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During a press conference yesterday with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, state Sen. Mike McGuire (D-North Coast) announced Senate Bill 1229, which would provide $25,000 grants to aspiring mental health clinicians willing to work in high-need communities for two years. The intention is to fill 10,000 new counseling positions at schools and youth organizations across the state, particularly those with high rates of adverse childhood experiences. “Students have experienced increased anxiety, depression, loneliness and, yes, suicidal thoughts,” McGuire said. “And in areas where adverse childhood experiences were high before the pandemic, the crisis is now even more acute.” “We know that there’s an increase in hospitalizations for young people and young adults, by some counts 42%,” Thurmond said of the bill he is co-sponsoring. “We also know that mental health has been a challenge for many communities even before the pandemic.” Before the pandemic, the state only had enough mental health professionals to meet, by many estimates, 30% of the need, Thurmond said. That was worse in rural communities like Humboldt County. That’s why McGuire said, “The bill will take a worst-first strategy, meaning areas where there’s higher cases of ACEs or a lack of mental health professionals would receive priority funding.”

 

Eureka Times-Standard

Teach for America (TFA) is expecting its smallest crop of first-year teachers in at least 15 years, with the organization expecting to place just under 2,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall. That’s just two-thirds of the number of first-year teachers TFA placed in schools in fall 2019, and one-third of the number it sent into the field in 2013. Enrollment in all kinds of teacher preparation programs stood at a little more than half a million in the fall of 2018, the latest federal data show, down 18% from eight years earlier. Pam Grossman, dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, who has studied teacher preparation, comments: “I don’t think they’re alone in seeing drops. This is, in general, a trend that I’m very concerned about.”

 

Chalkbeat

With state funding based on the number of students in the classroom, districts across California are bracing for the effect of declining enrollment, the result of falling birthrates, out-of-state migration, the high cost of living and the growth of charter schools, along with the pandemic. Los Angeles USD, the second-largest school district in the U.S., has seen a 40% drop in the number of students in the last 20 years. It currently has 437,358 students; however, a district financial forecast estimates that enrollment will dip below 400,000 for the first time in decades in the 2023-24 school year. Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said the district needs to begin examining enrollment trends to prepare for potential shortfalls in funding, and "make decisions in the way we staff schools."

 

Los Angeles Times

With the largest teacher strike to hit Sonoma County in five years looming this week, parents of thousands of children in Cotati-Rohnert Park USD are bracing for the latest potential disruption of classroom instruction two years into the coronavirus pandemic. More than 300 teachers who are pressing the district for better pay are set to begin a strike Thursday if no deal is reached. Some campuses have announced plans for shorter school days, and the district is planning to bring in substitutes and lean on other school employees to keep classrooms open and safe. Monday’s strike announcement came days after the release of an independent fact-finder’s report, in which a state-appointed neutral party recommended a three-year agreement with wage increases of 6%, 5% and a cost of living bump of 3.6% in the third year. Teachers, represented by the Rohnert Park Cotati Educators Association, have been asking for the district to meet that recommendation of an approximate 14.6% raise over three years. But meeting that proposal, while giving matching raises to the other unionized employees and district administrators, would drain district reserves and force it into a deficit within two years, said Superintendent Mayra Perez. The district's latest offer is a 3% ongoing wage increase in the current year, plus a bonus equivalent to an additional 3% wage bump, for a total 6% increase. The district also offered 5% in 2022-23 and a wage increase equivalent to cost of living increases in ‘23-’24.

 

The Press Democrat

K-12 Dive speaks to five school principals, from Vermont, Colorado, Illinois, and Alabama, about the benefits and burdens of having received three rounds of ESSER funding, including having more money to hire staff, but no candidates to fill the positions, and the difficulties of determining exactly what expenses are allowable. 

 

K-12 Dive

A California judge has ordered an online, for-profit university and its former parent company to pay $22m in penalties, saying they mislead students about the costs of their education, among other things, the state’s attorney general announced Monday. The San Diego Superior Court ruled in favor of the state of California in its 2017 lawsuit against Ashford University and and its then-parent company Zovio, Inc. The University of Arizona has since acquired the university and rebranded the online school, the University of Arizona Global Campus. It is an independent university that is operated in affiliation with the University of Arizona. “Ashford made false promises to students about the value of an Ashford degree, leaving students with mounting debt, broken promises, and searching for a job,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement announcing the ruling. “While we can’t turn back the clock for these students, this decision should send a strong message: If you engage in deceptive practices in order to pad your bottom line, my office will hold you accountable.”

