By Emily Tate Sullivan, Photo: Kelsey Brunner/EdSurge, EdSurge, November 16, 2022 In a valley renowned for its world-class ski resorts and unrivaled outdoor recreation, with 14,000-foot peaks that pierce the horizon, five-star hotels, designer storefronts and multimillion-dollar mountainside mansions, there is a fleet of short, white buses stamped with geometric shapes. Parked in the lots of schools, churches and community centers, the buses are inconspicuous. Most passersby would overlook...

By Amy DiPierro and Corey Mitchell, Photo: Matt Manley/Center for Public Integrity, November 15, 2022 For months, Beth Petersen paid acquaintances to take her son to school — money she sorely needed. They’d lost their apartment, her son bouncing between relatives and friends while she hotel-hopped. As hard as she tried to keep the 13-year-old at his school, they finally had to switch districts. Under federal law, Petersen’s son had a right to free transportation — and to remain in the school...

By Dylan Lukes and Christopher Cleveland, Photo: Wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock, Housing Matters, November 9, 2022 Starting in 1935, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) began ranking neighborhoods around the US based on a calculation of loan risk that explicitly associated white populations with low risk and Black populations with high risk. HOLC graded areas from A (minimal risk) to D (hazardous). They color-coded these grades onto maps that banks and lenders used to inform their...

By Caroline Preston, Photo: Caroline Preston/The Hechinger Report, The Washington Post, November 5, 2022 There was one minute left on Suzanne Horsley’s stopwatch and the atmosphere remained thick with carbon dioxide, despite the efforts of her third graders to clear the air. Horsley, a wellness teacher at Toll Gate Grammar School, in Pennington, N.J., had directed the kids to toss balls of yarn representing carbon dioxide molecules to their peers stationed at plastic disks representing...

By Winston Choi-Schagrin, Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/The New York Times, November 1, 2022 In mid-October, just two weeks after Hurricane Ian struck her state, Bertha Vazquez asked her class of 7th graders to go online and search for information about climate change. Specifically, she tasked them to find sites that cast doubt on its human causes and who paid for them. It was a sophisticated exercise for the 12-year olds, Ms. Vazquez said, teaching them to discern climate facts from a mass of...

Event Title: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline Using a Trauma Informed Lens Event Date: Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 Event Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST Event Facilitators: Porter Jennings-McGarity & Lara Kain Special Guest: Tia Martinez Join PACEs Connection’s trauma-informed education consultant (Lara Kain) and trauma-informed criminal justice consultant (Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity) and special guest Tia Martinez for our first ever interdisciplinary collaborative event...

The Bridging to Resilience conference is about coming together with educators, social workers, health care professionals, religious communities, and other helping professionals to share conversations, ideas, strategies, tools, and connections to help build resilience and heal trauma in our own communities. We believe that by building a collaborative and resilient community to both heal trauma and solve poverty in our classrooms and neighborhoods, we have the ability to change lives and...

By Brandon Tensley, Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images, CNN US, October 2, 2022 In the early 2000s, when I was a student at Ridge View High School, in Columbia, South Carolina, I loved to parse the legacies of certain historical figures: W.E.B. Du Bois, in AP US History; Malcolm X, in AP English Language and Composition. At the same time, I wanted more. Too often, Advanced Placement curricula seemed to give attention to just a handful of Black heavyweights and, as a result, neglect the...

Event Title: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline Using a Trauma Informed Lens Event Date: Wednesday, October 19th, 2022 Event Time: 10:00 am - 12:00 pm PST Event Facilitators: Porter Jennings-McGarity & Lara Kain Special Guest: Tia Martinez Join PACEs Connection’s trauma-informed education consultant (Lara Kain) and trauma-informed criminal justice consultant (Dr. Porter Jennings-McGarity) and special guest Tia Martinez for our first ever interdisciplinary collaborative event...

Please join us for our series Education Upended: Talking Out of Turn. This series features a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection education consultant, with special guests on education-related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs science-aware lens to examine what's going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. October session,...

By Kalyn Belsha, Chalkbeat, Photo: MediaNews Group/Getty Images, September 27, 2022 Kelly King was able to do something this summer she’d never been able to before: pay students to help others. King, who works for the school district on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, used federal COVID aid to hire three rising high school seniors to staff a booth at a riverside park. There, as crowds flocked to a farmers market and free concerts, the students told residents how local schools could help families...

By Victoria Namkung, Photo: Matt Kelly Elementary Community School, The Guardian, September 26, 2022 B efore California became the first state to implement a universal meals program for its 6.2 million public school students, Alyssa Wells would keep granola bars in her classroom for students who complained of being hungry. When the new program began in August at Foussat elementary school in Oceanside, California , which is primarily attended by Latino students from low-income families, the...

