California's Children

Fresno USD moves toward reducing dropout rates

UPDATE, February 29, 2012: Fresno Unified School District (FUSD) Superintendent Michael Hanson released the 35 names in the Graduation Task Force, which has been assembled to make recommendations on how to reduce the high dropout rates in the district, reports the Fresno Bee.

The Task Force, personally selected by Hanson, will be headed by Juan Arambula, former state Assembly member and FUSD trustee; it has a June deadline to give recommendations to boost graduation rates, which will lay the groundwork for new policies and programs.

Hanson also selected Javier Guzman, executive director of Chicano Youth Center and harsh critic of Hanson's policies, who has recently assembled his own dropout-intervention commission. In addition, the Fresno Bee is reporting a group of student activists called SUCCESS (Students United to Create a Climate of Engagement, Support and Safety) is also trying to improve graduation rates by reducing suspension and expulsions through Restorative Justice programs; nothing is paid for yet but the teenagers and their leaders gave their proposal to Hanson this month and plan to introduce their ideas to the community through public forums beginning in March, starting with workshops at the Boys and Girls Clubs.

SUCCESS is hoping to use the pioneering district-wide Restorative Justice program in the San Francisco Unified School District as a model.

Free Wii won't mean healthier kids

February 29, 2012: A study published Monday in Pediatrics found active video gaming, freely available at home, has no impact on the physical activity levels, reports Jeanine Stein of the LA Times' Booster Shots Blog.

Previous research has shown that physically active video games, played in labs, increased a child's activity to "moderate" or even "vigorous" levels. This newest work tested the theory in "more natural" settings other than a lab. The purpose was to see if physically active video games can prevent obesity, particularly in situations where a child does not have access to near or safe outdoor play areas.

Researchers, led by Tom Baranowski, professor of pediatrics, from the Children’s Nutrition Research Center (one of six nutrition research centers funded by the  Department of Agriculture) at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, introduced both inactive and active video games to 78 children, ages 9 to 12, (41% African American, 14% white, 13% Hispanic, 28% mixed ethnic heritage; 51% boys) with a body mass index between the 50th and the 99th percentile, a group considered at risk for adult obesity. No children had a game console in the home already and there was no mandate on how much time they had to play with the games.

Children randomly assigned to groups were allowed to pick either 2 inactive or 2 active games over 13 weeks and the level of physical activity was measured with an activity monitor worn by the children on the first, sixth, seventh and 12th weeks of the study. Children and parents were asked to keep a diary of game play for each week the child wore an activity monitor and researchers also conducted interviews with the children.

The choices:

1. Active Life-Extreme
2. EA Sports Active
3. Dance Dance Revolution-Hottest Party 3
4. Wii Fit Plus
5. Wii Sports

The study found no evidence that children receiving active video games were any more active over a 12-week period than those receiving inactive video games.

“It doesn’t appear that there’s any public health value to having active video games available...” said Baranowski in a news release. “Simply having those active video games available...doesn’t automatically lead to increased levels of physical activity in children.”

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

 

Cal Senate bill to okay school bus ads birthed by Huff

February 28, 2012: School districts would be allowed to place advertising on the outside of school buses if a new bill, SB 1295, is approved by the legislature, reports Jim Sanders of the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert.

Introduced by Republican Senate Leader Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar), the bill would also allow districts to decide on how to spend any revenue raised by selling the ads.

"We're looking at a way for districts to find another source of funding without placing additional burdens on taxpayers," said Bill Bird, spokesman for Huff. Advertising outside school buses would get maximum exposure because the vehicles travel throughout the district every weekday, Bird said.

According to the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Utah, Nevada  and New Mexico have adopted similar laws in an attempt to find additional funds for financially strapped school districts. Six other states (IN, KY, FL, MO, NY, RI, WA) are considering laws to allow ads on the outside of buses.

On February 16, 2012, Morgan Smith of the NY Times reported on Humble Independent School District in Texas that recently started selling ads on its school buses:

The proliferation of companies that act as a middleman between districts and would-be advertisers, has made it simpler for schools to get into advertising. Companies offer an attractive proposition for schools — in exchange for what usually amounts to a cut of 40% of the profits.

Districts have the ultimate say over what ads they accept, but the ad companies handle all the work in between, including graphic design.

Easier access to advertisers may not always translate to a more thoughtful process for schools, however.

“There doesn’t seem to be a real handle on the part of the school districts for what they are getting into,” said Faith Boninger, a researcher with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, who studies how advertising in schools affects students.

