A NEW APPROACH TO SCHOOL LUNCH

As more of a national health focus has shifted not only to care but prevention, we’re all required to take a role in the formation of good dietary habits for our coomunity’s youth.  Whether that be an emphasis upon exercise or it be a cultural shift on how we feed our children, we all recognize the integral part that school and school nutrition progragrams can play in the educating of our youth on healthy life choices, as the goals is to instil healthy habits.  School lunch is a pivotol element of this effort.  And for many school districts especially those that service inner-city urban communities, school lunch consist of child friendly foods that may not be the most healthy choices.  But, many inner-city students are preconditioned to enjoy and expect processed pre-paackaged, non-organic food.  Such food is proven to be not as healthy as the alternative.  So for a community and their respective school board to introduce organic and healthy choices, that communicty has decisevly chosen to highlight the benefits of healthy food choices through their offerings.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in the efforts of Navajo native-american communities:       

“Native schools on reservations with limited budgets often struggle to provide healthy, unprocessed and culturally relevant foods for their students. One possible and viable solution to address the severe conditions of poverty, social stress and health and nutrition problems in Native communities and schools is a Farm-to-School program in which local farmers supply produce to the schools directly within in their communities”.  

As reported by Vincent Schilling in  “Fresh From the Farm to School Lunches: Navajo Pilot Program Proves Successful”; the desire to provide healthy lunch choices for our community’s schools is prevelant, but the desire by policy stewards to alter the landscape of school district's long established business relationships with food vendors often serves as an impedicment to the type of activisim and impact that has been achived by the refernced Navajo community.  The example set by this community that’s chosen to promote healthy living in the face of regulatory restrictions should encourage us all to strive towards a better way of living for a better generation.

http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/28/fresh-farm-school-lunches-navajo-pilot-program-proves-successful-151066

"Staying back to get ahead: High school basketball players are repeating

Prep Athletics has always served as an area of the educational
experience that has been heavily subjected to ever-changing oversight
through policy.  The majority of athletic education policy is geared
towards protecting the student athlete.  Protections such as time limitations
for participation, age requirements, equipment requirements, and personnel training
requirements all work in concert to safeguard health while positioning student athletes for
collegiate opportunities should their talent level result in recruitment.
1972's "Title Nine" amendment to the 1965 "Higher Education Act" serves
as an example of federal education policy that provided opportunity for athletes
who possessed the talent and academic requirements to pursue education
beyond Secondary school. This was done by legislatively erasing gender lines and promoting equality for all student athletes
Other athletic policies are geared towards maintaining program integrity
through policy that ensures student academic compliancy.  Through these practices, schools guard against unscrupulous individuals or companies seeking to
exploit these student athletes through gambling, compensation schemes,
or potentially even sports drug activities.  All of which
can compromise a student athlete's ability to participate in amateur
sports programs which are proven to cultivate promising futures.
So when Matthew Stanmyre of the New Jersey Star-Ledger reports that
there's a popular trend of junior high school basketball players
purposely being positioned to repeat grades to gain a competitive advantage, one must inquire as to
whether this too is an area in which new or adjusted policy can have an
impact.  The trend of repeating grades is one that has recently been
utilized by student athletes and their families as a method to enhance
the athletic performance of a student while increasing scholarship
recruitment opportunities.  An older, physically more mature student
playing against what essentially amounts to underdeveloped talent, can
and does result in a student athlete appearing more athletically gifted and
subsequently better able to perform.  This clearly can affect a player's
level of collegiate recruitment,  For a talented player and as a strategy;
this approach has worked with bankable success for many players who were in fact offered high-profile scholarships, some of whom now play
professionally.  And even in doing this, students are in fact not stripped of
their capacity to graduate early, as players have an opportunity to
graduate at their original pace by reclassifying to a higher grade once
in high school. Stanmyre explains; "Those high-profile repeaters also
have helped create the latest wrinkle to the repeating trend: Players
reclassifying up a year during high school, in most cases back to their
original grade."
This trend clearly serves as shift in traditional thinking and practice
for how high school athletes and their respective institutions approach
and balance student collegiate aspirations and academic responsibilities.
And while I personally am in favor of "repeating and reclassifying"
for promising athletes; I'm left to ponder, how are these students
qualifying for repeating the grade? Are players intentionally tanking in
the classroom, or are they just not being promoted.  In either instance,
I'm concerned as to whether or not the integrity of academic and
eligibility protocols are institutionally being considered.  One would
assume that players aren't being encourage to demonstrate poor
behavioral discipline in order to qualify for repeating, so there remain questions
about how the particulars of this practice plays out. This is the type
of situation in which adding or altering assessment and oversight policy
might be appropriate as to ensure that the circumstances that
facilitated the introduction and eventual popularity of this trend ultimately do protect students.

http://www.nj.com/hssports/blog/boysbasketball/index.ssf/2013/07/staying
_back_to_get_ahead_high_school_basketball_players_are_staying_back_in_mi
ddle_school_to_get_an.html

