Youth in the News
Volume 3, Number 6, March 16-31, 2008
Contents
State Watch
Research
Government
STATE WATCH
- State reported graduation rates may not accurately reflect the number of students completing high school.
- In Alabama, a home for abandoned, abused and neglected children is adding a transitional house for youth moving from high school to college or trade school.
- Minneapolis has opened a Juvenile Supervision Center where police can drop off youth for committing low-level offenses like truancy, curfew violations and first-time shop lifting.
RESEARCH
- A new study suggests that a youth with poor social skills may be more likely to develop anxiety and depression as young adults.
GOVERNMENT
- Legislation that would tax "alcopops" as beer is debated in Maryland.
- The U.S. Farm Service Agency offers loans to rural youth nationwide for income producing projects in connection with their 4-H or Future Farmers of America.
- Vermont youth advocate for legislation that would prohibit smoking in a car when a minor is present.
- Students in Maryland support legislation that would allow in-state tuition for immigrant students.
- A California city park and recreation department is creating a youth commission to gain advise the department on youth activities.
- Massachusetts' Commission on GLBT Youth requests an increase in state funding for programs that serve gay and lesbian youth and to support a pilot homeless shelter.
- New York officials want to close large juvenile detention facilities and move to more community-based services.
- The Alabama Senate Education Committee voted against a bill that would allow students and professors to carry firearms on college campuses.
ARTICLES
NATIONWIDE
States’ Data Obscure How Few Finish High School
March 20, 2008
By Sam Dillon, New York Times
When it comes to high school graduation rates, Mississippi keeps two sets of books.
One team of statisticians working at the state education headquarters here recently calculated the official graduation rate at a respectable 87 percent, which Mississippi reported to Washington. But in another office piled with computer printouts, a second team of number crunchers came up with a different rate: a more sobering 63 percent.
The state schools superintendent, Hank Bounds, says the lower rate is more accurate and uses it in a campaign to combat a dropout crisis.
“We were losing about 13,000 dropouts a year, but publishing reports that said we had graduation rate percentages in the mid-80s,” Mr. Bounds said. “Mathematically, that just doesn’t work out.”
Like Mississippi, many states use an inflated graduation rate for federal reporting requirements under the No Child Left Behind law and a different one at home. As a result, researchers say, federal figures obscure a dropout epidemic so severe that only about 70 percent of the one million American students who start ninth grade each year graduate four years later.
California, for example, sends to Washington an official graduation rate of 83 percent but reports an estimated 67 percent on a state Web site. Delaware reported 84 percent to the federal government but publicized four lower rates at home.
The multiple rates have many causes. Some states have long obscured their real numbers to avoid embarrassment. Others have only recently developed data-tracking systems that allow them to follow dropouts accurately.
The No Child law is also at fault. The law set ambitious goals, enforced through sanctions, to make every student proficient in math and reading. But it established no national school completion goals.
“I liken N.C.L.B. to a mile race,” said Bob Wise, a former West Virginia governor who is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a group that seeks to improve schools. “Under N.C.L.B., students are tested rigorously every tenth of a mile. But nobody keeps track as to whether they cross the finish line.”
Furthermore, although the law requires schools to make only minimal annual improvements in their rates, reporting lower rates to Washington could nevertheless cause more high schools to be labeled failing - a disincentive for accurate reporting. With Congressional efforts to rewrite the law stalled, Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has begun using her executive powers to correct the weaknesses in it. Ms. Spellings’s efforts started Tuesday with a measure aimed at focusing resources on the nation’s worst schools. Graduation rates are also on her agenda.
In an interview, Ms. Spellings said she might require states to calculate their graduation rate according to one federal formula.
“I’m considering settling this once and for all,” she said, “by defining a single federal graduation rate and requesting states to report it that way. That would finally put this issue to rest.”
In 2001, the year the law was drafted, one of the first of a string of revisionist studies argued that the nation’s schools were losing more students than previously thought.
Jay P. Greene, a researcher at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research organization, compared eighth-grade enrollments with the number of diplomas bestowed five years later to estimate that the nation’s graduation rate was 71 percent. Federal statistics had put the figure 15 points higher.
Still, Congress did not make dropouts a central focus of the law. And when states negotiated their plans to carry it out, the Bush administration allowed them to use dozens of different ways to report graduation rates.
As an example, New Mexico defined its rate as the percentage of enrolled 12th graders who received a diploma. That method grossly undercounts dropouts by ignoring all students who leave before the 12th grade.
The law also allowed states to establish their own goals for improving graduation rates. Many set them low. Nevada, for instance, pledged to get just 50 percent of its students to graduate on time. And since the law required no annual measures of progress, California proposed that even a one-tenth of 1 percent annual improvement in its graduation rate should suffice.
Daniel J. Losen, who has studied dropout reporting for the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, said he once pointed out to a state official that, at that pace, it would take California 500 years to meet its graduation goal.
“In California, we’re patient,” Mr. Losen recalled the official saying.
Most troublesome to some experts was the way the No Child law’s mandate to bring students to proficiency on tests, coupled with its lack of a requirement that they graduate, created a perverse incentive to push students to drop out. If low-achieving students leave school early, a school’s performance can rise.
