30,000 Michigan children lose out on pre-K classes

Landen Ford wants to go to preschool. The 4-year-old Flushing boy with a crew cut and a toothy grin thought he’d learn the alphabet and his sounds, and maybe make some friends, just like his big brother Logan did last year. But instead of learning to write his name, Landen is learning an early lesson in budgets and bureaucracy.

“The teacher called and said ‘I’m sorry, Landen didn’t get in,’” said Janelle Ford, mother of the two boys. “Logan learned so much – he loved it. Now there are no spots for Landen. It’s not fair.”

Almost 30,000 Michigan 4-year-olds who qualify for free preschool are not in classrooms, because of inadequate state funding, logistical hurdles and inconsistent coordination of services.

 http://bridgemi.com/2012/09/30000-children-lose-out-on-pre-k-classes/

Martha Thawnghmung has become the face of the local Burmese community

She was an 8-year-old girl, a member of one of the first Burmese families to leave their military-controlled homeland. When they arrived in the U.S., she became part of one of the few Asian families to live in Battle Creek.

The life-changing move for Martha Thawnghmung was not easy. The director of the Springfield-based Burma Center said she didn’t feel like she belonged in Battle Creek for a long time. Her parents had moved from Myanmar in the 1980s in hopes that Thawnghmung and her six siblings could practice their Christian religion freely and make a better life for themselves.

But going to a mostly white school, where she and her classmates knew she looked different, was difficult. Thawnghmung, 41, said it wasn’t until a few years ago that Battle Creek finally felt like home.

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120928/NEWS01/309270036/Martha-Thawnghmung-has-become-face-local-Burmese-community

Truant kids to cost families state aid

Michigan parents whose children don't attend school will lose welfare cash benefits under a new state policy that takes effect Oct. 1.

Starting Monday, the Michigan Department of Human Services will require children ages 6-15 to attend school full time to keep their family eligible for cash benefits. If a child doesn't, the entire family becomes ineligible.

The policy change was prompted by Gov. Rick Snyder, who called earlier this year for a crackdown on truancy and the cycle of crime it creates. It takes effect two days before Michigan's fall Count Day, when attendance is used to determine 90 percent of a school district's per-pupil funding from the state.

For the 2011-12 school year, 93,408 cases of truancy were reported in Michigan schools, an increase of nearly 10,000 from the previous year, which had 83,491.

The policy is expected to affect the vast majority of the state's 59,000 welfare cash-assistance cases and its 162,655 recipients. The average eligible household in Michigan receives $463 a month from the state.

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20120925/METRO/209250373#ixzz27SKFFMK3

Michigan, We Have a Problem

Following last week’s release of national poverty numbers, the Census Bureau released state specific numbers this week. Besides a drop in the uninsured, it doesn’t look good. Our colleagues at Marketplace wrote a comprehensive article about poverty rates across the country.  The number that we’re most interested in, though, is the increase in children living in poverty.

Over the past ten years Michigan has had the third-largest increase in childhood poverty.  In 2001, Michigan had a child poverty rate of 14.2 percent. That number rose to 24.4 percent last year. That’s a ten percent increase over 10 years.

Job loss alone can’t explain the increase in Michigan’s poverty rates. Last year one in 10 working families in the state were living in poverty, the highest percentage in the Midwest.

http://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/michigan-we-have-problem

Michigan State House Discusses Whether Undocumented Children Have Right To Attend School In Michigan

Michigan state house (education committee) currently discussing whether undocumented children have a right to attend school in Michigan and whether their parents have right to decide which school.

The debate started as a debate as to whether or not parents could trigger a privatization or take over of a public school if the school was "failing".  The bill would allow for a simple majority of parents to take over the school and hire a charter operator to run same.  (As a retired public school administrator, I will skip adding my two cents to that debate.)

However, the discussion has devolved further as to whether or not the parents of undocumented children would have a right to vote in such an "election" and even if their kids have a right to attend school.

This posting in Twitter from conservative reporter Dave Murray of Grand Rapids Press:

"Dave Murray:

Trigger discussion has spun into a debate on whether illegal immigrants can attend schools, then vote in trigger elections."

P.S. I believe that the US Department of Education and Supreme Court have ruled that schools have no right to turn children, any children, away from public school doors.

The link to an article that Mr. Murray has just published can be found at:

http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/09/detroit_parents_say_parent_tri.html

Homelessness can't simply be wished away

For some people, the line between having and having not is thinner than we’d like to believe.

One not-so-tiny disaster, one troubling financial misstep, one awful decision and what was once there is not anymore and there you are.

And then the troubles build on top of each other, growing and roiling and fulminating like some personal form of nuclear fusion and the bad becomes worse and the worse becomes unimaginable.