 

East Bay Times

While many students and families that school districts have identified as homeless qualify for services under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a majority usually don’t get access to federally funded supports such as “rapid rehousing” to quickly connect families with permanent housing, continuum-of-care grant programs and other U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development services meant to stabilize the homeless. At the heart of the problem is a difference in the definition of “homelessness” under two separate federal agencies. While HUD defines homelessness as living on the streets or in a homeless shelter, among other categories, the U.S. Department of Education’s definition under the McKinney-Vento Act extends to children or families sharing housing with others, commonly referred to as “doubled up." Such students are more likely to have significantly lower GPAs and less likely to graduate on time than those in stable housing. Poor-quality housing is also associated with lower kindergarten-readiness. Those against expanding the definition of homelessness — lawmakers, homelessness nonprofits and advocacy groups, among others — also say there is a lack of resources needed to support the additional families who would qualify for federal support if the definition were expanded.  If HUD counted doubled-up families or those living out of motels as homeless, the number on homeless rolls would drastically increase, signaling to lawmakers the need for more funds, advocates say.  Instead, the official count includes only those on the streets or in shelters and is conducted one night every January.

 

K-12 Dive

To learn how employers can help meet the needs of staff affected by the invasion of Ukraine — as well as other global conflicts, HR Dive spoke with Tiamo Katsonga-Phiri, director of the University of Denver's Trauma Disaster Recovery Clinic, and Thomas Barrett, clinical professor emeritus at the University of Denver's Graduate School of Professional Psychology. Employers can help themselves respond to employees' stress by understanding the mental health symptoms that tend to appear in response to global conflict.  Common responses to past trauma include post-traumatic stress disorder, major depression and generalized anxiety, Katsonga-Phiri said. Common symptoms outside of work may include nightmares, difficulty sleeping, difficulty eating and flashbacks. In the workplace, symptoms might look like difficulty concentrating, an unexpectedly slow pace, excessive worry, sudden panic and difficulty building relationships with co-workers. Employees may benefit from more flexibility in breaks and hours worked, even if just in the form of providing the time and private space during work hours to call family who live in another time zone may be a major benefit for some workers. Barrett also said that organizing an action in response to a conflict, such as fundraising drives and volunteer activities to support refugees, can help address feelings of powerlessness.

 

K-12 Dive

Mask mandates have disappeared rapidly in the last few weeks in the United States as Omicron cases have receded. But some school districts, cities and one state are holding out, and some teachers, parents and students fear that dropping mask mandates in schools is premature. Hawaii remains the only U.S. state that isn't lifting its indoor mask mandate. Several school districts have their own mask mandates, independent of their cities or states. Public schools in Boston, Washington and Seattle continue to require masks at school, even though officials in most of those cities have ended indoor mask rules. In Los Angeles County, school districts will set their own rules about masks starting on Friday, when the county’s mask requirement ends. But the City of Los Angeles, the country’s second-largest district, will continue to require masks at its schools. Experts have pointed out that while the risk COVID poses to children is real, it is now about the same as the risk of the flu, and many doctors cite the mental health strain that children have faced during the pandemic and the educational value of seeing full faces. Other studies, such as a recent one from the US Centers for Disease Control and the Arkansas Department of Health, have found that schools that require masks have fewer COVID cases on average - in this case, 23% - than those that didn't. Mask policies had the most effect for older students and in combination with higher vaccination coverage.

 

CNN	New York Times

The Federal Trade Commission says that WW International, the weight-loss organization formerly known as Weight Watchers, used its pediatric app Kurbo to illegally collect personal information from children without their parents’ permission. A complaint filed Friday by the Justice Department on behalf of the commission said that the firm violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, which requires apps and other online services geared toward children to get parental consent before collecting data from users under 13. WW has agreed to pay a $1.5m penalty as part of a settlement, and to erase the algorithms it had derived from the user data. WW introduced Kurbo in 2019, billing it as a way of promoting healthy eating habits among children. Users enter their height, weight, age and health goals, and then track what they eat and how much they exercise. The app drew criticism from pediatricians, nutritionists and others who warned that weight-loss programs for children can lead to eating disorders and low self-esteem. . 

 

New York Times