No study has documented that the law has produced such an effect nationwide. Experts say they believe many low-scoring students are prodded to leave school, often by school officials urging them to seek an equivalency certificate known as a General Educational Development diploma.
“They get them out so they don’t have them taking those tests,” said Wanda Holly-Stirewalt, director of a program in Jackson, Miss., that helps dropouts earn a G.E.D. “We’ve heard that a lot. It happens all over the system.”
After several research groups questioned graduation rates, the federal Department of Education in 2005 published an estimated rate for each state, to identify those that were reporting least accurately. The figures suggested that nine states had overstated their graduation rates by 10 to 22 percentage points.
Part of the discrepancy is because many states inflate their official rate by counting dropouts who later earn a G.E.D. as graduates or by removing them from calculations altogether.
The undercounting of dropouts can be striking.
In Mississippi, the official formula put the graduation rate for the state’s largest district, Jackson Public Schools, at 81 percent. Mr. Bounds, the state schools superintendent, said the true rate was 56 percent.
At Murrah High School, one of eight here, the official graduation rate is 99 percent, even though yearbooks show that half of Murrah’s freshmen disappear before becoming seniors. Even Murrah’s principal, Roy Brookshire, expressed surprise.
“I can’t explain how they figured that, truly I can’t,” Mr. Brookshire said.
Governors also stepped in, worried that schools were not preparing the work force their states need. In December 2005, all 50 agreed to standardize their graduation rate calculations, basing them on tracking individual students through high school.
Fifteen states have begun to use the formula, said Dane Linn, director of the education division at the National Governors Association. And it has produced some stunning revelations.
In North Carolina, the rate plummeted a year ago to 68 percent from 95 percent. The News & Observer in Raleigh likened the experience to the shock of hearing a doctor diagnose a terrible illness.
“But now doctors can start treatments that can lead to a cure,” the paper said in an editorial.
Mississippi is among the states that have become the most serious about confronting their dropout problem, Mr. Linn said.
The state has been building a record system capable of tracking student data from year to year, and in 2005 used it to estimate a graduation rate of 61 percent, 24 points below the official rate.
Mr. Bounds took office that fall and was initially consumed with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But he eventually had time to pore over the data.
“It was time to boldly confront the facts,” he said.
Mr. Bounds has used the new figures to persuade the Mississippi Board of Education to require school districts to prepare dropout prevention plans. Last month he told 2,000 community leaders that the state’s dropout crisis was like “a Katrina hitting our schools every year.”
The state will eventually report the lower rate to Washington but has set no schedule, Mr. Bounds said. One problem, he said, is that when Mississippi sends revised rates for its more than 200 high schools, their success levels will appear to plummet and many schools could be exposed to sanctions.
“It’ll look like everybody has dropped, when actually everybody’s doing a better job,” Mr. Bounds said. “But we’re capturing the right score on the scoreboard.”
ALABAMA
Boys Ranch to add transition home
Summerdale facility to provide home for teens entering college
March 25, 2008
By Guy Busby, www.al.com
Teens in the Alabama Sheriffs' Boys Ranch system making the transition after high school will soon have a place to help them prepare for college and independent living, according to program officials.
Construction of the transition home at the system's Baldwin County Boys Ranch should begin in the next two weeks, said Jim Harmon, director of the Summerdale program.
Program supporters will hold a ground-breaking ceremony at 2 p.m. today to mark the start of the effort, he said.
"It's going to be something new, a way for our guys to make the transition from high school to college," Harmon said. "This way, if they want to stay and go to a local college or trade school, they'll have a home and not just be put out on their own."
Harmon said teens who graduate from high school while in the program can attend college, but because of a lack of space must leave the Boys Ranch and live at the school or in other housing.
"They have to live in a dorm in order to make space here for a boy coming into the program," Harmon said. "Sometimes that's a struggle when they get into college and don't have the support they get here."
Harmon said the new home should be completed by summer. He said it will house up to eight boys and two house parents. The building, which will include eight bathrooms and seven bedrooms, is expected to cost up to $400,000. The new structure will be about 4,800 square feet in size.
"We have enough money to start, but we're still raising money," Harmon said. "A lot of people don't realize that we're entirely funded through donations, we don't get any money from the state."
The Alabama Sheriffs' Youth Ranch program has three facilities for boys -- in Baldwin, Morgan and St. Clair counties -- as well as the Tallapoosa County Girls Ranch. The programs are intended for children between 6 and 18 who need a safe home environment.
"It's for kids in unfortunate circumstances who, through no fault of their own, need a stable place to stay," Harmon said.
The Baldwin County facility can accommodate 16 boys. The center now has 12 residents, Harmon said.
He said donations received so far include a contribution from the Camille Schroeder Charitable Foundation Trust.
Baldwin County Sheriff Huey "Hoss" Mack Jr. said the local ranch program provides an environment for children that will help them prepare for the future.
"The construction of the College Transition Home will provide an additional level of support to these young men," he said in a statement.
Nicolas C. Rauccio, chief executive officer of the Alabama Sheriffs' Youth Ranches, said that since the ranch program began the facilities have helped almost 4,000 abandoned, abused and neglected children.
