California's Children

SB 622: Pop tax bill moves thru first Senate committee

April 25, 2013: SB 622, a bill proposing a tax of a penny-per-ounce on "sugary drinks" (the monies collected would fund "the Children's Health Promotion Fund, which this bill would create"), passed its first hearing Wednesday in the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance on Wednesday in a 5-2 vote along party lines. The bill was authored by Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel).

What has a decade of deployments done to military preschoolers?

April 22, 2013: Two million children in the U.S. have been affected by parental military deployments -- 58% of service members have children --  over the last decade. These military families hold the sad record of being the most deployed and re-deployed service generation in American history, as well as the service generation with the longest length of deployments. And -- 58% of them are parents; 42% of their children are aged 0-5.

(A RAND Corporation study in 2009 that found military children were more anxious than children in the general civilian population focused on 11-17-year-olds.)

Three progressive studies, all focusing on the impact of these deployments on the lives on children, were presented last week at the Society for Research in Child Development's biennial conference in Seattle. 

In opening the discussion, researchers Julie Wargo Aikins and Deane Aikins, at left, of the Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neuroscience at, respectively, the Merrill Palmer Skillman Institute, Wayne State Univ. and the John Dingell Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both in Detroit, noted that while "child adjustment to parental deployment has been measured in terms of psychopathology and problem behaviors, psychopathology is like only the 'tip of the iceberg.' "  Further, the Aikins report that while, in their sample, child gender "has no significant impact on our findings...younger childeren [are] more likely to meet current criteria for clinically significant behavioral problems."

The numbers? In the "clinical concern" category are 89% of the preschool-age children in the researchers' sample (and 25% of school age children). A contributing factor to these figures is what the Aikins call "alarming rates of depressive symptoms/depression among [non-deployed] mothers [and] importantly...higher for mothers of younger children...."

 The study is intended to further the understanding of the issue so that appropriate interventions can be made to aid the families. Its presentation at the SRCD conference was succeeded by programmatic intervention models.

Boy Scout LGBTQ anti-discrim SB 323 moves thru Sen. comm.

April 15, 2013: The "Boy Scout bill" (

SB 323)

 passed the Governance and Finance Committee of the California State Senate last week with a 5-2 vote along party lines, and heads to the Appropriations. 

The bill, author by Sen. Ricardo Lara (D-Long Beach) would repeal the tax

-exempt status of any youth organization that discriminates based on gender identity, sexual orientation or religious affiliation.

 

As reported in Friday's Sacramento Bee, "The legisl

ation comes amid increased public pressure for the Boy Scouts to change its blanket ban on openly gay troops..."

 

 

 

 

 

Steubenville's house party: lawyers ask, where were the parents?

April 9, 2013: No civil suits have been filed, but "letters have been written" by attorneys have notified "at least some of the people who own the homes mentioned during the trial, possibly others....to notify their homeowner insurance companies....that they may be subject to a liability claim in civil court," according to Eric Minor of Steubenville NBC station WTOV.

The story, reported yesterday by Alexander Abad-Santos in The Atlantic wire, is covered in as much detail as can leak during the tightly closed investigations of a grandy jury, called by Ohio Attorney General Mike deWine to examine whether adults were criminally negligent or if more charges should be filed. Abad-Santos writes:

[For] the adults who own the houses where the multiple attacks occurred [there are] unanswered legal questions: Where were the parents when a 16-year-old girl was being raped in an alcohol fueled night of partying? Who else could be held responsible for a sex crime with an online diary? And what is the new line of privacy for football post-game party hosts when the party turns into a national dialogue? Local law experts and an examination of testimony about the three houses in question reveal that, well, the grown-ups in Steubenville might get off the hook — and the jagged puzzle of accountability may go unsolved...

Why? Abad-Santos asked Sarah Rudolph Cole, an Ohio State Univ. law professor, what consequences there may be for the three sets of parents whose houses were locations for the migrating partyers.

...Cole told The Atlantic Wire Monday that the "bottom line is that you can be sued for these things, but liability will likely turn on whether it was foreseeable that a drunken minor would, more likely than not, cause physical harm to another person."

