California's Children

New Race/Top $ for 40% low-$ enrollments: Duncan

May 23, 2012: School districts with over 40% of their [at least 2,500] students classified as low-income are now eligible for another round of competitive Race to the Top federal grants, according to an announcement made yesterday by US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, at left.

 The proposal, the RTTT-D program, was covered by Richard Perez-Pena in the New York Times. ( RTTT-D is accepting comments until June 8, 2012; the DOE hopes to "waive the rulemaking" and publish the final rules in July. Applications will accepted in October and grants awarded by December 31, 2012.)  

From the DOE: Awards will range from $15 million to $25 million (totalling $400 million), depending on the population of students served through the plan.

Districts must effectively engage and collaborate with teachers, parents and outside organizations to create their plan and provide assistance to ensure a successful transition to proposed reforms.  Teachers will track and receive real-time data and information that helps them adapt their lessons and individualize instruction to accommodate the differences among their students.

As explained by the NY Times: 

Like the department’s state-level competition for federal grants that preceded it, the program will require systems for measuring student progress and assessing teachers and administrators. A spokesman for the department said it would look for programs that provide ways to tailor instruction to individual students. The rules require districts to show how they will focus resources on “students facing significant challenges, such as students with disabilities, English learners and students affected by impacts of poverty or family instability.”

School districts can apply on their own or in a consortium with neighboring districts and propose programs that encompass all students or just a subset, making it easier to achieve the low-income population target. A district can specify schools, grade levels and even academic subjects in its application.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Alameda County, Target test food assistance thru public schools

May 18, 2012: Two schools in Oakland -- McClymonds High and Laurel Elementary -- are the focus of a pilot food assistance program conducted by the Alameda County Community Food Bank (ACCFB).

In a partnership with the discount retailer Target and the nonprofit, Feeding America, once a month ACCFB is distributing red cloth bags, stuffed with fresh vegetables, fruit, canned food and rice just before the end of the school day.

The program, Meals for Minds, is also known as the Mobile Pantry. Partner Target is no stranger to food assistance: two years ago, it donated $2.3 million to Feeding America and $1.2 million to local food banks nationwide to support mobile pantry school-based food programs. (The program at Laurel Elementary is Target-sponsored; the one at McClymonds High is funded through the ACCFB's general fund.) Next year, ACCFB hopes to expand to three more schools with the support of other businesses.

Kate Murphy, education writer for the Oakland Tribune reported on how the Mobile Pantry worked this past Tuesday: 160 people, all of whom were parents and caregivers of children at the school, collected nearly 1,480 pounds of food.

...The food bank reported a 29% increase in referrals to its emergency food help line from 2 years ago in the two ZIP codes nearest to Laurel Elementary; 71% percent of the children at Laurel Elementary are eligible for federally subsidized meals.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Photo: Ximena and Judy Hernandez pick up free food bags with other families of Laurel Elementary students from the Alameda County Food Bank in Oakland on Tuesday, May 15, 2012. (Laura A. Oda/Oakland Tribune)

Sex traffickers target LA County foster kids: Probation Dept. fights back

May 9, 2012: Over one-third of the juvenile prostitutes who were in police custody at some point during 2010 -- the most recent year for which data is available -- had "ties" to the Los Angeles Dept. of Children and Family Services. The tie? They've been in foster care.

This month, with the help of a $1 million grant received in January from the US Dept. of Health & Human Services, the LA County Probation Department (LACPD) is initiating "My Life, My Choice," a national program, developed in Massachusetts to identify and support girls in foster care who are most vulnerable to being victims of sexual exploitation and human trafficking. 

Susan Abram, reporting for the Los Angeles Daily News on child sex trafficking in LA County, writes that each trafficked girl can earn up to $140,000 a year for a southland pimp; there is believed to be at least 17 main boulevards where young prostitutes are rotated.

In Los Angeles County, two administrators at the LACPD with social welfare educations, Michelle Guymon, at left, and Hania Cardenas, have "gone above and beyond their regular duties...to shine a light on [juvenile sex trafficking] and advocate for rehabilitation and healing...," in the words of LA County Supervisor Don Knabe [Long Beach-South Bay], who addressed the issue in January 2012, and supported the LACPD's efforts to establish a special unit dedicated to sexually exploited minors, for which Guymon is now the project manager.

In the LACPD program, more than 500 staff and community foster care providers have been trained to raise awareness and identify and support sexually exploited girls. Personal protection is also offered for  girls who are willing to testify against the pimps (even though this protection may mean housed in detention or sent to a juvenile camp).