"These children had nowhere else to turn, but found the support they needed from our house parents and caring staff members," Rauccio said. "Our homes are safe havens where these boys can regain their self-confidence and build self-esteem."
MINNESOTA
Our kids, our neighborhoods : New Mpls Supervision Center more than just a holding pen for wayward kids
March 26, 2008
By Felicia Shultz, Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
Minneapolis kids who are picked up by a police officer for skipping school or missing curfew will be sent to the new Juvenile Supervision Center in Minneapolis City Hall. Funded by the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County, the center expects to see 4,000 children pass through its doors this year alone.
While city and county leaders are pleased to see the new Supervision Center open after several years of planning, it’s not really a flashy or novel place that they want kids to be excited about seeing; they prefer kids to stay in school, or at home during late evening hours resting up for the next school day.
The Juvenile Supervision Center is where youth ages 10-17 are taken when they are found committing low-level offenses, like truancy, curfew violations, or a first-time shoplifting offense. It is a safe place for youth to go to until they are picked up by a parent, and it was designed to help teens receive social service assistance, if needed, to correct any challenges the child is currently facing.
“It is very much a prevention program that intervenes with youth,” explains Sharlene Shelton, Hennepin County’s human services area manager. “It helps them so they don’t escalate further in committing more crimes.”
Before the center opened, these same low-level offenders were taken to the Hennepin County Juvenile Detention Center and mixed in with youth who were accused of committing much more serious crimes such as armed robbery or taking a weapon to school.
Shelton notes that studies show if a teen even so much as touches the door of a facility housed with higher-crime offenders, the likelihood of that teen committing another crime is very high.
The opening of the new center comes as many city, county and community leaders are working together to more effectively prevent youth violence before it occurs. In January, the City of Minneapolis released a Blueprint for Action to Reduce Youth Violence in Minneapolis that outlined 34 steps to reduce youth violence, including support for the Juvenile Supervision Center.
The center is open 24 hours a day and is more than just a quiet spot where teens can wait for their parents to come and pick them up. It is supervised waiting, and staff will do a risk screening of each child. If the results show the child rates high on the at-risk screening, staff will conduct an assessment and connect the child with a county or city social services resource for short-term or long-term care.
The care is voluntary - not required by anyone - and most importantly, it might help the child open up and communicate about what caused him/her to commit the low-level offense to being with.
“When it’s a first-time offense, it’s often a sign of a more serious problem,” notes Shelton. “For example, if a child is found shoplifting, we want to know why. Is it because they’re homeless, or was it a gang-initiated activity?”
These are tough questions for kids to answer and often yield painful feelings. But, City and community leaders want these issues resolved before they develop into more serious crimes. Children who stay in school are most often children who succeed in life.
Merle Bell-Gonzales of the Office of Student Attendance with Minneapolis Public Schools notes that attendance patterns start early, and there is a direct link between school success and children attending school.
“We are very appreciative of the fact that community resources have come together for this [Supervision Center],” said Bell-Gonzales. “Attendance helps students feel connected to school. It gives them a feeling of purpose and responsibility.”
She notes that a one percent increase in attendance yields more than a one percent increase in test scores. And, math scores are affected 3½ times as much as reading scores when attendance levels improve.
Kids learn when they’re in school. And when they’re not, juvenile crimes increase.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan, “Over the past two years, juveniles accounted for almost half of all those arrested for violent crimes. Those numbers have dropped by 20 percent due to a renewed focus by officers on violent offenders as well as curfew and truancy. In fact, schools that worked with the police reported a 75 percent improvement in truancy problems,” he said.
Bell-Gonzales notes that the success of our youth is truly a community effort. “Everyone in our community must value education. Getting an education can change a life - that’s the one thing that is a given. We have to advocate this.”
It will take the work of great parents and outstanding community leaders to promote education and to help prevent youth violence before it occurs. But by doing so, African American communities in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and all other neighborhoods in Minnesota will be safer, stronger, and a place to call home for many generations to come.
ANXIETY
Understanding Teen Anxiety and Depression
March 26, 2008
Ivanhoe Newswire
Do anxiety and depression lead to social problems in youth or do the social problems themselves lead to anxiety and depression?
A new study from the University of Vermont and the University of Minnesota suggests the latter is more likely the case. And social problems -- such as difficulties forming relationships and being accepted by friends -- are especially likely during the transition from adolescence into young adulthood.
Researchers followed 205 boys and girls, ages eight to 12 years, over 20 years into young adulthood. The study created measures of internalizing problems -- anxiety, depressed mood, and being withdrawn. It also measured social competence -- how well you function in relation to other people, especially how you get along with others and form close relationships.
Results show young people who had more internalizing problems at the start of the study were more likely to have those problems in adolescence and young adulthood. Those who started out as socially competent stayed that way as they grew up.
The study also found children who were less socially competent in childhood were more likely to have anxiety or depression in adolescence. And those who were less socially competent in adolescence were more likely to have anxiety and depression in young adulthood.
