Extending the School Day and After School Programs

Being a single parent is most likely one of the hardest jobs someone could have. Despite how many kids one has, working and providing for them is extremely difficult. Finding affordable and safe childcare is hard. When their children get to school age, parents should be relieved that finally, they can send their child to school while they work. That is not the case we find, however. With the hours of school that is in session and not enough access to childcare, it is still hard for parents to find the balance between being a good worker and a good parent. The hours that schools run and the lack of before and after school childcare make it still very difficult for parents to find time to be with their kids.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the average number of hours in the school day is 6.64. The average school day ends at about 2:50 or 3:00 and starts at 7:00 or 8:00. Those hours do not coincide with the hours adults work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average number of hours for full-time workers is 8 hours. With the average workday starting at 9. Single jobholders also work 8 hours, and people with only a high school diploma work 8 hours as well. Parents have to come to the hard decision of either spending money on childcare or else taking off work to pick up or drop off their child or work. Parents should not have to decide between losing their job, money, or time with their families.  

Hours in the school day are not the only problem parents are facing. The lack of childcare is a battle as well. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2008, out of the 49,700 public elementary schools, 56% had some form of after school program. 46% had stand-alone daycare. Even 24% of areas with concentrated poverty have access to after school programs as well, according to the After School Alliance. That leaves a high number of families who are trying to make ends meet without any assistance from educational facilities. If school hours are inhibiting parents from attending work, having no childcare is also an issue. It also results negatively for children involved. Having no after school enrichment and assistance can contribute to low school involvement and commitment, higher drug, and alcohol use, and it increases the number of arrests. Not only does it help parents, but it also helps the students become successful. 

With these facts, schools changing hours to fit parents’ schedules better, and providing parents with better childcare makes sense. Parents should not have to choose between taking off work and not making money or having their children be in school. If the school day started at nine and ended around four, it would better accommodate the parents. These ideas would help parents by having them take their children to work before school. It would also help parents to find someone to pick up their child if needed. Parents would not have to leave work early or arrive late because they had to take their child to school. The increased access to after-school care would also assist families and, ultimately, the children by providing them with programs if they do have to work longer than 4:00. Teachers who work long hours can be paid overtime, and money for this bill can come from the federal level. The department of Education could use ESSA funds, and Title l can also increase to help. Programs such as the 21st Century and other after school care based programs could also provide more compensation for longer school days and better after school care. Let us help the families of our communities grow more reliable and better by providing more convenient school hours and expand after school care.

Shelter-in-home with E-learning widens learning gaps

Good Afternoon,

I write to you in hopes that you can help your fellow teachers, students, and parents.  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, our lives have been turned upside down.  As a society, we are being asked to do things outside of our normal routines and scope. While these changes may not all be bad, there are a few new roles that are proving to be difficult. 

One of the hardest things, as a mother, is the adjustment to distance learning that is expected of me and my children. The difficulty comes because even the environment makes a difference when it comes to learning. During non-COVID times, children learn in a controlled classroom on specific dates and times with teachers who are specially trained. The structure children are exposed to breeds learning. Children and parents are now being asked to continue to learn in unstructured environments, without specific dates and times available, and without specialized training. This has wreaked havoc on homes all across the nation. It has led students to feel unmotivated and frustrated. Parents feel an immense burden to keep their children up to speed with others who may or may not be in an environment suited for learning. 

There are many children who require special education services or alternate learning plan to succeed in “normal” times.  These children are now expected to learn and function in a less than conducive environment.  While government officials are saying that grades will not be impacted, there is little assurance that children who were already behind or who will fall behind now will be unaffected when school does resume. 

Instead of canceling school for the remainder of the current year, the schools were forced to put a rush on learning remotely, which has been a struggle for students, teachers, and parents.  Teachers were given only a few days to gather information and put a lesson plan together that would be delivered in a non-traditional way through the internet. 

