Schools in Youngstown, Ohio, have begun offering an after-school program for children from families affected by unemployment.
The program, sponsored by members of the American Federation of Teachers, will provide counseling, games, and group discussions for children in grades one through eight who seem troubled by their home situations, said a spokesman.
Some children, whose parents attended school but who are now unemployed, may start to view school as “a waste of time,” the spokesman said. Others are upset by changes in the family lifestyle, he added.
Youngstown was selected for the pilot project because unemployment has reached about 22 percent there, he said. Sessions meet three times a week.
Threatened by declining enrollment in some affluent areas, the Dallas Independent School District has been trying to convince local realtors that city schools are as good as suburban schools.
About 15 times this year, pta mothers have joined with administrators to host parties for local realtors at individual schools, said Dean Angel, a district spokesman. Profiles of each school are also circulated, listing such features as special programs offered, and the average education and income level of the parents whose children attend the school.
“We’ve been trying to cater to the realtors since we discovered they’ve been promoting suburban schools over our schools,” Mr. Angel said. “Many of them don’t know about our programs. They just think of us as any inner-city district.”
The Philadelphia school board has agreed to pay some 4,000 district employees a previously negotiated 10-percent salary increase that was rescinded nearly two years ago to cut back on the district’s expenses.
The agreement will cost the district approximately $12 million, according to Elliot Alexander, a district spokesman.
In July 1981, Mr. Alexander explained, the school board rescinded the 10-percent increase for maintenance and operations workers, bus drivers, and teachers to offset a budget deficit of more than $200 million.
The local union representing the “blue-collar” workers challenged the board’s decision before an arbitrator, who found that the workers were entitled to the pay raise.
The court of common pleas and most recently the state supreme court upheld the arbitrator’s ruling in what has been a long legal battle marked by a 22-day strike in February. (See Education Week, Feb. 9, 1983.)
Under the terms of the board’s agreement, according to Mr. Alexander, the district will pay part of the money owed by June 30, the end of the fiscal year. The remainder will be paid during the next fiscal year.
Twenty-one guidance counselors and “school-to-work coordinators” from the District of Columbia public schools have begun a year-long fellowship program designed to enhance their ability to prepare their students for meaningful work.
Sponsored by the Institute for Educational Leadership with a $190,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, the program will bring the counselors together with leaders in the local business community to expand their “contacts” and broaden their understanding of the job market and how curricula might be better adapted to market requirements, according to Jacqueline Danzenberger, director of the project for the iel
As part of that effort, Ms. Danzenberger said, the institute is working with a number of business and industry leaders on the project’s advisory council to arrange summer jobs in the private sector for the counselors.
The cost of the counselors’ and coordinators’ salaries will be shared equally, she said, by the fellowship program and the employers.
The school-to-work coordinators are employed in the district’s six new special-interest high schools supported by several private corporations. They will receive an additional five days of intensive inservice training under the program, the director said.
An additional goal of the project, Ms. Danzenberger said, is to expand the concept to other communities by 1984-85.