“Overall, our research suggests that social competence, such as acceptance by peers and developing healthy relationships, is a key influence in the development of future internalizing problems such as anxiety and depressed mood, especially over the transition years from adolescence into young adulthood,” lead author Keith Burt, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychology at the University of Vermont, was quoted as saying. “These results suggest that although internalizing problems have some stability across time, there is also room for intervention and change. More specifically, youth at risk for internalizing problems might benefit from interventions focused on building healthy relationships with peers.”
MARYLAND
Maryland the Latest Target in Industry Bid to See Alcopops Classified as Beer
March 26, 2008
By Bob Curley, www.jointogether.com
Maryland's attorney general says that so-called "alcopops" should be treated like hard-liquor products under the law, but some members of the state legislature want sweetened alcoholic drinks like Smirnoff Ice and Mike's Hard Lemonade classified and taxed like beer.
With support from Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, the Maryland Senate easily passed a bill (HB 879) this week to classify alcopops as beer for taxation purposes. Backers said the legislation was needed to bring Maryland's law into line with a 2003 federal Tax and Trade Bureau ruling that alcopops should be classified as beer as long as no more than 49 percent of the alcohol in the products is derived from distilled spirits.
Critics, however, say the real intent of the alcohol industry and its supporters is to keep alcopop prices low so they remain affordable to young customers; federal studies have shown that the sweet alcoholic drinks are a favorite of underage drinkers. Under Maryland law, liquor is taxed at $1.50 per gallon, while beer is taxed at just 9 cents per gallon. "That's a sweet deal for producers but bad public policy," said the Baltimore Sun in a March 20 editorial opposing the legislation.
"The real story is that this has been the industry's warpath for the last few years," said Michele Simon, research and policy director at the Marin Institute. "About half the states clearly say that any product with distilled is classified as such, but the industry has figured out the way around that is to go to the states and change state laws to match the federal law."
At least six states -- Tennessee, Minnesota, Missouri, Washington, Oregon and Virginia -- have amended their laws to conform to the TTB definitions, according to Jim Mosher, director of the Center for the Study of Law and Enforcement Policy at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE).
The Maryland legislation -- which was introduced right before a holiday weekend, debated at a hearing scheduled on President's Day, and fast-tracked through the Senate -- is now before the House of Delegates for consideration.
Even some opponents of the bill concede that the measure has a good chance of passage in the House, pointing to Maryland's history of low alcohol taxes and the fact that supporters of the bill have framed a vote against the measure as a vote for a "tax increase" -- a tactic that may be especially effective in the wake of a bruising special legislative session where a number of state taxes were raised to close a $1.7-billion budget gap.
Ironically, Maryland has always taxed alcopops as beer, not liquor, even though the TTB itself found that the flavored malt beverages (FMBs) currently on the market derive most of their alcohol from distilled spirits. The industry may have been spurred into a bid to codify the current tax treatment by Attorney General Douglas Gansler's February opinion on alcohol classification, as well as recent legislation in California and Utah to classify alcopops as liquor. "People are waking up to fact that these products have been misclassified thanks to the industry's duplicity," said Marin's Simon.
John Colymers, secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, requested the ruling from Gansler in February, noting, "If FMBs were subject to the higher distilled-spirits tax rate, this could have positive public health implications," since "these sweet, often fruit-flavored malt beverages are popular with adolescents."
In his response to Colymers and a letter to the General Assembly opposing legislation to classify alcopops as beer, Gansler said that FMBs are not "flavored beers" but rather liquor products, and that Maryland is under no obligation to conform its law to the TTB rules.
"Passing this legislation will make it easier for young people and underage youth to obtain distilled spirits by making alcopops available in more retail outlets and taxing them at a lower rate," added the Maryland chapter of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in its Feb. 18 testimony before the House Health and Government Operations Committee.
FARM SERVICE
Farm Service Agency youth loans available
March 19, 2008
Bogalusa Daily News
The United States Department of Agriculture's Farm Service Agency (FSA) has authority to provide credit to rural youth loans as a tool to encourage young people to participate in 4-H, Future Farmers of America (FFA), and similar organizations.
According to Mack McCraney, Farm Loan Agent for the Washington/ St. Tammany Parish Farm Service Agency, young people who are 10 to 20 years of age may establish and operate income producing projects of modest size in connection with their participation in 4-H Clubs, FFA, or other similar organizations.
Eligible loan applicants may be approved for a youth loan up to but not exceeding $5,000. Youths under 18 years of age must have concurrence of their parents or guardian. Each project must be part of an organized and supervised program of work.
The project must be planned and operated with the help of the organization's supervisor, produce sufficient income to repay the loan, and provide the youth with practical business and educational experience.
McCraney emphasized that because of changes made in the 1996 Debt Collection Act, it is extremely important that applicants, sponsors, and parents or guardians understand that if the loan is not repaid, the borrower would become ineligible for other government loans, such as student loans and/or housing loans.
Interested parties are urged to visit the Washington/St. Tammany Parish Farm Service Agency Office for additional information concerning the eligibility and availability of youth related loans at 1111 Washington St., Franklinton, or call 985-839-5687, Ext. 2.
