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President Joe Biden hosted a conference on hunger, nutrition and health Wednesday, at which he pushed to expand access to free school meals for 9m more children by 2032. In July, a group of Congressional Democrats introduced the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act. In addition to reauthorizing the expired USDA waivers that allowed all students to eat meals for free regardless of income status, the bill would expand access to free school meals by lowering the threshold for what’s known as the Community Eligibility Provision for those programs. That allows schools or clusters of schools to offer free meals if 40% or more of the student population qualifies for free or reduced-price meals. Under the bill, that threshold would be lowered to 25%. Through the USDA, the administration also plans to expand student access to meals in the summer, provide more resources to school meal programs serving Native American students, and advance a new initiative to support schools’ efforts to improve the nutritional quality of meals. Nonprofit group FoodCorps is working with the administration on this, and is committing $250m to its Nourishing Food Initiative. Lori Adkins, president of the School Nutrition Association, comments: “Research shows school meals support academic achievement and are the healthiest meals children eat.”

 

The Hill

Education Week

K12 Dive

Wall Street Journal

Accelerate Language, Accelerate Literacy

Bilingualism is an advantage and something our students should be proud of—they speak hundreds of different languages with different syntax, grammar, and vocabulary, and this diversity means they each have unique needs when it comes to literacy.

Join us for the third annual Emergent Bilingual Week, October 17-21, 2022! Lexia Learning presents a series of expert-led webinar sessions that explore important aspects of supporting multilingual students, including the acceleration of English language learning, the role of oral language in literacy instruction, language learning efficacy and research, how educators can leverage artificial intelligence, and much more!

The webinars are free. Attendees will earn CE certificates for PD hours and teacher license renewal.

Register today!

 

Millions of K-12 students missed school this week in Florida, as nearly every public school district in the state closed its buildings during the onslaught of Hurricane Ian. At least 55 of Florida's 67 public school districts closed for at least one day, according to the state's department of education, district websites and social media, causing 2.5m students to miss school. Around 1.7m of those students missed three days or more, and several districts have yet to announce their reopening plans. Hillsborough County Public Schools, which includes Tampa and is one of the largest districts affected, closed for all five days to prepare its schools to serve as emergency shelters. With more than 200,000 students, the district is the nation's 6th largest. This week, the district sheltered around 9,000 people, and 28 school-based shelters are still open, according to Superintendent Addison Davis. "We had great momentum taking place at the start of the year. This year was the first year we kind of felt like we had some normalcy," he said, referring to the pandemic disruptions of the two previous years. "So we got to regain that ... and really create that momentum back once again."

 

Miami Herald

NPR

Tampa Bay Times

While brick-and-mortar school districts across the country desperately work to fill vacant teaching positions, online schools say they are often attracting far more candidates than they can hire. An extreme example comes at Lowcountry Connections Academy, an online school in South Carolina. Before school started this fall, the cyber academy posted four new teacher openings and received roughly 1,050 applications for the roles. School leader GeRita Connor says: "This is year 20 for me in education, year 10 as a leader. That’s the most applications I’ve received in my life." Research from the U.S. Government Accountability Office using pre-pandemic data shows students at online schools score far worse on academic tests than their peers learning in-person however, even when factoring in race, poverty level and disability status. Heather Schwartz, a researcher at the Rand Corporation who has studied virtual schools during the pandemic, is among those worried about the continued trend toward more families and teachers engaging in online education. “Until we have proof the virtual schools can perform just as well — for at least some students — as traditional public schools, yeah, I’m concerned,” she says.

 

The 74 (Online)

 

US Department of Education

Twenty-three percent of U.S. students struggle to afford menstrual hygiene products, according to a nationally representative 2021 survey by Thinx and PERIOD, a youth-led nonprofit group focused on combating period poverty and stigma. This issue is especially prevalent among lower-income students and students of color, and was exacerbated by the lack of access to free menstrual products while schools were closed during the pandemic. The majority of students say they rarely or never find period products in school bathrooms, according to the survey. Ameer Abdul, the national campaign manager at PERIOD, says the problem is not funding, but what schools choose to prioritize. "If we are not able to have a conversation about an issue, we will not be able to have a conversation about the solution. So in order to have a conversation about it, we need to first break the stigma. And that comes from speaking about menstruation and normalizing menstruation."

 

US News and World Report

Most adults (88%) in the United States believe that their state should mandate a financial education course for high school students to graduate, according to a new survey by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) and AmeriSpeak. Some 80% said they wish such a requirement existed when they were in school. “Some states already require students to take a financial education course, and some states are in the process of instituting this curriculum. Americans overwhelmingly agree that learning money skills at an early age is important,” says NEFE president Billy Hensley. Separately, Birmingham City Council in Alabama on Tuesday approved a $1m financial literacy program that will be offered to students at Birmingham City Schools. The city has partnered with IMC Financial Consulting, which will teach financial workshops.

 

The Hill

Al.com

Over 3m children in Pakistan may miss a semester of school due to extreme flooding damage to schools within the country. Although local authorities have set up temporary learning centers in areas affected by the flooding in an effort to continue the children's education, the Associated Press reports, officials say that given the scale of destruction, the centers may not be enough to keep children in school. About 24,000 schools around the country have been affected by floods, disrupting the education of close to 3.5m children, according to a World Bank report released Wednesday. The unprecedented flooding began in June, with the United Nations attributing the disaster to climate change. Prior to the floods, three in four Pakistani children were in “learning poverty,” meaning that they do not know how to read or understand simple text by the age of 10. With the widespread destruction of schools, the World Bank estimates "learning poverty" could go up 5%.

 

Washington Examiner

Chicago Public Schools has just 322,000 students this year, a decline of 8,000 students, pushing it down a notch to the fourth-largest U.S. school district. CPS trails Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, which has seen its enrollment increase to 325,000. CPS officials said enrollment declined in elementary schools but held steady in high schools. Preschool enrollment is up by 6%. Enrollment in CPS is down 81,000 students over the last decade.

 

Chicago Sun Times