The event was a joint effort by BHC and partner groups like Cultiva La Salud, Healthy Equity Project and the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) that provided dozens of MCSD parents with a chance to air concerns over the district’s spending. In total, more than two-dozen families were in attendance, speaking four different languages and representing a wide swath of the community concerned over the lack of transparency in the district’s Local Control Accountability Plan (LCAP).
The LCAP is a statewide requirement for school districts that must show how each agency plans to spend money provided through the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). Like many districts, MCSD relies on LCFF dollars for a majority of its budget and the state funds accounted for 75 percent of the district’s $134 million 2016-2017 budget. About $21 million of those LCFF funds are considered equity-based and intended specifically for high-need populations like foster youth, low-income students and English Learners.
What are we doing and why are we doing it? Those seem to be the questions that keep coming up as I try to differentiate my thoughts from a once thoughtless category of opinion. What opinions you ask? Well let’s start with the obvious narrative of politics and all its rich participants, oh sorry, I meant rich discussions.
(This post originally appeared on theknowfresno.org and represents a collection of youth voices from YouthWire and partner media groups throughout the state. Read More
(Photo courtesy of Aaliyah Lannerd)
By We’Ced Youth Media
We’Ced asked our youth reporters, coworkers, friends and family members about the special role maternal figures play in their lives. Read More
NAM has also worked to help inform ethnic media on how to report and cover hate-related incidents.
But when it comes to accurately documenting hate, there is in fact no national system in place. The FBI maintains its Uniform Crime Reporting Program which is slow to update and relies on reports from law enforcement agencies that may or – as is often the case – may not report such crimes.
This recent spike builds upon an older trend of Merced’s youth reporting higher-than-average rates of depression or hopelessness. According to 2011-2013 data from online research tool Kidsdata, minority teens in Merced County report feelings of depression at higher rates than statewide peer groups. The numbers are based on responses from 7th, 9th and 11th grade students who reported feeling sad or hopeless almost every day for two weeks or more.
If you have never experienced addiction, it can be hard to understand what people really go through. It is easy to blame addicts, but no one wakes up one day wanting to be addicted. They face battles everyday. And so to those around them.
A study from 2010 shows that over 23.5 million Americans are addicted to drugs and alcohol. But only 1 in 10 Americans receives the treatment they need. And as of 2014, there were only around 14,000 treatment centers nationwide, not enough compared to the size of the problem.
It’s important to remember that many young victims of sexual abuse do not report their abuse until many years later, or never at all. What connects survivors who report and those who don’t is the sense of shame and the blame they carry on their shoulders. They need to know that they are not alone, and it is not their fault.
Unfortunately, there are many situations in schools throughout the country where students are discriminated against because of what they wear, who they love, and who they are. These students are bullied and they are humiliated, resulting in both physical and emotional scars that will haunt them for a long while.
It’s very upsetting to see schools turn away from the kind of progress made in recent years when it comes to things like LGBTQ+ rights and gender stereotypes. More and more, students are again becoming afraid, keeping their identities and their views in the shadows.
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