How these schools put opioid settlement dollars to work

Hello from Kalyn, Erica, and Wellington on the national team. Today’s big story looks at how schools in one hard-hit community are spending their share of a roughly $50 billion opioid industry settlement to heal wounds from the drug crisis. 

Keep reading for that, plus a consumer protection lawsuit over ineffective curriculum, the fraught legacy of California’s English-only policies, and more news from around our network.

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The big story

The opioid crisis has taken a huge toll on children in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, one of the city’s most impoverished.

Students are surrounded by drug use, used needles, and gun violence. Parks aren’t safe places to play. Kids cope with trauma and chronic stress. Many families have fled the area’s public schools.

Now, half a dozen schools in Kensington are working to mitigate some of that harm with an unusual funding source: $2 million from the settlement of a lawsuit against the drug companies that fueled the opioid crisis in their backyard. The community is one of several across the U.S. using settlement money to help children hurt by the epidemic. 

The money will go toward playground upgrades, bullet-resistant fencing, trees, and a classroom where kids can go to calm down. It will help provide small stipends to parents who walk children to school and give high schoolers new fitness equipment.

School leaders say they’re grateful for the funds, but they’re just a drop in the bucket of what kids need to recover and thrive. 

“I hope no one thinks for one minute that the $2 million that was awarded to the six schools is going to, for one minute, erase what our kids have seen during this opioid epidemic,” said Awilda Balbuena, one of the schools’ principals. “This is a Band-Aid to an open chest wound.”

Read the full story here.

Photo credit: Solmaira Valerio for Kensington Voice

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More national stories

Massachusetts families are suing three famed literacy specialists and their publishers over discredited reading curriculum. The families allege that Lucy Calkins, Irene Fountas, and Gay Su Pinnell knew that their approach to literacy instruction, which de-emphasized phonics, was not supported by research and that they used deceptive practices to push the curriculum on school districts and teachers. This may be the first time people have applied a consumer protection approach to an education policy debate. 

Local stories to watch

• Philadelphia aims to be a leader in training educators to use artificial intelligence. The school district is rolling out a program this spring with the University of Pennsylvania that will help district officials develop an AI framework and show teachers practical uses for AI in the classroom. Leaders hope the initiative will serve as a national model, especially as surveys find urban districts are less likely to offer this kind of support.
• Key Colorado lawmakers oppose cuts to the state’s universal free school meals program. Costs for the program have been higher than expected, but several lawmakers who help craft the state’s budget said they didn’t want to shrink the number of kids or meals served. Other ideas to address the budget gap are still on the table, such as ditching grants to train kitchen staff or asking voters if the state can keep excess tax revenue.
• Michigan Democrats want schools to teach inclusive history. Lawmakers are using their lame-duck session to push through a raft of education-related bills before Republicans take control of the state House. Among them is a bill to require K-12 history curriculum to include the experiences and contributions of African, Latino, Arab, and Native Americans, among other racial and cultural groups. Michigan would be joining other Democrat-led states in adopting inclusive history standards, even as some Republican-led states have limited how schools approach history and race.
• A Tennessee commission with the power to ban books statewide has yet to hear a single case. Lawmakers gave the commission wide-reaching authority in the hopes of removing material they believed was “pornographic” and “obscene.” Two years after the law was passed, just three cases have been filed, and they were all withdrawn. Despite the lack of statewide action, book bans have accelerated locally.

Spotlight on ... SCOTUS and schools

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week in a Tennessee case that could have broad implications for trans rights. On the surface, United States v. Skrmetti is about whether Tennessee can ban gender-affirming care for minors who want to transition — not an issue that directly affects the classroom. But the case hinges on whether laws and regulations that target transgender people are a form of illegal sex discrimination. Depending on how broad the court’s ruling is, a decision that upholds Tennessee’s law could have wider implications. 

The Supreme Court took a pass, however, on several other contentious education-related topics. The court declined to review admissions policies at Boston Latin School that had the effect of creating a more diverse student body because the school was no longer using the specific policies in question. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court declined to hear a similar case out of Virginia. For now, it remains legal to use admissions criteria that prioritize diversity, so long as they do not explicitly consider the race of individual students.

The high court also turned away a challenge to a Wisconsin school district policy that allowed students to change their gender presentation at school without notifying their parents. None of the parents in the case had a child who had changed their gender presentation, and a majority of the justices found the parents didn’t have standing to object to the policy. But three conservative justices said they would have taken the case, which “presents a question of great and growing national importance," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissent.

Did you know

5%

That’s how much college enrollment declined among 18-year-old college freshmen this school year, according to an analysis by the National College Attainment Network. Bill DeBaun, senior director of NCAN, told Inside Higher Ed the magnitude of the decline among recent high school graduates is “very large and very discouraging.”

Many observers believe the glitch-riddled Better FAFSA played a big role in the drop. Students’ financial aid offers were significantly delayed, and some gave up on college plans.

Quote of the week

“We were punished for speaking Spanish. We were hit with rulers, pinched, our braids were pulled. Now the whole school is dual-language.”

That’s Bárbara Flores, who started kindergarten in California in 1953 during a time when English-only policies were enforced with violence. She would go on to become a teacher and train thousands of other teachers in bilingual education. But when California voters adopted Proposition 227 and essentially banned bilingual education, that teacher pipeline was destroyed, CalMatters reports. 

Now, bilingual education is allowed again, and dual-language programs are flourishing in some districts, including the one where Flores was punished for speaking Spanish. But without enough teachers, money, or guidance, just 10% of students in the nation’s most linguistically diverse state are enrolled in dual-language programs.