Some teachers have since sent home packets for children to complete.  These packets, while easier to understand, still present challenges.  Parents are struggling to keep children engaged enough to complete assignments and often are busy themselves with working from home that they are worried their children aren’t completing their work. 

Some parents and children are thriving in the world of e-learning while others are not. The reality is that some parents are unable to make the time commitment to allow for children to thrive due to their employment or other limitations while others are simply undereducated and are having difficulty learning and then subsequently teaching the information. 

Together we can support our children in making sure that next year they will not have to deal with the fact that they fell behind or need re-teaching. 

It would be in the best interest of parents, students, and faculty to have school, e-learning included, suspended for the remainder of the school year. In the interest of giving students an equal chance to start the next year at the same level as their peers, I call you to take a stand and contact your local school board or the Illinois State Board of Education and demand changes to the current learning system.  We may not be able to see numbers and statistics of how this unforeseen situation has impacted our children yet, but we need to stand up for all children from all walks of life to ensure that there is no child is left behind.

Thank you and stay safe.

Protect persons who are LGBTQ+

Walking into a store or restaurant, most people wouldn’t even consider the possibility that they might be denied service. Even those people not wearing a shirt or shoes would move forward with confidence in procuring what they need. This isn’t the case for the LGBTQ+ population across the country. For this community, the reality is that they may live in a state where businesses and organizations are within their rights to deny them service. A 2015 study found that 63% of people who identify as LGBTQ+ have experienced some form of public accommodation discrimination. Most of these cases pass by with little to none media attention. This, however, wasn’t the case in the Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission complaint.

In 2012, a recently married gay couple, Charlie Craig and David Mullins, requested a wedding cake be designed and baked by the Masterpiece Cakeshop where they lived in Colorado. The bakery, owned by Jack Phillips and run as an LLC, refused that service to the couple based on his belief that their marriage was a sin and that it violated his religious beliefs. The bakery did offer to sell the couple an already baked cake but would not design what the couple specifically wanted. The couple filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission (CCRC) and the commission determined that the complaint was founded. The case would end up in front of the Supreme Court who, unfortunately, never got to the real issue of the case but focused on the response of the CCRC. In avoiding to address the issue of the discrimination, the Supreme Court inadvertently gave support to this type of behavior. 

There are debates happening at every level of government about the right for LGBTQ+ people to be treated equally in businesses and public places. Let that sit there for a minute…not to be given special rights or to offer extra protections but to be treated the same as everyone else. Public accommodation policies typically reference places that people visit outside of their home environment. Those include restaurants, retail stores, specialty shops and gyms but can also include public transportation, state offices like the DMV, and churches and healthcare facilities. The most well-known public accommodation law is the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited discrimination in public accommodations based on race, color, and national origin. These laws are particularly important for the members of this community who are homeless or food insecure. Discrimination in shelters and social service organizations increase the individuals’ risk significantly by creating an environment in which community members feel unsafe. However, in the US today, men and women are still being discriminated against based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. According to the Movement Advancement Project’s (MAP) LGBT Policy Spotlight: Public Accommodations Nondiscrimination Laws:

Laws protecting people from discrimination in public accommodations based on sexual orientation and gender identity exist in only 19 states and the District of Columbia. And there are no federal nondiscrimination protections in public accommodations for any of these characteristics. As a result, just over half of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBTQ+) people in the United States live in a state where businesses could refuse to serve them because of who they are.