VERMONT
Swanton Youth Propose Legislation to Protect Kids Statewide
March 26, 2008
When a group of more than twenty students from Swanton Central School want to do their part to protect the health of their peers statewide, they don’t just talk about it, they take action. Swanton’s
Vermont Kids Against Tobacco (VKAT) noticed many parents smoke in their cars while they were
dropping their kids off at school. They were concerned about kids being exposed to secondhand smoke, something they know is deadly. They met with both Swanton Town officials and State representatives to determine how to proceed. As a result, Representative Kathy LaVoie of Swanton
introduced legislation protecting youth under 18 years old from secondhand smoke in cars. "This bill may be a controversial one," says Rep. Kathy LaVoie, "But it’s clear to me that it protects the health of children and that’s important to pursue."
Vermont isn’t the only state taking appropriate steps to protect youth from secondhand smoke in cars. Arkansas, California and Louisiana have enacted legislation banning smoking in cars where children are present. Bangor, Maine has done it as well prompting the state of Maine to consider a statewide ban this legislative session. Vermont may be the only state, however, where the idea for the legislative change came from fifth and sixth graders.
Here are some facts that convinced the Swanton VKAT to take action. In addition to the Surgeon
General’s report confirming that any exposure to secondhand smoke is a risk, especially for children, a recent Harvard School of Public Health study found "alarming" levels of secondhand smoke generated in just five minutes in vehicles under various driving, ventilation, and smoking conditions. The researchers found higher levels of particulate matter in vehicles where smoking occurred than in bars before smoking was banned in indoor workplaces. Based on their analysis, the researchers concluded that "smoking in cars under typical driver and traffic conditions provides potentially unsafe secondhand smoke exposure." The American Academy of Pediatrics has also announced their support "…for changes in existing state and local laws and policies that protect children from secondhand smoke exposure by prohibiting smoking in any vehicle while a legal minor (under 18 years of age) is in the vehicle …"
With support from the membership of the Franklin Grand Isle Tobacco Prevention Coalition, the Swanton VKAT of Swanton Central School will do their best to educate families of the dangers of smoking in cars when children are present. They hope that by the time they graduate into middle school that fewer kids will be at risk due to exposure to secondhand smoke.
MARYLAND
Students rally for in-state tuition for illegal immigrants
State legislation is not expected to pass this year
March 27, 2008
By Dennis Carter
Bladensburg High School senior Nemesis Zambrano will be eligible for in-state college tuition next fall, but many of her classmates won’t, due to their immigration status. Knowing their families can’t afford out-of-state tuition, they’re dropping out of Bladensburg and taking minimum wage jobs, she said.
‘‘I have friends who think they can’t go to college, so they drop out of high school,” said Zambrano, 17, part of a handful of Prince George’s County students who attended a Monday rally at the University of Maryland, College Park in support of a law that would grant in-state tuition to Maryland high school students who do not have legal immigration status.
‘‘They think there’s no hope for them, but they’re all very smart kids with potential,” Zambrano said.
More than 70 people, including high school and college students, attended the rally in support of the bill. But state lawmakers and immigrant rights advocates said the legislation - Senate Bill 591, sponsored by Sen. Paul Pinsky (D-Dist. 22) of University Park - would fall short of the necessary support this year in Annapolis. Activists who oppose the proposed law said they were relieved to see that it was stalled in committee and would likely not get a full vote before the session ends April 9. They say it threatens to allow undocumented immigrants into college while Maryland residents could lose their place in a college classroom.
‘‘There are only a finite number of spots,” said Susan Payne, a longtime Montgomery County resident and executive director of the Maryland Coalition for Immigration Reform, a group that has testified several times on immigration-related bills this year in Annapolis. ‘‘For every illegal alien who is given a spot, there is a [Maryland citizen] who doesn’t get in.”
But Pinsky said students who graduated at the top of their high school class were not considering college because of the daunting out-of-state tuition.
‘‘If someone can go to Northwestern High School and get a 4.0, why shouldn’t they be able to go to College Park and pay a reasonable tuition?” he asked. ‘‘Everyone says, ‘Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.’ Well, that’s what these people want to do. ... If they are Maryland students who are accepted, they should be able to go to higher education institutions like their neighbors.”
The Board of Regents for the University System of Maryland controls tuition policies for public state colleges and universities, including which students are eligible for in-state tuition. Currently, a student must be a Maryland resident for 12 consecutive months before being considered for in-state tuition status.
This year’s bill would grant in-state tuition to anyone who graduated from a state high school and could prove the student’s family paid state income taxes, among other requirements. Similar legislation was passed by lawmakers in 2003, but vetoed by then-Gov. Robert R. Ehrlich Jr. Ehrlich gave a list of reasons for why he nixed the bill, including that it would reward illegal behavior.
‘‘Maryland citizens are under no obligation to pay for the tuition of a citizen of another country,” said Payne, who took video and pictures at the campus rally. ‘‘People don’t want this to be a sanctuary for illegal activity.”
The difference between resident and non-resident tuitions can be more than $10,000 annually at Maryland colleges and universities. At the University of Maryland, College Park, in-state tuition during the spring 2008 semester is $3,984. Non-residents pay $11,103 this semester.