Having advertisements in schools is not consistent with the teaching of critical thinking, Ms. Boninger said. And what is being sold — fast food, for instance — can run counter to subjects being taught, like nutrition. She added that the polarized gender stereotypes and materialist perspectives that may come with exposure to advertisements had been shown to harm students’ self-esteem.

“It’s a nice thing for a company to get into schools because they are really getting this market young and vulnerable,” she said.

In addition, Texas schools’ success with advertising has varied, but the districts may not be getting as much revenue as they had hoped.

A February 2012 report from Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy group founded in 1971, examined the advertising programs in 25 of the largest school districts. The group found that no program reported raising more than $250,000, which made up 0.03 % of the school system’s overall budget. 

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Read more here: http://blogs.sacbee.com/capitolalertlatest/2012/02/california-senate-ads-public-school-bus.html#storylink=cpy

Obese kids 4x more likely to have "severe absence" from school

February 28, 2012: A new study finds that obese children are four times more likely to miss more than 2 days of school per month (considered a "severe absence") than their healthy-weight peers; for overweight children, the rate was double.

The study, "Association between increased BMI and severe school absenteeism among US children and adolescents," published online February 21, 2012, in the International Journal of Obesity,  was reported on by Jeannine Stein for the LA Times's Booster Shots Blog.

Co-researchers, Y Li of the Northrop Grumman Information Systems, Atlanta (that lists one of its core competencies as health information systems), Stuart Tedders PhD and Jian Zhang Ph.D., both associate professors in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, examine rates of absenteeism among 1,387 children age 6 to 11 and 2,185 teens age 12 to 18 who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2005–2008. 

(The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), designed to assess the health and nutritional status of adults and children, is a program of the National Center for Health Statistics, an agency of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The survey consists of interviews with demographic, socioeconomic, dietary, and health-related questions, and physical examinations including medical, dental, and physiological measurements, as well as laboratory tests.) 

Among all the study participants about 16% were overweight and about 19% were obese according to their body mass index (using the 2000 CDC Growth Charts). When researchers looked at school days missed in the past year they saw no significant differences among the weight groups. However, the odds of missing two or more days per month doubled and quadrupled for overweight and obese children, respectively. (The same was not seen among teens.)

Although the study didn’t give definitive explanations as to why overweight kids miss more days of school than normal-weight children, the authors offered some theories. The missed days, they said, could be indicative of parents’ mental illness or socioeconomic status. But if weight is the reason kids are missing school, a number of factors could be to blame, including a fear of being bullied, of being teased, or of being embarrassed about participating in physical activities.

Physical problems linked with obesity, such as asthma and sleep apnea, they added, could be an issue as well in missing school days.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Cal-Learn will die under new budget; LAO agrees

February 28, 2012: In what is no doubt the final nail in the coffin for Cal-Learn, the Legislative Analyst's Office in its February 22 report on recommendations re: the Governor's proposed cuts to CalWORKs, wrote:

In Light of Budget Constraints, Proposed Elimination [of Cal-Learn] Has Merit. Under the Governor's proposal, counties would be allowed to continue funding Cal–Learn using the employment services allotment of their single allocation funding. Thus, counties would be allowed to prioritize limited employment services resources between Cal–Learn recipients and the general CalWORKs population based on local needs. In light of budgetary constraints in the CalWORKs program, we believe this proposal merits serious consideration by the Legislature.

The Cal-Learn program will be "basically eliminated" under the '12-'13 Brown budget, according to legislative advocate Tim Fitzharris, writing in the bulletin of the Child Development Policy Institute. (The program had been suspended for '11-'12 by the Legislature.)

A program developed out of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) legislation, Cal-Learn is for teen parents, overwhelmingly the mothers, who have not completed high school. (At left, is a Sacramento Cal-Learn client, Dana Wollensack, 19, with her son, Darris Williams.)

Case managers have worked with the girls to receive education and health services; payments necessary for child care, transportation and other educational expenses have been arranged; and bonuses (and sanctions) have been used to encourage completion of school (and good grades). (Bonuses amounted to a possible four $100 a year and a one-time $500 for graduating or earning a GED.) Sanctions of $50 or $100 are given for each report card with an average below a 1.0 (D, on a 4.0 scale).

Teen parents (or pregnant teens) who receive CalWORKs funds are required to participate in Cal-Learn if there are under 19 and have not completed high school. The cohort was expanded in 1998 to include the opportunity for teens over 19 to continue voluntarily in the program until they earn a diploma or GED, or turn 20.

The program has also included teaching parenting skills, pre-and postnatal care and nutrition advice, relationship facilitation between the parent and the non-custodial parent, and assessments of the "suitability of the teen's living situation."

In any month, the average state caseload has been 15,000.