Lunch debts piling up for school districts

By Emily Bazar, USA TODAY

More children are getting into school lunch lines without being able to pay, creating a financial burden for school districts.

Some schools are toughening their policies — limiting students to two or three unpaid meals, creating payment plans and using collection agencies.

It’s a growing problem that reflects families’ economic struggles nationally, says Dora Rivas, president of the School Nutrition Association.

“When we’re talking to parents, we’re hearing that they lost their jobs, their cars have broken down,” says Sheila Mason of Des Moines Public Schools.
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Attorney General and Education Secretary Call for National Conversation on Values and Student Violence

U.S. Department of Justice to Release Study on Children’s Exposure to Violence; U.S. Department of Education to Provide $500,000 Grant to Help Fenger Community

Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan today joined with Chicago city officials to call for a national conversation on values to address youth violence in the wake of the fatal beating of a Chicago high school student. The announcement followed meetings with City officials, community leaders, students, and parents.

“Youth violence isn’t a Chicago problem, any more than it is a black problem or a white problem. It’s something that affects communities big and small, and people of all races and colors. Today is the beginning of what will be a sustained, national effort on behalf of this entire administration to address youth violence and to make our streets safe for everyone,” Holder said.

“Chicago will not be defined by this incident but rather by our response to it – so we came here today to join with you and with communities all across America – to call for a national conversation on values. It’s a conversation that must happen every place in America where violence, intolerance, and discrimination exists,” Duncan said.
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What College Students Don’t Know

Every Fall the professors at beloit college publish their Mindset List, a dictionary of all the deeply ingrained cultural references that will make no sense to the bright-eyed students of the incoming class. It’s a kind of time travel, to remind us how far we’ve come. This year’s freshmen were typically born in 1991. That means, the authors explain, they have never used a card catalog to find a book; salsa has always outsold ketchup; women have always outnumbered men in college. There has always been blue Jell-O.

In 1991 we were fighting a war in Iraq, and still are; health care needed reforming, and still does. But before despairing that some things never change, consider how much has. In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?
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Reduced grants a possibility

Low inflation leads councils to consider reclaiming money from existing grants. Zoë Corbyn reports

Millions of pounds could be wiped off the collective value of research council grants that have already been awarded to academics.

The UK’s seven research councils may claw back money promised to grant holders in light of falling inflation.

Awards from the councils, which spend about £3 billion on research each year, normally have a sum added at the outset to take account of inflation.
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N.Va. Students Improve, But Schools Fall Short

Roughly nine of every 10 public school students in Northern Virginia passed the state’s reading and math tests in the spring, with achievement gaps narrowing and passing rates edging upward or holding steady across the region.

Yet data released Thursday show that more schools in the region and statewide are falling short of academic targets that rise steadily each year. Many educators are wondering how much more improvement is possible under a federal rating system that essentially demands perfect performance in the next five years.

“I’m definitely worried about that,” said Patricia I. Wright, state superintendent of public instruction. “That’s a question being raised all over the country, in terms of whether or not 100 percent proficiency by 2014 is a realistic statistical goal. All of us agree that’s an educational goal that we want to stand by.”
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