Prince George’s Community College charges $5,990 per semester for non-county state residents, and $8,630 for non-state residents. Prince George’s residents pay about $3,710 per semester. More than 6,000 of the University of Maryland’s 25,000 undergraduate students are from outside the state.
Laws that allow undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition have passed in 10 states since 2001, mostly in the west. Several other states are considering similar legislation this year.
Ricardo Flores, director of advocacy for the Maryland Multicultural Youth Centers, said many undocumented students were brought to the state as children and attended Maryland public schools through high school, just like their classmates with legal residency.
‘‘Right now ... leadership in the state of Maryland doesn’t get that,” said Flores, who spoke at the rally. ‘‘These kids deserve the opportunity to go to college and [pay in-state tuition].”
Zambrano, the Bladensburg senior, said she applied to the University of Maryland and Goucher College in Baltimore, where she will pay in-state tuition if she is accepted. She encouraged her friends, all Bladensburg seniors, to apply to college, but knowing they would have to pay out-of-state tuition, they decided not to.
Several students from middle and high schools in Prince George’s, Baltimore and Montgomery counties spoke on McKeldin Mall on the College Park campus. Many said their grades suffered over the last year as they have been disheartened and distracted by the prospect of out-of-state tuition.
‘‘Most of us can’t afford that,” said Edgar Mondragon, 18, a Bladensburg High senior. ‘‘And because of that, a lot of us have to abandon our dreams.”
CALIFORNIA
City wants youth with opinions
March 19, 2008
By Kurt Schauppner, The Desert Trail
Youth of Twentynine Palms, the park and recreation department wants you.
Specifically, the Park and Recreation Department is looking for sixth- through 11th- graders interested in serving on a youth commission and others interested in serving on committees which will support that commission.
“We want to have a regular voice from the youth of Twentynine Palms about what they would like to see with respect to youth activities,” recreation supervisor Kevin Cole said Friday afternoon, March 14.
“Several cities have them,” Cole said. “It’s something that Joel Klink, when he was the mayor, really wanted to get started. He and I got together, talked about what our thoughts were as far as what we wanted to accomplish with it, rather what would be accomplished with it.
“We want to have a regular voice from the youth of Twentynine Palms about what they would like to see with respect to youth activities,” Cole said.
“It would probably work more as an advisory panel to the recreation department, as far as things they would like to see us doing over there.”
He added that, as the commission progresses, its influence could expand.
“Some youth commissions offer a youth perspective on
legislation to their councils. Once we get it started we can see the kind of direction they want to take.”
The first step toward creation of the commission, Cole said, will be to take applications from young people, sixth- through 11th-graders, interested in serving two-year terms on the advisory body.
“We’ve gone through this debate quite a bit,” Cole said of
the age designations. “Are sixth graders too young?
High school seniors are excluded from the application process because of the likelihood that they will go off to college and not be available to serve the second year of their terms.
“We would like to see some consistency,” Cole said. “We’d like to have a board of seven. We would want them to serve two-year terms. If they were entering their junior year they would be here for their junior and senior years.”
Cole said he has spoken to local young people, mostly basketball players, about the commission and has gotten some good responses.
“They had many ideas about activities they would like to see,” Cole said.
Recreation Department officials, he added, are hoping to get a broad range of young people involvement in the commission and in support of the advisory group.
“We want to involve as many kids as possible. No one will be denied participation,” he said, noting that plans call for a board meeting every other month and a general membership meeting every other month.
“If kids wanted to be involved we would want to place them on committees,” he said. “We wouldn’t want to turn anybody away.”
The application process will start within the next two weeks. Applications will be available at the park and recreation office on Joe Davis Drive on the south side of Luckie Park.
Once applications are turned in a panel including Cole, Klink, Larry Bowden and Randy Councell will review the applications, conduct interviews and select youth commissioners.
“I would like to get the board in place as quickly as possible,” he said. “I would like to push to have a spring event that the youth commission would sponsor or put on.
“I’m excited about it,” he said. “Anytime you can get the youth of the community involved it is a good thing, it’s good for the whole community.”
MASSACHUSETTS
Youth commission seeks funding for new programs
March 22, 2008
By Ethan Jacobs, www.edgeboston.com
The Massachusetts Commission on GLBT Youth plans to push for an unprecedented $2.9 million in state funding for youth programs in the Fiscal Year 2009, a figure far above the commission’s FY02 high watermark of $1.6 million.
That sum would fund gay/straight alliances (GSAs) and community-based organizations serving LGBT youth, a staple of state LGBT funding in past years. But it would also break ground by funding new initiatives, including a pilot homeless shelter serving LGBT youth and programming to combat LGBT youth dating violence. During the commission’s March 17 meeting in Springfield, Jason Smith, chair of the commission, told commissioners to get comfortable with the $2.9 million figure and to understand it as the "bare minimum" of funding needed to respond to the critical needs of LGBT youth. He urged them not to get discouraged by news reports and comments from lawmakers and budget watchers that this year’s tight fiscal situation - House Speaker Sal DiMasi has promised the FY09 budget will include $100 million in cuts - means there will be few funding increases.