By Patrick Wall, Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images, Chalkbeat, September 23, 2022 The culture war engulfing schools has subjected educators like Richard Clifton to unfamiliar scrutiny — including, in his case, a public records request. In Savannah, Georgia, where Clifton is a longtime English teacher, a group of conservative activists earlier this year began calling for the school board to “purge” books with sexual content from school libraries. After Clifton took a personal...

By Asher Lehrer-Small, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, The74, September 19, 2022 An increasing share of states are including student perspectives in education policymaking, a new report finds, but making sure those voices are diverse and have real power can remain a challenge. At least 33 now include formal positions for youth representatives on their state boards of education or as advisors to their state boards or their state superintendent’s office. That’s up from just 25 four...

By Cara Buckley, Photograph: Janie Osborne for The New York Times, The New York Times, September 15, 2022 Public schools are increasingly using savings from solar energy to upgrade facilities, help their communities, and give teachers raises — often with no cost to taxpayers. One school district was able to give pay raises to its teachers as big as 30 percent. Another bought new heating and ventilation systems, all the better to help students and educators breathe easier in these times. The...

Please join us for our series Education Upended: Talking Out of Turn. This series features a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection education consultant, with special guests on education-related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs science-aware lens to examine what's going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. October session,...

By Nicquel Terry Ellis, Photo: Victor Valley Union High School District, CNN US, September 1, 2022 A California school district is vowing to reform its discipline practices after a federal investigation revealed it was giving harsher punishment to Black students compared to White students who displayed similar behavior. Officials from the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights say the Victor Valley Union High School District in southern California's San Bernardino County committed...

PACEs Connection's interactive sessions focus on trauma-informed education and the impact of policy and system changes. This course will be facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEs Connection's educational consultant, and will be a combination of lecture, discussion, and collaboration. This session will use the RYSE center Interacting Layers of Trauma and Healing as a framework. Policy and Systems, Trauma-Informed Education and your Community PACEs Initiative Outline the importance of including...

Are you ready to transform your school to become a trauma-informed and healing-centered environment? An institute specifically tailored for school leaders and leadership teams who want to understand the HOW of trauma-informed schools. Join us for an encore of PACEs Connection Trauma-Informed School Leadership Institute. Speakers included current and former building leaders engaged in the work as well as other national experts supporting schools through this transformation process.

Please join us for our series Education Upended—Talking Out of Turn. This series features a conversation facilitated by Lara Kain, PACEsConnection education consultant, with special guests on education, related current events and hot topics. We will use a trauma-informed and PACEs-science lens to examine what's going on K-12 education, what needs changing, and strategies being used in the field to disrupt harmful policies and make positive changes in the system. August Session, Tuesday...

By Camilla Mutoni Griffiths and Nicky Sullivan, Photo: Maskot/Getty Images, Scientific American, August 19, 2022 “Where are the Native Americans now?” asked fifth grade students in an Iowa City classroom last year. There are many ways their teacher, Melanie Hester, might have answered. She could have pointed out that today Native Americans live in cities and towns across the U.S. About 20 percent live on reservations , and Hester could have used that to open a discussion of the U.S.

By Adrian Horton, Photo: Argot Pictures, The Guardian, August 15, 2022 T here’s a moment early in Let the Little Light Shine, a riveting documentary on one community’s fight to preserve their grade school, when it becomes clear that Chicago’s National Teachers Academy is no ordinary place. It’s a school assembly, and the students – overwhelmingly Black and brown children from the city’s South Side, kindergarten through eighth grade – pack benches in the cafeteria. Two of the older students...

By Kristi Eaton, Photo: Tulsa Regional STEM Alliance, The74 August 15, 2022 * Ed. note - Why this article? An effort to overcome the opportunity gap facing girls and other disadvantaged student groups. This is part of PACEs Connection’s mission. Nine-year-old Marissa Williams and 10-year-old Kason Huerta sit huddled next to each other on the floor of the library at Darnaby Elementary School in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The temperature outside is nearing 100 degrees on this balmy Thursday in July, but...

By Brian Lopez, Photo: Rachel Zein/The Texas Tribune, The74, August 11, 2022 For the past year, Texas educators have struggled with a new law targeting how history and race are taught in the state’s public schools. Some administrators thought it meant they needed to teach an opposing view of the Holocaust. For other school officials, the pressure of adhering to new restrictions about how to teach social studies was too much and for some it was the last straw: They quit . In one district, a...