Simply put, that means that they can be denied service based on who they love or how they identify in relation to their gender. Transgender people report a significant amount of discrimination; “According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey of nearly 28,000 people, transgender respondents reported being denied equal treatment or service, verbally harassed, or physically attacked at many places of public accommodation.”  (MAP, 2018, p. 2)  

Interestingly, the majority of Americans support the broadening of discrimination laws. The Civil Rights Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act cover a majority of the population that needs to be protected, and most Americans feel that the LGBTQ+ community should simply be added to those laws already in place. Based on a study done in 2015, 72% of the people polled believed that adding protections for this group was essential while only 23% oppose these types of laws. Similarly, half of Americans polled do not support laws that require that transgender people only use the bathroom that corresponds with the sex they were born with whole 38% favor such laws. (MAP, 2018) 

With the patchwork of state laws in place and the lack of a federal non-discrimination law, it is important more now than ever, that the rights of the LGBTQ+ community are forefront and addressed. Local and state lawmakers need to work to shore up current laws and ensure that all vulnerable populations are included. Those states, like Arizona, Florida, Michigan and Indiana, need to move to write and sign into law clear non-discrimination policies that cover all public accommodations. The federal government needs to work to update the protections already in place to include this community. Businesses need to ensure that they are serving everyone in their community and customers need to frequent the businesses that exhibit non-discriminatory practices. 

It can be shocking to realize that this type of discrimination is still occurring and is somehow considered to be acceptable. The need for these laws at all, laws that make clear that treating people unfairly is not ok, seems unimaginable. Advocating for these communities, demanding fair treatment from the businesses that people support, voting for laws and politicians who respect these communities are the steps that need to be taken in order to ensure equality and fairness for the LGBTQ+ community.

Movement Advancement Project. January 2018. LGBT Policy Spotlight: Public Accommodations Nondiscrimination Laws. https://www.lgbtmap.org/policy-spotlight-public-accommodations.

Please support universal free lunches

Citizens of Springfield,

I am writing this letter as a citizen that truly and deeply cares about the children in our community. It is of utmost importance that we take care of our children because they will one day be the lifeblood of our society. As children, we were all helpless in the face of our environments, which basically means we had no control where and what environment we grew up in. If we were born into privilege, we could not control that, just like we could not control if we were born into poverty. We were voiceless and incapable of truly taking care of ourselves. That is why it is our responsibility to be the voice of our children and do everything in our power to advocate and fight for their rights. 

Free Universal School Lunch will provide all children in our community with adequate school meals, both breakfast and lunch, which is sadly a luxury for too many children in Springfield. Many of you are already aware of the free and reduced school lunch system already in place, but may not know just how inefficient this system truly is. One major issue is the fact that there are many children that “fall through the cracks” because of the intensity and lengthiness of the paperwork needed to be filled out in order to qualify for free/reduced lunch. This is even more evident in families where English is not the primary language. No child should be left behind just because the paperwork is not accommodating. This also goes along with the strict qualifications families must meet in order to receive free/reduced lunches. Some families badly need free/reduced lunches for their children, but they barely miss the qualifications, so they are forced to pay for meals for their children (and oftentimes have large negative balances). Creating a system where all children are given free lunch would not only help these families out tremendously, but it would also save the school staff members a lot of time and trouble dealing with the paperwork and trying to get families to pay their negative balances. Another issue with this system already in place, is that it creates a breeding ground for humiliation and bullying because schools are oftentimes guilty of separating the children who need these accommodations from the ones who do not. This is an issue I was forced to experience firsthand.

Growing up with a single mother was very tough, and we struggled heavily to make ends meet. My mom always did everything she could to give us the happiest and most stable life possible, where we would not be looked down on because we did not have as much money as our peers. She did an incredible job and I am grateful that I was always given the best things my mom could give me. Since we lived in a lower-class household, we qualified for free lunches, which lifted the burden off of my mom from having to pay for one more thing for us. This is true, but my school did a horrible job of covering the fact that I got free lunch, so all my peers knew. This was humiliating for me because I tried my best to hide my family’s struggles from my classmates. My school, for reasons unbeknownst to me, decided to put all of the kids that got free or reduced lunches at the back of the line. I am unsure if they somehow needed to do this to make it more organized, or because they were somehow punishing us for being poor by making us get our lunch last, but either way, it was a humiliation I dealt with every single day for years. I know that if my school did something as ridiculous as this, that other schools (not all but some) are doing the same thing. I never want any child to have to experience that kind of purposeful embarrassment, and that is why free lunches would eliminate this problem altogether.