The commission’s budget request would more than offset the deep cuts made to the state’s LGBT youth budget since the state budget crisis in 2002 prompted then-Gov. Jane Swift to gut LGBT youth funding. Funding continued to hover well below the FY02 level during the administration of Gov. Mitt Romney and the first year of Gov. Deval Patrick’s administration; in the current fiscal year the total LGBT youth funding stands at $600,000.
The funding request is a product of the commission’s work over the past year to identify the most pressing needs facing LGBT youth. Since last summer the commission has held regional meetings in Boston, Hyannis, Worcester, Brockton, and the most recent in Springfield to meet with LGBT youth, GSA advisors and LGBT youth program coordinators and develop a picture of the health and safety risks facing LGBT young people. The commission, drew on those meetings and their own expertise to develop funding priorities, and the commission’s executive committee and government relations committee synthesized those priorities into an itemized request.
During the meeting, the first time the full commission discussed the funding proposal, the item that drew the most attention was the $400,000 for a pilot shelter for homeless LGBT youth. Commissioner Al Toney said he felt it would be more effective to focus on making existing shelters safe for LGBT youth rather than creating one LGBT-friendly shelter. He said he worried that with just one safe shelter in the state, many youth seeking safe housing would have to travel across the state and outside their communities in order to make use of the shelter’s services.
In response commissioner Gunner Scott, head of the health and human services committee that recommended the pilot shelter, said that based on his decade of experience in shelter services, which included work with The Network/La Red, a domestic violence service organization, he believes that in the short term the community cannot rely on mainstream shelters to create safe spaces for LGBT youth. He told commissioners that if they imagined all the problems facing LGBT youth in schools, the situation in shelters is that severe "magnified by 300 percent."
Smith said the commission would defer to the health and human services committee’s recommendation.
Eleni Carr, chair of the government relations committee, told Bay Windows the $400,000 for the shelter would support a 12-bed facility that would be open during the evenings and overnight but closed during the day. She said the budget request makes no suggestion about where the shelter should be located.
"The idea would be that it would be a 45-day kind of thing, so kids could be assessed and directed to services and hopefully a more permanent situation," said Carr. She said if the pilot shelter is successful the commission would recommend the creation of similar shelters to serve different regions of the state.
The issue of LGBT youth homelessness was at the forefront of the Springfield commission meeting, held at Springfield Central High School. Before the public meeting that evening the commission held a closed-door session with a group of youth and LGBT service providers from Springfield, Holyoke and Longmeadow. A 19-year-old from Holyoke said that when he came out his aunt, who was raising him at the time, kicked him out of the house. The commission permitted Bay Windows to cover the session on the condition that the paper not use the names of the youth unless they gave their express permission.
The Holyoke youth said that after he was forced out he entered the Department of Social Services (DSS) system, but he said several of his foster families rejected him after discovering he was gay. At age 18 he left DSS, but found few options for housing and several times considered going to a shelter.
"I returned to DSS last week," he said.
Chino Rios, an 18-year-old high school student from Springfield, said that while his own family has been supportive, he knows several LGBT peers who have been forced out of their homes by their families after coming out.
"I know a lot of friends that I’ve even taken into my own home. Thank God my mom’s accepting," said Rios.
The youth said that at school teachers and administrators rarely respond to incidents of anti-LGBT harassment with more than a slap on the wrist.
"If you do report it to the teacher they’ll say they weren’t serious about what they did," said one female student from Longmeadow.
The Holyoke youth said that he helped found Holyoke High School’s GSA a few years ago, which has had a modest impact on the climate for LGBT students. The GSA took it upon itself to do teacher trainings on LGBT issues. But despite that, he said he was a constant target of harassment. People in class passed him notes calling him a faggot, harassed him in the locker room and refused to change next to him.
"I dropped out of high school. ... Every single day I was tortured," he said.
Rios, who attends Springfield’s High School of Commerce, said that he has encountered less harassment, in large part because he found a group of LGBT friends who support each other.
"We have a little homo posse, and we stick up for each other," said Rios.
Rios and the Holyoke youth, who are both Puerto Rican, said that it has been particularly difficult to be out within the Puerto Rican community in Western Mass. The Holyoke student said some of the worst harassment he has faced has been at the hands of other Puerto Rican youth, and he said even though he is out he has at times felt ashamed to be gay when he is within the community.
"It’s something we’re taught from a young age, that a man is supposed to be one thing and a woman is supposed to be another thing," he said. He urged the commission to create a committee to deal with issues facing LGBT minorities.
Following the meeting with the youth the commission held its open meeting, where Smith and Carr outlined the budget proposal. Carr said the $2.9 million was split between the Department of Public Health (DPH), which will receive $2.1 million, and the Department of Education (DOE), which will receive $800,000.
Carr told Bay Windows that the funding for the homeless shelter would come from the DPH funding, as will a number of other programs. The commission is requesting $800,000 to support community-based organizations such as the Alliances of Gay and Lesbian Youth (AGLYs), and $300,000 to create programs dealing with dating violence. The DOE funding includes $500,000 to support GSAs.