By Betty M Rosales, Photo: Ashley A Smith, EdSource, August 11, 2002 A s community college students return to their campuses, many will find one new resource to count on: a hub where they can seek support in meeting their basic needs. Known as basic needs centers, the resources offered differ from campus to campus, but most tend to help students who are experiencing housing and food insecurity. Others also offer other support like paying for auto insurance, finding low-cost medical care,...

By Elizabeth D. Steiner, Heather Schwartz, and Melissa Kay Diliberti, The 74, August 8, 2022 Schools have been trying to return to normal after three years of closures, disruption and setbacks, so it’s no surprise that the pandemic has taken a toll on educators’ morale. Yet, thus far, public school educators nationally have not left their jobs at notably higher rates than before the pandemic began. Even so, poor morale among educators is concerning. Given how many teachers enter the...

By Lee Lawrence, Photo: Nikos Frazier/Journal & Courier/AP/File, The Christian Science Monitor, August 8, 2022 P resident Joe Biden is expected to decide this month whether there will be mass student debt cancellation. And while Americans are at loggerheads over that, they are in almost full agreement about fixing the root cause: the high cost of a college education. Asked to choose between the government forgiving student debt or making college more affordable for current and future...

By Jennifer A. Kingson, Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios, Axios, July 28, 2022 A landmark California law requiring high schools to start at 8:30am or later is jump-starting similar efforts nationwide after years of intense debate over schools' starting bells. Why it matters: Most teens don't get enough sleep — yet school start times are a hot-button political issue that divide communities, pitting teachers, parents, bus drivers, and administrators against one another. Pediatricians say...

By California Supportive Schools, July 2022 School districts that implement whole-community supports incorporate the needs of families and caregivers in their approach to student well-being. In this audiocast, you’ll hear about how Pajaro Valley Unified School District prioritizes community voice to provide responsive supports that promote multi-generational wellness through their Family Engagement and Wellness Center. [ Please click here to listen to the audiocast .] [ Please click here to...

By Asher Lehrer-Small, The 74, July 27, 2022 Students who miss at least 10% of school days are more likely to face reading difficulties by third grade, less likely to earn a high school diploma and are at higher risk of juvenile delinquency . There’s a word to describe when students surpass this troubling threshold: chronic absenteeism. It makes intuitive sense. Students who spend less time in the classroom have a harder time keeping up with their peers and may face difficulties developing...

By Sara Miller Llana, Photo: Melanie Stetson Freeman/The Christian Science Monitor, The Christian Science Monitor, July 25, 2022 C hristine M’Lot grew up feeling her culture was invisible. Throughout most of her public education in Winnipeg, the Anishinaabe educator says she saw almost no representation of Indigenous voices, save for a single book assignment her senior year. It wasn’t until university that she had her first Indigenous teacher and was introduced to modern Indigenous culture –...

By Kevin Mahnken, Photo: Glen Cooper/Getty Images, The 74, July 24, 2022 With the Supreme Court poised to reduce or even eliminate affirmative action in college admissions, a recent study has offered a unique window into the magnitude of racial preferences in America’s elite colleges. The paper , part of a series of studies conducted in the wake of high-profile litigation against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, shows that Hispanic and African American applicants to both...

By Natalie Lu, Photo: Natalie Lu, EdSource, July 25, 2022 I didn’t expect to fall apart so quickly. After transferring to University of California Berkeley in the midst of a pandemic, I assumed I was resilient. But the hard truth hit me faster than a car on a California freeway when I practically lost my mind my senior year. Before this, in 2019, I lost my grandfather to dementia, and months after, suddenly had to navigate a pandemic that could have also taken my grandmother. For a bit, I...

By Petula Dvorak, Photo: Amanda Voisard/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, July 25, 2022 “It’s a whole different generation,” Barbara Mickles said out loud, to no one in particular, shaking her head and adding a grandmotherly “mmm-hmmm” to underscore the absurdity of $100 sneakers on ever-growing kid feet. Mickles, 62, was watching a swarm of kids, including a few of her 16 grandchildren, go giddy over sneakers — Nike, Adidas, Champion. All the hot brands. Back in Arkansas, Shoe...

By Janie Har, Photo: Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP Photo, Associated Press, July 15, 2022 San Francisco Bay Area high school teacher Lisa Raskin moved out of a cramped apartment she was sharing with a roommate and into her own place this month, paying a deeply discounted $1,500 a month for a one-bedroom with expansive views within walking distance to work. It was once an impossible dream in an exorbitantly priced region hostile to new housing. But her employer, a 4,000-student school district...