In an email exchange surrounding simple questions — whether or not you can be sued in Ohio for a rape that occurs in your home, or for the underage drinking that court evidence says led to it — Cole insisted that Steubenville party suits wouldn't be that clear cut: "Typically, an adult who provides alcohol to a minor owes a 'Duty of Care' to that minor. So the adult would have a duty of reasonable care to the drinker and likely, if it is foreseeable that the drinker might harm someone else, a duty to protect that person."...

California's Penal Code (272 PC)  is surprisingly namby-pamby on this issue, and is focused primarily on the responsibilities of keeping a minor who has been drinking in your home from getting behind the wheel of a car. From House Law, a site dedicated to reassuring potential defendants:

You contribute to the delinquency of a minor anytime your actions lead a minor down a path towards criminal behavior, truancy from school or becoming a dependant of the juvenile court.  This law not only applies to adults, but to minors who contribute to other minors’ delinquent behavior as well.  And because this law is so broad, there are a variety of acts that can subject you to charges for this offense.

Penal Code 272 PC is a wobbler, which means that prosecutors may file it as either an infraction or a misdemeanor, depending on the circumstances of the offense and your criminal history...

Chance for public comment on USDA school food guidelines ends Tues., 4-9

April 6, 2013:  The national school nutrition guidelines proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture -- and required under the 2010 reauthorization of the child nutrition bill, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, have been available for public comment since the first of February -- the gate closes on Tuesday, April 9. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack has been on the road, explaining and promoting the guidelines, and education professionls around the country have mobilized to write op-ed pieces for today's newspapers, supporting more healthful food and meal practices, in public schools. 

From Secretary Vilsack:

• USDA recently issued a proposed rule to improve the health of snacks sold in schools. The public is invited to comment at regulations.gov through Tuesday, April 9, 2013.
• USDA's MyPlate symbol and the resources at ChooseMyPlate.gov provide quick, easy reference tools for parents, teachers, healthcare professionals and communities.
• USDA also created SuperTracker, a free online planning and tracking tool used by over two million Americans daily to help them improve food choices, maintain a healthy weight, and track physical activity.
• USDA provides shopping strategies and meal planning advice to help families serve more nutritious meals affordably through its 10-Tips Nutrition Series and the Thrifty Food Plan.
• Through USDA's Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, the Department has worked to increase access to nutritious food through the development of strong local and regional food systems. The number of farmers markets increased by more than 67 percent in the last four years and there are now more than 220 regional food hubs in operation around the country.
• USDA launched a new $5 million Farm to School grant program in 2012 to increase the amount of healthy, local food in schools. 

In yesterday's Washington Post, Wendy Costa, an educational coordinator at Mount Harmon Plantation in Earleville, Md., and a founder of University High School on the California State University campus at Fresno: 

...A few years ago I asked the principal of a really awful middle school — where few seventh-graders could read at grade level and the “opportunity” class watched violent movies — to name his most important accomplishment. He replied, “Feeding 1,100 students in 29 minutes.” I wanted to ask him: What’s the rush? Why do children have to go home at 3 o’clock when their parents don’t get off work until 5 o’clock? Why not have a long, civilized lunch? ..., I have visited dozens of schools in Texas, California and Maryland. There is a dreary sameness to the cafeterias. They remind me of the cafeterias in jails. School cafeterias are generally clean and efficient, but they are not inviting places...It is generally accepted that American families do not eat together as much as they used to...With a few changes, school lunch can be an important part of the curriculum and part of the long process of transmitting the best values to the next generation.

In today's Sacramento Bee, Mikki Cichocki, youth services, San Bernardino City Unified School District, and secretary-treasurer of the Caliornia Teachers Ass'n:

...There's simply no good reason to sell unhealthy fare in our schools. It undermines parents' efforts to raise healthy kids, makes it harder for teachers to do their jobs well, and contributes to an obesity epidemic that threatens the health of more than 23.5 million children and teens.

About 40 percent of students buy and eat one or more snacks at school, and almost 70 percent buy and consume at least one sugary drink. One report found that students consume almost 400 billion calories from junk foods sold in our nation's schools each year...Compared with many other states, California's nutrition standards for school snacks and drinks are quite strong. But the state does allow middle and high schools to sell sugar sports drinks, and all public schools can sell 2 percent milk, as opposed to low-fat options like 1 percent or skim. Worse yet are the states that offer kids little or no protection against the widespread availability of junk foods and unhealthy drinks at school...

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