Carr told commissioners the House Ways and Means committee is expected to announce its FY09 budget proposal on or around April 16. If the proposal falls short of the $2.9 million figure (Gov. Patrick’s own proposal, released in January, level-funded LGBT youth programs), Carr said lawmakers would have until 5 p.m. on April 18 to file amendments to bump up those numbers. She said the commission is lining up sponsors to file those amendments, but between now and the release of the Ways and Means budget she urged commissioners to schedule meetings with their state representatives to make the case for the $2.9 million in funding and to ask them to commit to co-sponsoring the amendments if the Ways and Means budget falls short of that figure.
"$2.9 million, compared to what we have it seems like a lot. ... It is a necessary increase. It is what is needed in the schools and the community to create safer spaces for kids, a more positive social environment," Carr told Bay Windows.
NEW YORK
OCFS wants to close underutilized youth facilities
March 27, 2008
By Steve Ference, Capital News 9
"It was hard for me to transition back to the community when I was upstate," said Kyle Sullivan.
After being arrested at the age of 14 on a nonviolent charge, Kyle Sullivan said spending months in an upstate youth rehabilitation facility did little for him. He returned not once, but twice.
"We're here today to support the New York State Office of Children and Family Services' plan to close six underutilized youth facilities," said Juvenile Justice Project Director Mishi Faruqee.
Juvenile justice groups said Sullivan shares a common story that they said involves a system that for too long has been about filling beds and passing the high cost to taxpayers.
"The Senate has proposed keeping open the Auburn youth facility, the Brace youth facility, and the Great Valley youth facility," said Faruqee.
The Office of Children and Family Services planned to close six facilities to save taxpayers $16 million. But to their surprise, three of the facilities are in the Senate budget to remain open - even though there are few or no children receiving services at the sites.
"We are in a fiscal situation where the state has to close a gap of between four and five billion," said Queens Assemblyman William Scarborough. "Meanwhile, the department has to maintain facilities when in some instances you have two children and 25 or 26 staff."
This, as OCFS hopes to move to a more targeted community-based program that costs $15,000 per year, per kid - instead of using the facilities that can cost above $100,000 per kid, per year.
Officials said the alternative programs are not only cheaper, but they believe they're more effective.
Ruben Austria, a Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow said, "You know what happens when we put young people upstate - 81 percent of the boys reoffend within three years."
A spokesman for the State Senate Majority told us why the facilities would remain open under their budget saying, "Three would be kept open for a number of factors, including economic factors, and we are trying to find alternative uses for the facilities."
"I think that's what we should do, find an alternative use in that community for that particular site or building," said OCFS Commissioner Gladys Carrion. "But really we don't need to have those facilities in our juvenile justice system."
Whatever happens, the lives of countless teens like Josh Lane will be affected. He attended a cheaper, alternative program instead of an upstate facility.
He said, "Without that program, I probably would have been re-arrested. Locked up. Dead. Anything."
ALABAMA
Committee rejects campus gun bills
March 27, 2008
By Dana Beyerle, TuscaloosaNews.com
The state Senate Education Committee rejected legislation Wednesday that would have allowed students and professors to carry firearms on college campuses.
Sen. Hank Erwin, R-Montevallo, sponsored three bills in response to campus shootings last April at Virginia Tech, where a suicidal student shot and killed 32 people, and in February at Northern Illinois University, where a former graduate student killed himself and five others.
Two of the bills would have allowed students and professors to carry firearms under certain conditions, and the other would have prohibited state-
supported colleges and universities from adopting policies to prevent professors from carrying firearms.
The state’s public universities, which currently ban guns on campus, opposed the legislation.
“This, I’m afraid, is a very dangerous bill,” said University of Alabama system spokesman Bill Jones, a former law enforcement officer. He said allowing people who are not trained officers to start shooting would endanger many people at crowded college campuses.
Erwin’s bills contained restrictions like a requirement that students and professors have the proper gun permits.
“It’s not just an open Wild West,” Erwin said.
Shawn Giddy, director of public safety at Jacksonville State University, said, “The probability of an accidental shooting is much higher than the need to have one to protect yourself.”
Erwin urged the committee to approve the bills. “We need to debate these in the full Senate and the entire Legislature,” he said.
No one testified in favor of them.
After listening to Erwin and opponents, the Education Committee voted largely along party lines against sending the bills to the full Senate. The five Democrats present voted against the bills and, except in one instance, the three Republicans in attendance voted for them. Four committee members were not present to vote.
Utah, the first state with such a law, has not experienced problems, he said.
Students also would have had to meet other criteria, including completing a gun skills course approved by the university and participating in the campus’ ROTC military training program. A student also could not have a felony or misdemeanor conviction.
Erwin said the bills were designed to discourage gunmen by making them aware someone could shoot back quickly.
Gordon Stone, executive director of the Alabama Higher Education Partnership, which lobbies on behalf of Alabama’s 13 public universities, said emotions can run high on campuses, and guns don’t need to be added to the mix.
“Consider what it might be like at an Auburn versus Alabama football game if the students had firearms?” Stone asked the committee.
At least 10 other states are considering similar legislation this spring, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
With half of the legislative session remaining, Erwin said he will offer a scaled-down bill that would allow licensed law enforcement officers to carry guns on a college campus when they are enrolled in classes.
University officials said the best approach is more education about crime prevention and how to recognize students with emotional problems.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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