By Florina Rodov
Broadcast version by Andrea Sears
Reporting for the YES! Magazine Media-New York News Connection

NEW YORK -- When Latoya Ramjit struggles to make ends meet, she turns to a food pantry that provides milk, juice, cereal, fresh fruit and vegetables, and even cleaning supplies and hygiene products. She doesn't have to travel far, because it's at her daughter's elementary school, P.S. 67, just steps from their apartment in the Fort Greene community in Brooklyn, New York.

Ramjit, who's president of the PTA, helped found the pantry four years ago, certain it would become indispensable at a school where 99% of students are low-income and some are homeless.

The food pantry at P.S. 67, also known as the Charles A. Dorsey Community School, is stocked by the Food Bank for New York City. This relationship, along with an alliance with Partnership with Children, which provides wraparound services including mental health care, has helped transform P.S. 67 from a failing school in danger of closing to a thriving community school that's a hub of services for students, their families, and the neighborhood.

The idea behind community schools is that poverty, housing instability, trauma, and subpar health care impede students' ability to learn, so schools must mindfully address these challenges. While about 5000 community schools exist nationwide, they're most prevalent in New York City, where Mayor Bill de Blasio launched the $200 million Community Schools Initiative in 2014 with the goal of creating 100 community schools. Over time, they've grown to 267 schools serving 135,000 students in low-income areas. According to a three-year study by the Rand Corporation released in January, they're working.

Community schools are improving graduation rates and math scores, while reducing chronic absenteeism and disciplinary incidents. And they're expanding across the country.

This particular reform is a departure from the punitive accountability, standardized testing, and school choice education reforms of the past 20 years that have disregarded poverty's impact on test scores, shut stakeholders out of the decision-making process, applied market solutions to schools that function on the basis of human relationships not profits and losses, and diverted funding from public schools to privately managed charter and voucher schools.

In her new book, Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America's Public Schools, education policy analyst and historian Diane Ravitch illustrates that these corporate education reforms have resulted in stagnant test scores, a narrowed curriculum, attacks on teachers, and public school closures, which devastate communities.

Since becoming mayor in 2014, de Blasio has moved away from his predecessor Mike Bloomberg's tactic of closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with smaller schools and new staff. Though Bloomberg touted a 42% increase in graduation rates as a result of his reforms, his claim deserves greater scrutiny.

A veteran teacher in Upper Manhattan who asked to remain anonymous recalled that credit recovery programs were rampant during Bloomberg's regime. Pressured to increase graduation rates, administrators persuaded students to make up a year's worth of failed classes by doing a worksheet packet, writing a few essays, and taking online quizzes where they could easily look up the answers. "After they submitted this mediocre work to their teachers, we were told to pass them," the teacher said. It resulted in the high graduation rates Bloomberg is publicizing in his bid for the White House.

It's emblematic of a corporate education reform movement that's tall on rhetoric but short on results. However, a resistance is growing across the country: Parents are opting their kids out of standardized testing, communities are protesting the closing of neighborhood schools, and stakeholders are marching with striking teachers for better funding in the Red for Ed movement. The expansion of community schools can be considered part of this resistance, and their common-sense approach of providing wraparound services and prioritizing stakeholder engagement are precisely what Ravitch and other experts advocate for. In fact, a deal to create 30 community schools was in the agreement that ended the LA teachers' strike a year ago.

During de Blasio's Jan. 28 news conference at P.S. 67 to celebrate the findings of the Rand report, Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said that community schools happen "in an organic way, not to the community but with the community." Echoing the importance of stakeholder involvement, PTA president Ramjit said, "The adage 'it takes a village to raise a child' is true here at P.S. 67," noting that more parents have gotten involved with the school since it became a community hub. In addition to the food pantry that's open to families twice a month, the school also offers students onsite dental exams, vision screenings, and an asthma case manager.

Each community school forms an alliance with a community-based organization that addresses its unique needs. For P.S. 67, that organization is the aforementioned Partnership with Children, which stations a community director at the school to concentrate on attendance issues and parental involvement, allowing Principal Kyesha Jackson to focus on academics. Partnership with Children also provides social workers and counselors who connect families to legal and housing resources.

Furthermore, they run in-class workshops that help students navigate their feelings, which helped Ramjit's daughter overcome her shyness. And they provide individual counseling and group therapy that uses art to work through trauma.