"Priorities In Special Education"

For many States such as the one highlighted in "Sequester hits special
education like 'ton of bricks'" the impact of fiscal restraints are
altering their capacity to fund complete "special education" services to
their district's schools.  The importance of programs that fall
underneath the scope of "special education" are critical to students
that do and can benefit from behavioral, developmental or academic
impediments. Many of these programs are proven to affect student
development but the realities of dwindling educational resources aren't
just placing "Special Ed" services in danger but are actually reshaping
the effectiveness of these programs. And while the public outcry for
continuing services that aid these students is consistent, it's
necessarily not inline with policymaker's political interest enough for
them to expose themselves to political risk or for them to utilize
political capital to publicly and legislatively resist these fiscal
cuts.  So the outlook for States to secure additional funding or to
restore education appropriations appears unlikely in the immediate
future, but it's imperative that Federal, State and Municipal
policymakers summon the will or at least demonstrate the political
craftiness to ensure that appropriate funding is available for "Special
Education" programs. Because the future for many students in many states
with many issues, depend upon it.


http://news.msn.com/us/sequester-hits-special-education-like-ton-of-bric
ks?stay=1
< http://news.msn.com/us/sequester-hits-special-education-like-ton-of-bri
cks?stay=1>

School Uniform Policy and the Purpose that it can serve

 

There are several well established purposes for America’s private institutions to require their students to wear school uniforms, many of these reasons are steeped in tradition.  Whether it is practices that date back decades or it just is a commonality that all private schools have adopted since their inception, dress code policy is non controversial.  But for public schools in urban settings, the only reason to institute such policy can only be to support the efficacy of school safety measures.  In many communities, it’s been determined that school uniforms can aid administrators in their basic responsibility in identifying attending students against those that would approach school grounds with nefarious or perhaps criminalistic  intentions.  In addition to that, the prevailing notion is that with school uniform requirements, students can no longer dress in clothing that would inflame rival gang activity from classmates or potentially encourage criminalistic behavior for those that oppose such clothing.  Additionally, those that support such measures justifiably contend that within their urban communities, the uniform uniforms can relieve the social pressure that some kids feel to wear trendy clothing at any cost.  These are all valid concerns that can be addressed through uniform policy, but what serves as perhaps the main motivator for the requirement of school uniforms in urban schools is the sociological effect that trendy clothing can have on socio-economically disadvantaged students.  Most understand that those students that cannot afford to display the most contemporary fashion are disadvantaged within school circles.  And most also understand that this disadvantage can have a crippling affect on a student’s disposition, which affects an adolescent’s willingness to engage in academic activities as a result of a lack of perceived social acceptance which for young students; can result in a lack of general of institutional interest.  Such an activity is assumedly combated by the implementation of uniform policy.  But many contend that a requirement to purchase certain garments for children can in fact impose a financial hardship upon student’s parents.  Such a premise is further highlighted by the following article spotlighting the New Orleans’ school system: 

“SCHOOL UNIFORMS: THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE PLAID”

www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/08/school_uniforms_the_good_the_b.html

The highlighted financial hardship must be weighed against valid institutional concerns regarding student safety and academically viability.  But irregardless, it must be recognized that the aforementioned shift in policy realistically has only a  marginal impact upon schools as any financial impact incurred by parents is equal to that of or is only slightly higher than that of the cost of clothing for student’s not required to wear uniforms.    

           

"America's Charter School movement shifts into High Gear"

From the Kipp Charter school network with schools in major American cities such as Los Angeles and Houston, to Hartford's Capital Prepatory; the introduction of charter schools as a replacement for many of the nation's underachieving public schools is a welcomed development for those that thirst for schools and educators that can effectively educate.  These publicly funded but alternatively managed schools are known to operate without the bureaucratic regulations that often serve as impediments to the effective delivery of education.  These impediments are known to institutionally promote a lack of versatility in resource management that many underachieving schools need to turn around their respective school's performance.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the Kentucky community referenced in the article below: 

http://www.newsdemocratleader.com/view/full_story/23274008/article-Survey-says--Vulnerable-Kentuckians-want-charter-schools?instance=popular

And while the effectiveness of these schools can be debated utilizing varying student performance metrics as evidence of either success or failure, it's clear that communities that embrace charter schools do so while highlighting an underlying lack of confidence in their political and labor representatives that are responsible  for shaping educational policy in a way that benefits students and not their own interest.  It's widely understood and accepted that in many cities, the status quo of public school management serves no one but those that champion it.  Students continue to developmentally lag compared to their counterparts and do so with no promise of institutional change that can reverse the trend.  Parents, educators and community members generally thirst for any type of shift in business practice that can result in their community's students attending schools that are free to innovate in order to educate.  It's this thirst that rallies parents and community alike to affect change in schools.  And as a result of the aforementioned lack of confidence in those that can alter and reshape educational policy, charter schools remain a vehicle by which underachieving and underserved schools can be remade into institutions that produce students equipped with the educational tools that they were promised when they were enrolled.