It is our job to be a voice for the voiceless and to be a friend to the friendless. Some of these children feel like they have nobody on their side, but if we come together to advocate for Free Universal School Lunch, they will finally have someone be their voice. The burden of scrambling to pull money together to pay for these school lunches is unnecessary and only adds stress to families that are already beyond stressed. Please join me in petitioning to create a bill that allows every child in Springfield to receive free lunches. It is the least we can do. Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation

On March 5, 2020 a new bill was introduced in the Senate titled “Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act of 2020” or the “EARN IT Act of 2020.” This bill was brought forth to try and establish a National Commission on Online Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention, and for other purposes. The purpose of this Commission is to decide what practices the providers of interactive technology may use to implement prevention, reduction, and response to online sexual exploitation of children. This Commission will include nineteen members, which will be composed of: The Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (or any of these leaders’ representatives). The remaining sixteen members are appointed by the Senate and House of Representatives. All these members will meet certain qualifications that make them fit for the job, including experience with such matters. Sexual abuse is a serious issue these days for both adults and children. A child, however, may not know that such an event is taking place therefore, it is not generally reported. It is important to minimize the possibility of this abuse happening and establishing a Commission to help stop it from happening online is a great start.  

Let’s talk about child sexual abuse. It’s a tough subject, but one that we must address. Only about one-third of child sexual abuse cases are identified, and even fewer are reported. Although it has been shown that internet and commercial sexual exploitation are a relatively small segment of total sexual abuse cases, this is still significant to the overall problem. Over 90% of children that have been commercially sexually exploited have also experienced sexual abuse in the past. One of the most gut-wrenching facts though, is that “About 75% of child pornography victims are living at home when they are photographed. Parents are often responsible.” Perhaps with this bill getting passed and consequent formation of the Commission, these children can be saved from their abusers, often their own parents. 

If these children are not saved now, there are many consequences that often result for persons who experience sexual abuse. These include academic problems, emotional and mental health problems, substance abuse at a young age, higher risk of teen pregnancy, etc. Everyone knows someone that is under the age of eighteen. Whether it is a relative or not, would you want the chance of electronic sexual exploitation happen to them? Hopefully the answer is “No.” You know how people say “Kids are brutally honest?” Why would any of that change now? Many of the victims of sexual abuse are not believed because usually the abuser is a family member or someone they are close with, and almost always the perpetrator is someone they know. “It is estimated that only 4 to 8% of child sexual abuse reports are fabricated. Most of the fabricated reports are made by adults involved in custody disputes or by adolescents.” Kids, especially at a young age, usually do not have much sexual knowledge, and when they do show knowledge in such a subject, it should raise awareness that something bad might be going on. This should be one of the signs to acknowledge that a child has been sexually abused. Whether the statement the child has made is true or not, it should most definitely be reported and investigated.  

Just take a moment and think about how much exploitation is out there commercially and on the internet for literally everyone to see. There are pornographic web pages out there on the internet that have no censorship or any safety measures taken as to who has access to such websites. If this type of material is out there for anyone to see, there is also child exploitation out there that people can get their hands on. Just keep in mind, the reader of this article knows someone under the age of eighteen. Would you want that individual exploited all over the web and other places? Hopefully you readers keep that in your mind when thinking of wanting to push this bill further into legislature, possibly making it a law and creating a Commission to help put an end to all of this abuse against children.  Please join me in letting your senators and your U.S. House Representative know that you care about the EARN IT Act and want to see it passed into law.    