The focus on mental health is grounded in neuroscience, according to PWC's CEO Margaret Crotty. The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University found that the trauma of food insecurity, homelessness, violence, and other adversities causes chronic stress. Without intervention, chronic stress becomes toxic stress, a neurological condition affecting the parts of the brain that enable kids to focus on their studies and behave in school.

The Harvard center found that toxic stress can lead to depression, substance abuse, diabetes, cancer, and other chronic illness later in life. A preventive measure is connecting students to social workers who provide consistent, nurturing care.

This whole child approach tackles physical, socio-emotional, and academic needs equally. While benefiting individual students, it also addresses systemic concerns. For example, restorative discipline practices such as positive reinforcement, talking circles, and community building instead of zero-tolerance policies including suspensions and expulsions create a supportive school culture, according to Derek Anello, PWC's VP of Programs.

They also mitigate the chance that students will end up in the school-to-prison pipeline, which refers to the punitive discipline that starts in pre-K and pushes kids out of school, onto the street, and into the criminal justice system. Boys of color and those with special needs are disproportionately affected, but girls of color also face biased disciplinary action.

Community schools also emphasize attendance. Obviously, students have to be present to learn, but it goes deeper than that. When kids are absent a lot, chances are there's trouble at home: Perhaps a family's been evicted or there's no heat in their apartment in the dead of winter. By identifying these issues, community directors are able to connect families to services that can help them. Conversely, when attendance is up, it's sometimes the result of enrichment classes that students enjoy, which informs the school's decision to offer more of them.

That's because community schools prioritize student engagement. During the news conference at P.S. 67, Mayor de Blasio asserted, "Kids enjoy school and can't wait to get there!" referring to classes such as art and robotics that spark creativity, and Freedom School, a summer literacy and cultural program that helps children avoid summer learning loss. This is a response to the standardized testing craze that forced schools to "teach to the test," crowding out untested subjects and killing kids' joy for learning.

"Our children are more than just scores; they're human beings," Councilman Mark Treyger, a former teacher, declared, implying that focusing primarily on tests is dehumanizing. Historian Ravitch has gone even further, calling it educational malpractice on numerous occasions.

Encouragingly, math and English scores are up at P.S. 67, as are attendance rates. Meanwhile, discipline incidents are down. Across the 113 (out of 267) community schools Rand studied over three years, it found improvements in attendance, math scores, and graduation and promotion rates. Among elementary and middle community schools, disciplinary incidents were down compared to non-community schools.

Furthermore, behavioral incidents declined among Black students and students with disabilities. But disciplinary incidents among high school students didn't decline. And while math scores improved, English scores did not. Still, the results are promising enough for Treyger to declare, "Every school should be a community school."

The key to making this happen is patience, combining community schools with other programs, and a financial investment mixed with careful implementation. When a reporter asked de Blasio about the lack of progress in English scores, he explained that change happens slowly-child by child and school by school.

Furthermore, he was confident that the collaboration with other programs such as Pre-K for All, 3-K for All, Computer Science for All, and AP for All will continue to move the needle. But careful execution is vital: An earlier initiative, Renewal, was rolled out haphazardly and failed to produce the desired results despite its $773 million cost. Still, money is essential-without proper funding, good outcomes are impossible in NYC or anywhere else.

"Our kids have endless potential," de Blasio said. "If we help them tap it, they have endless potential."

Community schools also emphasize student engagement with classes like art and robotics, as well as a summer reading program that kids enjoy.

New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza says the results at P.S. 67 and other community schools in the city are impressive.

"Increases in graduation rates, on-time matriculation to the next grade level, early signs of increases in math achievement, significant reductions in chronic absenteeism - because we know that in order for students to learn, they have to be in the school."

Educators say the keys to community schools' success are financial investment and careful implementation. There are now about 5,000 community schools open nationwide.


This story was produced with original reporting from Florina Rodov for YES! Magazine. Florina Rodov is a former public school teacher who has written for The Atlantic, CNN, Shondaland, and others. She's working on two books. Follow her on Twitter @FlorinaRodov

By Lane Wendell Fischer for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service for the Public News Service/Daily Yonder Collaboration

Hiring and maintaining a qualified educator workforce is often a primary concern for rural schools across the country, requiring local education leaders to create innovative solutions.

The University of Wyoming’s College of Education has recently partnered with local community colleges across the state to repair a pipeline for future Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers at high schools and community colleges. 

CTE programs offer students an array of skills-based learning opportunities for many high-demand industries ranging from construction, to nursing, to marketing.