From LA Daily News:

The data [from Guymon and Cardenas's research].... showed that of the 174 girls brought in for prostitution, 92% were African American, while 84% were from the Long Beach, South Los Angeles, Hawthorne, Inglewood, Compton and Torrance areas....

Most of the girls are also between 13 and 17, but many enter prostitution at age 12, Cardenas said. And the form of exploitation continues to grow.

"Online exploitation has increased," Cardenas said. "I think that the pimps are getting younger. Some of them are in gangs. And many of them will promise girls to be in videos. There's all kinds of recruitment tactics."

Cardenas and Guymon also presented data to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. The board in April voted unanimously to support the Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act (CASE), a state ballot initiative to strengthen penalties against human traffickers, add fines to fund victim services, and require that all sex offenders disclose Internet accounts. (It will also remove barriers to prosecute child sex traffickers, mandate training for law enforcement, and protect victims in court proceedings).

If passed by voters in November, CASE would be the toughest human trafficking law in the country, said Knabe [Long Beach-South Bay] who supported the measure. 

Initial reporting on sex trafficking in Los Angeles County among "young girls who may have a history in the foster care system or absent parents" was done by Janet D. Kelly on The Urban Perspective.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

Kids not included in drug trials -- for meds they are prescribed

May 1, 2012: Children are being overlooked for clinical drug trials for health conditions that typically impact them in high numbers (such as asthma): a preliminary study examining drug trials for the top 10 highest burden pediatric health problems found only 12% involved children, and in high-income countries, it drops to 10%. 

Lead researcher Florence Bourgeois, MD, at left, pediatrics professor, Children's Hospital Boston, presented the preliminary findings at the Pediatrics Academic Societies annual meeting in Boston last weekend, reported on by Crystal Phend for Medpage Today, an online medical news source co-developed by The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

The concern is that children's bodies absorb and distribute drugs at different rates and durations than adults, yet are prescribed them based on clinical trials that do not include pediatric participants; furthermore, pediatric trials were less likely to examine safety outcomes than adult trials (10% v. 17%).

"There is a deficiency in the amount of research activity not just for rare diseases, but also for diseases that are quite common among children, such as asthma," Bourgeois told MedPage Today.

Bourgeois' team identified all the drug trials registered from 2006-2011 with the National Institutes of Health's ClinicalTrials.gov, a database of federally and privately supported clinical trials conducted both in the United States and world-wide, for health conditions that impact children: asthma, migraine headache, schizophrenia, depression, diarrhea, lower respiratory infection, malaria, bipolar disorder, and HIV/AIDS.

Researchers found that funding for pediatric trials primarily comes from government or non-profit organization (60%), with little private funding from private industry (compared to 35% of adult trials).

When the researchers analyzed the trials by the type of country they were done in, they found even greater discrepancy for children in lower income nations.

In higher-income countries, children bore 21.4% of the disease burden for the conditions studied, but 9.8% of the clinical trials done for those conditions (P<0.001).

In middle- and low-income countries, children accounted for 61.9% of the disease burden, but just 11.9% of the trials (P<0.001).

"Given the current distribution of funding sources, we need more support from both nonprofit organizations as well as commercial entities or industry," Bourgeois said in an interview.

The Pediatrics Academic Societies meeting is jointly sponsored by the American Pediatric Society, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Academic Pediatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.

9 CA elems win Target library renovation grants

April 30, 2012:  Nine California elementary schools  are recipients of grants in Target's  2012 School Library Makeover Program (in partnership with the Heart of America Foundation).  The money from Target --$12 million -- will go toward renovating library facilities in the schools, and will include donations of 2,000 books, furniture, and iPads; additionally, each student at the winning schools will receive 7 books to take home.

The winners in California are:

Leo Politi Elementary, Western Avenue Elementary, Valerio Street Elementary (Los Angeles);
Roosevelt Elementary School (Santa Ana); Peter Burnett Elementary (Sacramento);  Albert Will Angier Elementary (San Diego); Bachrodt Charter Academy (San Jose); Sanchez College Preparatory School (San Francisco); Burnett Elementary School (Long Beach).

Schools are preselected based on need: more than 65% of the students must be eligible for free or reduced-price lunches and more than 25% of the students read at or below basic levels on standardized tests.

Target also announced it plans to return to 118 schools that received library renovations in previous efforts and provide them with $1.5 million in reading grant

Click here to see a previous library makeover of Starr King Elementary School in Long Beach.

 Written for California's Children by Elizabeth J Carlyle.