Website for Statistics: 

Child Sexual Abuse Statistics (2015). Darkness to Light. http://www.d2l.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/all_statistics_20150619.pdf   

Source for Bill Information: 

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/3398/text   

Please Support the Older Americans Act

As individuals grow older they often become less and less independent and have to rely on family members, aids, or services to help them through day to day living. Losing independence and having to rely on others can be quite depressing for the elderly population. The Older Americans Act (OAA) is an amazing resource for the elderly population. The OAA funds programs and services that work to enable the elderly population to enjoy healthy productive and independent lives in their homes and communities (National Association of Social Workers issue brief about the Older Americans Act). Some examples of services offered through this program are family caregiver support, long-term care ombudsman, nutrition programs, transportation, and programs to prevent and address elder abuse, neglect and exploitation (NASW letter supporting the Older Americans Act). If these policies are easily accessible, the elderly population’s mental health and well-being will benefit from the services listed. These services and programs work to still give elderly individuals a sense of being independent and capable of things they believed they never would be able to be capable of achieving again upon “losing independence.”

Funding is crucial and for the OAA increasing funding is absolutely necessary. Increasing funding is necessary for a couple different reasons. One reason is changing demographics within the US Population and another reason is because of new challenges that will be endured.

Changing demographics relates to the US population as a whole aging and the baby boom generation aging. Proactive policies and approaches are essential to ensure that older adults thrive and remain engaged with their families communities, and the broader society. New challenges that will need addressed as longevity increases and the population ages are the need for housing, economic security, health care, transportation, advocacy, and additional support services (Richard J. Fiesta’s consensus recommendations, 2019). Funding through OAA is crucial to ensure that as the elderly population continues to grow the necessary resources can be provided to the elderly individuals in need.

DCFS should place siblings together in foster care

According to a Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) training titled “Keeping Children Connected to Their Brothers and Sisters,” when my mother received a sibling group of three in [date omitted to protect privacy], she should have been asked to take in the fourth sibling, who was an infant at the time. Additionally, when siblings are separated in foster care, they should have two sibling visits per month in addition to visits with the biological parent(s). Not only was this not facilitated, but any attempts to request the contact information of the foster parents of the fourth sibling were denied. It even says on the DCFS website that children in foster care will be told where their siblings are living and how to contact them. Also, if only one sibling from a sibling group is adopted, then the caseworker is supposed to speak with all parties involved about a continued contact plan or visits between the children.

This was not the only time DCFS neglected to follow through on their own policies. The sibling group of three was moved [about a year after initial placement with this student’s mother] because parental rights were being terminated, but my mother was still not able to contact the foster parents of the youngest sibling. We were told that they would be placed in a home five minutes away from the youngest, so my mother felt comfortable that they would be able to see each other. Following this removal, one of the children that was with my mother went to live with the youngest, and the other two children went to live in the household that was five minutes away. Later, the two that stayed together were moved because they were being abused. 

Throughout all the placements, the two sibling visits each month did not happen; they only saw each other during the parental meetings. The two siblings, who suffered through two placements and two school districts, came back to my mother [about seven months after being moved out of the student’s household when parental rights were terminated]. Finally, in [recent days], DCFS is getting around to moving the third child back into my mother’s care, which should have happened within 60 days of the other two returning to my mother’s house back [approximately nine months earlier], as explained in the training. Through foster parent support groups, my mother and I personally know of foster parents in similar situations. Foster parents are being denied the opportunity to keep siblings together; DCFS is failing to comply with their own policy.

We were not aware of this until my mother mistakenly took a staff training through Virtual Training Center (VTC), which shows that caseworkers should already have a working knowledge of the policy and are failing to implement it. Both caseworkers and foster parents should be aware of the information in this training, especially so siblings can stay together or stay in contact when that’s not possible. Foster children are negatively impacted when a rule like this is not enforced. Please contact your local DCFS office and urge them to consistently follow this policy.

For evidence of the importance of sibling foster care placement, see:

Washington, K. (2007). Sibling placement in foster care: a review of the evidence. Child & Family Social Work. 2007;12(4):426-433. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2206.2006.00467.x.