For decades, Wyoming has relied on traditional methods to fill out its CTE teacher workforce. After completing a two-year associate’s degree at their community college, students could either enter the trades or take another two years of teacher training. 

“It was very much a fork in the road,” said Rob Hill, a CTE consultant for the University of Wyoming and president of SkillsUSA Wyoming. Hill became a Wyoming CTE teacher through this traditional path.

“You had to take life off and go to school,” Hill said. “That limited a lot of people, especially students with families, jobs, and homes.”

As it turned out, most students never completed the final two years of teacher training and just entered the trades after the first two years at their community college, Hill said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

This outdated pipeline has contributed to a shortage of both CTE teachers and skilled workers in the state.

According to a 2023 report from the Wyoming Professional Teaching Standards Board, the median age of CTE teachers in Wyoming schools is 52, and national numbers are similar. Compare this to the average age of all teachers in the U.S., which is just over 42. 

On average, a state employee in Wyoming retires at 62. This means that in the next 7 to 10 years, Wyoming could lose close to half of its CTE workforce to retirement.

“We’ve seen a number of things that have impacted us and that rural part is very real,” Hill said.

In rural communities, a CTE program might only consist of one or two teachers. When that school loses a teacher, the whole program is at risk until a qualified replacement is found. 

During a recent tour of Wyoming’s school districts, Jenna Shim, PhD and interim dean of the College of Education, learned that some high school CTE programs are closing down because they couldn’t find replacements.

“One CTE teacher shared with me that he has a specialty in welding, but he has to teach culinary arts,” Shim told the Daily Yonder. “I could see welding and construction, but welding and culinary arts seem like a far stretch.”

And it can be difficult to attract new talent to small schools and communities. 

“We tend to do best with people that are invested in that community previously and become teachers, as opposed to bringing in teachers into small communities,” Hill said.

The CTE Domino Effect in Rural Communities

Adding to the difficulty of attracting new teachers is a domino effect caused by current teacher shortages, Shim and Hill said.

A shortage of educators leads to a shortage of high school CTE programs, which leads to a shortage of students pursuing CTE in the state, followed by a shortage of tradespeople in the state, and a shortage of essential services, which, in turn, leads to less attractive communities.

On top of educational advancement for students, repairing CTE teacher pipelines through state and local partnerships helps assemble the next generation of rural water experts, plumbers, electricians, technicians, mechanics, and more, Hill said.

“It has a trickle-down effect into the stability of the community,” Shim said.

And in rural communities, small fluctuations in population, programs, and services can be especially catastrophic — or especially beneficial. 

“It doesn’t seem like a big deal if you don’t have one teacher,” Hill said. “But that one teacher in a town of 2000 people that teaches welding, where you have a huge welding industry, that has an extremely large impact.”

The broken pipeline has also raised economic concerns. “Without a sufficient number of teachers, it’s hard to prepare a sufficient workforce,” Shim said.

Two key industries in Wyoming are energy and tourism. Both rely heavily on skilled workers. And both are susceptible to booms and busts that give local communities economic whiplash.

“Over the last decade especially, there’s been a real desire to diversify our workforce,” Hill said. “And that means a different generation of career and technical education, like manufacturing, cybersecurity, and data analysis.”

Repairing the Pipeline

The biggest problem in the previous CTE teacher pipeline was continuity, Hill said. The pathway to teacher certification in rural communities must be both attractive and achievable.

This spring, the College of Education piloted a new course that aims to do both by exposing community college students to CTE teaching before they complete their associate’s degree and decide between trades work or teaching. 

“Creating a more seamless pathway is a real goal here,” Hill explained. 

The bridge course will be offered each semester in partnership with all eight community colleges in the state and is inherently low stakes. The course credits can be applied toward an associate’s degree at the community college, toward their teaching degree at the university, or toward any other bachelor’s degree they pursue.

In the course, students get a taste of what a career in CTE teaching is like. Coordinated by Hill, the course is one dose online learning and one dose on-site learning. Hill leads the online classroom, where students learn about different national and statewide topics. “But students will learn about how it’s implemented locally,” Hill said. 

Each community college has a community college professional and a school district professional that serve as a mentor and safety net for local students, introducing them to CTE leaders at both levels. 

One area of misconception is how much CTE teachers are paid, Shim said.

“I think wages scare them most,” Hill said. “But in Wyoming, our hourly wage is higher than many of the trades folks. We have pensions. We have healthcare. It’s a lot more competitive than folks think it is.”