We are all convinced we live in a protective little bubble where the truly nasty stuff stays away and afflicts somebody else. Truth is, it doesn’t always happen that way.

Homelessness is a problem everywhere and anywhere in this country. You can ignore it all you like.  You can look the other way or pretend local, state and federal government programs will take care of it so you don’t have to. But, again, it just doesn’t work that way.

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120916/NEWS01/309160017/Chuck-Carlson-Homelessness-can-t-simply-wished-away?nclick_check=1

Voces establishes itself in Battle Creek Latino community

The memory still makes Kate Flores shudder.

She recounts the story of a local Latino woman who was in the midst of a miscarriage, could not speak English and had no way to make herself understood at the hospital because there was no interpreter.

So instead, she relied on her English-speaking 13-year-old son in the emergency room, the only person she trusted to make herself understood to doctors.

“Can you imagine?” said Flores, executive director of Voces, a nonprofit organization seeking to provide assistance to Latinos in the Battle Creek area.

It’s that story, and others too much like it, that convinced Flores and others concerned about the local Spanish-speaking community to get behind Voces, Spanish for “voices.”

http://www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20120913/NEWS01/309130001/Voces-establishes-itself-B-C-Latino-community

Racial, Regional Divide Still Haunt Detroit's Progress

For many years — perhaps even decades — Detroit has been the poster child for economic malaise. Adjusting for inflation, per capita income in metro Detroit dropped more than 20 percent between 1999 and 2010.

Some analysts say regional cooperation might have helped keep Detroit above water when the car industry sank, but that entrenched divisions that pit the city against its suburbs, and blacks against whites, have hindered that.

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/11/160768981/racial-regional-divide-still-haunt-detroits-progress

NY Times Editorial: The Constitution on Skid Row

In 2011, a Federal District Court judge enjoined the city (of Los Angeles) from seizing property there unless it was abandoned, contraband, evidence of a crime or an immediate threat to public health or safety, and from destroying it unless it posed a threat.

In a welcome 2-to-1 ruling last week, a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld that order, rejecting the contention that “the unattended property of homeless persons is uniquely beyond the reach of the Constitution.” 

The court found that the Fourth Amendment’s protection of possessions and the 14th Amendment’s due-process guarantee prohibited this kind of confiscation of personal property by government, regardless of the homelessness of the owner. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-constitution-on-skid-row.html?_r=1

Chance Encounter

The community I live in is a relatively affluent one.  Not Gross Pointe or East Grand Rapids, but the rate of free and reduced price lunch in the schools is roughly half of the state average.  According to the real estate web site for Trulia Realtors, the average listing price for homes in my zip code is currently $357,000.  Only four of 133 homes currently listed for sale are listed for under $100,000.  The average is no doubt pulled up since seven homes, all with Lake Michigan access, are listed at over $1 million.  The median home listing (normally a better indicator of the community since a few very expensive homes can skew the data quickly) is still about $230,000-$240,000.

However, within the community are pockets of poverty.   Approximately, 29 percent of the children last school year qualified for free/reduced price school lunch.  There are areas of trailer and migrant housing.   As mentioned above, there are homes in the district which are valued at less than $100,000.  Some are much less.

My point is that poverty exists here.  But I wasn't really thinking about that when I went to the public library recently.  I wasn't thinking about the fact that many people don't have access to not only medical care, but dental and vision care as well.  This lady was my reminder:

Chance Encounter

Walking into the library entry 
my thoughts are on the book 
needing to be returned 
and the new one I hope to check out.
But I see kneeling there
a woman who also notices me 
as she tries on a discarded pair of glasses 
from the box marked:"Lions Donations."


Her search much more urgent
than feelings of embarrassment 
so she continues, as do I 
to deposit my returned book 
in the slot next to her.

Perhaps ten minutes later 
after checking out a new book 
on the life of Darwin 
I exit where
she is still kneeling in the entry 
scrounging through the box
trying out nearly every pair.
Alone.

So, with sadness in my eyes 
I pass her by again. 
She looking for better sight. 
Me, for human evolution 
and dignity. 

Hunger Action Week challenge to West Michigan: Can you live on $4.37 per day?

You spent about $30 on food for the week. But it's only Thursday, and most of the food is gone. You won't be able to buy any more for two days, meaning a few pieces of bread and peanut butter will be your Saturday and Sunday meals.

How is your stomach going to feel by Sunday night?

Area food assistance agencies want you to know.

The organizations are challenging people to live on $30.59 cents during Hunger Action Week from
Sept. 14-20 as part of the "HunGRy?" program. That weekly total breaks down to $4.37 a day.

http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2011/09/hunger_action_week_challenge_t.html