June was quite a month for learning, connecting, reflecting, and inspiration around issues of transforming the education system. I started the month off by attending the 2022 National Community Schools and Family Engagement Conference here in my hometown of Los Angeles. Over 3,000 attendees from across the country gathered to learn from each other and share their expertise around developing authentic community-driven Community Schools. (If you want to dive deeper into what community schools...

By Emma Gallegos, Photo: Kerin Coffey, EdSource, July 7, 2022 A question that has long vexed American secondary education is whether to prepare students for college or a career. With the creation of the Golden State Pathways Program, California has decided to invest in both. The state budget sets aside $500 million in competitive grants to establish a new program to ensure students “ advance seamlessly from high school to college and career.” Its goal is to help students transition from high...

By Trisha Powell Crain, Photo: Laura Bruce, The Hechinger Report, June 29, 2022 A labama schools were just starting a new venture to help students find mental health resources when COVID hit. Mental health service coordinators are now in place in nearly all of Alabama’s 138 school districts; they help smooth the path so more students can find resources. The new role came at a key time, officials say, and will help more communities wrestle with the best way to help more students. “We know...

By Steve Snyder, Image: Screenshot from article, The 74, June 30, 2022 After two years of pandemic chaos, classroom disruptions and trauma, this spring has seen school communities across the country rally their way back to something approximating normal. At the center of these efforts are inspiring teachers, school staffers and neighborhood leaders who for years now have put their time and energy into guiding students, families and wider school communities through a time of unprecedented...

By Sequoia Carrillo, Photo: John Locher/Associate Press, National Public Radio, June 28, 2022 The University of Arizona announced Monday that Native American students no longer would have to pay tuition or fees at its main campus in Tucson. The university hopes the new program better serves the state's large Native population. The program, a first of its kind in an Arizona public university, will be available for students registered to any of the state's 22 federally recognized tribes . More...

By Linda Jacobson, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images, The 74, June 23, 2022 This summer marks the third time in eight years that the U.S. Department of Education is overhauling its policy on how school districts should handle student discipline. And while the controversy surrounding the issue hasn’t changed, the pandemic offers up a troubling new context: Districts are reporting spikes in student misconduct , violent attacks on school employees and blatant disregard for school rules.

By Katy Knight, Illustration: Siegel Family Endowment, The 74, June 27, 2022 The past two years have demonstrated that schools are much more than places of education. While pandemic-related closures interrupted learning, reduced academic expectations and widened inequality gaps for students, they also carried high consequences for communities at large. When schools shut down, working parents — especially women — who were left without child care suffered career setbacks as they struggled to...

By Matt Barnum, Photo: Kena Betancur/VIEWpress/Getty Images, Chalkbeat, June 22, 2022 Congress appears poised to respond to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting, which gripped the nation’s attention and resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two teachers. A bipartisan bill , unveiled Tuesday evening, would add modest gun control rules and provide new funding for a bevy of mental health and school safety programs. It quickly gained support from 64 senators, clearing its first procedural...

By Peter Yeung, The 74, June 20, 2022 In 2004, Maxence Arcy moved with his family to Bellefontaine, a poor suburb of the French city of Toulouse. Limited by what he could afford, the father of six bought a place on a sprawling housing estate in the neighborhood which had catchment schools with the worst educational record in the region. “At the time, there were only Mahgrebians and Africans living on the estate and going to these schools,” says Arcy, who originally migrated from Morocco in...

By Carolyn Jones, Photo: Screenshot from article, EdSource, June 16, 2022 Five years ago, Fremont High in East Oakland had some of the highest discipline rates and lowest attendance in the city. Fights and conflicts were common occurrences. Only 1 in 4 graduates were qualified to attend public college in California. One in 3 dropped out entirely. But Fremont High is – literally – a different place now. With a newly rebuilt campus and an intensive focus on improving campus climate, Fremont...

By Hannah Natanson and Moriah Balingit, Photo: Cedar Attanasio/AP, The Washington Post, June 16, 2022 A Florida teacher lost her job for hanging a Black Lives Matter flag over her classroom door and rewarding student activism. A Massachusetts teacher was fired for posting a video denouncing critical race theory. A teacher in Missouri got the ax for assigning a worksheet about privilege — and still another, in California, was fired for criticizing mask mandates on her Facebook page. They were...

By Libby Stanford, Photo: John Tully/Education Week, Education Week, June 13, 2022 Nonprofit organizations that have spent decades offering social-emotional learning and equity-based support to schools are facing a new challenge: defending their existence. This year, education terms like SEL and equity have become embroiled in the controversy surrounding “critical race theory,” an academic framework that argues racism is a social construct that has been embedded into legal systems and...