The organization of the course is a masterclass in rural ingenuity. By using technology, the course eliminates long distance travel to the university campus in Laramie on the southern border of the state. It allows students to remain in their local communities, while still being connected to the state’s CTE teacher network.

“We knew we had a statewide problem and we needed to create a statewide solution, or in this case, a local solution for a statewide problem,” Hill said. “This is about connecting people in Wyoming. Because we have these vast distances between us, we have to have a way to connect people.”

Twenty-two students are currently enrolled in the pilot course. Half of the inaugural cohort are community college students. The other half includes veterans, community college instructors, K-12 instructors, and paraprofessionals who are exploring their future career options.

The course has garnered support from state legislators, the university, the colleges, local high schools, local business, and from the students themselves. 

Each of the enrolled students is taking the course tuition-free, thanks to scholarships from local businesses and private donors.

“Word is getting out,” Shim said. “I think that’s a testimony for how important this work is.”

Strong CTE programs lead to strong communities, Shim and Hill said. A lot of high school CTE programs are embedded into community culture. Organizations like FFA provide opportunities for social gathering and community service, for example. 

“We’ve come up with a mutually beneficial solution and this takes a partnership and teamwork,” Hill said. “No significant advances take place without a group of us working together in a mutually beneficial system.”


Lane Wendell Fischer wrote this article for the Shasta Scout via The Daily Yonder.


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Texas Lieutenant Gov. Dan Patrick has released 57 "interim charges," the topics he wants Senate committees to study in preparation for the 89th legislative session next year.

Four charges are for the committee overseeing public education. They include improving reading and math readiness in grade school, and redesigning the state's standardized tests.

Eli Melandrez, government relations associate for the American Federation of Teachers-Texas, said educators are surprised the list does not include pay increases for teachers or controversial school vouchers, which use public money to pay for private schooling.

"It's interesting to see both of those key issues absent from the interim charges," Melandrez observed. "Across the state we've seen school closures; we've seen teachers being let go. We've seen a greater percentage of our teacher workforce as uncertified educators."

Two unsuccessful special sessions were held in the past few months, in an attempt to pass a school voucher proposal. Other charges for public schools include examining how school districts used COVID-19 funding, and monitoring the implementation of bills passed in the last session.

Patrick also directed the Higher Education Committee to analyze faculty senates, monitor bans on DEI policies at colleges and universities and revise policies for faculty tenure.

Melandrez noted their union is now affiliated with the American Association of University Professors and members are concerned the lieutenant governor is inserting his own political views into the education system.

"That's worrisome for us," Melandrez emphasized. "In public education and higher education, we are seeing a concerted effort to minimize educator voices."

Patrick also wants senators to review university antisemitism policies and protecting the First Amendment rights of faculty, staff and students. The next legislative session convenes Jan. 14, 2025.

Minnesota's largest school district is at the center of a budget controversy tied to the recent wave of school board candidates fighting diversity programs and some parents feel it's time to call out the "politicizing" of public education.

Students and parents packed this week's meeting of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board after a member posted on Facebook he and two other colleagues would oppose the new budget if it contained some diversity, equity, and inclusion provisions.

Kendra Redmond, a parent of school children and a grassroots organizer who has fought book ban attempts in the Bloomington district, said it is frustrating to see what is happening in the Anoka district.

"Public schools are meant to serve all students," Redmond contended. "School boards should be elected to do what's best for students, not what's best for particular groups or what aligns for specific stakeholders."

The Anoka-Hennepin board has seen its dynamics shift with the election of some members supported by conservative groups pushing "culture-war" issues within education. The officials and candidates contend DEI initiatives only foster more divisiveness in schools. Some of the programs being targeted in the Anoka district are mandated under state law.

Redmond and fellow parents in Bloomington recently formed a grassroots group to protect programs and materials that promote inclusiveness. She acknowledged she never thought she would become this active but noted it is a different environment now, with some voices deemed "extreme" having an influence.

"In our community, a lot of people leading the effort don't even have kids in the public school system," Redmond pointed out. "The fact that they're tying up the work of the school board, the energy of parents and the energy of kids; that're tying that up for political maneuvering is just a waste of everyone's time."

Nationwide, those tracking school board candidates with extreme views said the movement saw a dip in last fall's elections. Redmond emphasized parents should still keep an eye out for controversial actions and either speak up or run for seats themselves to counter what's happening.


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