Tag: California

In These 8 States, Students Are Going to Be Served Healthier School Lunches

Posted on by robbie

A new pilot program aimed at encouraging states to purchase locally-sourced food will bring more fresh produce to school meals across eight states.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced California, Connecticut, Michigan, New York, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin will be able to use some of their USDA Foods allocation toward unprocessed fruits and vegetables from local farms rather than going through the USDA Foods program.

The Pilot Project for Procurement of Unprocessed Fruits and Vegetables, which falls under the Agricultural Act of 2014 (Farm Bill), was created to not only promote farm-to-table meals, but also help schools strengthen relationships with vendors, growers, wholesalers and distributors, according to the USDA.

USDA Foods comprises about 20 percent of foods served in schools, with schools using their allocation from a list of 180 items including fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, rice, low fat cheese, beans, pasta, flour and other whole grain products. Under the new program, schools will be able to substitute those allocations for fresher, local options.

“Providing pilot states with more flexibility in the use of their USDA Foods’ dollars offers states another opportunity to provide schoolchildren with additional fruits and vegetables from within their own communities,” says Kevin Concannon, USDA Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services.  “When schools invest food dollars into local communities, all of agriculture benefits, including local farmers, ranchers, fishermen, food processors and manufacturers.”

States were selected on criteria including a commitment to farm-to-school efforts, previous promotion initiatives, the variety and abundance of fruit and vegetable growers in the state on a per capita basis, as well as how diverse the state’s educational agencies are in size and geography.

For states like Connecticut, the program not only promotes the local economy, but also helps children form more nutritional habits of buying fresh, local produce.

“Connecticut’s participation in this federal pilot is great news for our farmers, our economy and our children,” says Governor Dannel P. Malloy. “Our state is home to thousands of farming operations responsible for billions in economic activity. By increasing the amount locally-sourced healthy food options for our students, we help lay a foundation for lifelong successful habits.”

MORE: The District Where Healthy School Lunches Are Actually Succeeding

The Surprising Thing That’s Giving Low-Income Students Internet Access

Posted on by robbie

In the evening, when students are supposed to be at home toiling over their homework, the school buses that carry them to school usually sit idle in a lot. But one school district in Salton City, Calif., is putting these vehicles’ downtime to good use.
How so?
By installing Wi-Fi routers inside the school buses and parking them in neighborhoods where many low-income students lack Internet access. For as long as the battery on the bus lasts, the community can use the free Wi-Fi — something that could have huge outcomes, considering that about half of the low-income students in the U.S. lack home Internet access, according to Nichole Dobo of the Hechinger Report.
The only other choice for these kids is to stay at school and use the Wi-Fi there to complete their homework. Darryl Adams, superintendent of schools of the Coachella Valley Unified District, tells Dobo, “I had kids sitting outside my office yesterday because they want to connect to the Internet at, like, 6 o’clock at night.”
When low-income students stay after hours to hop online — missing the school bus home — it creates difficulties for the parents who must come fetch them, as many of them live an hour’s drive or more away.
Thirteen-year-old Jasmine Jimenez says that she’s looking forward to the day when the district might enable Wi-Fi on the bus during its route. “It won’t be a big bug to ask your parents to pick you up,” she said.
School district officials haven’t completely worked out the kinks of the system. So far they’ve only been able to install routers in two buses out of their fleet of 90. Drivers park the two buses on lots in trailer parks and must obtain permission from the owners to do so. But the biggest problem is that the battery tends to die after only one hour of use, an energy crunch which some have suggested might be solved by installing solar panels on the buses.
Still, the Coachella district is determined to try to make the program work. “Come on. We can do better than that as a nation, especially for our low-income families and our disadvantaged families,’’ superintendent Darryl Adams says.
MORE: Every Kid Needs An Internet Connection to Thrive In School. This District Has A Plan to Make it Happen

These 10 Documentaries Will Change How You See America

Posted on by robbie

Documentary films are known for sparking social change. (Case in point: Who wants to eat at McDonalds after seeing Super Size Me or Food, Inc.? What parent suggests visiting SeaWorld after seeing Blackfish?) Though 2014’s nonfiction films weren’t massive box office hits, they pointed out injustice and lifted our eyes to the doers making a difference. Here are the 10 must-see documentaries that inspired us to action.

10. The Great Invisible

BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 still darkens the coastline along the Gulf of Mexico in the form of altered ecosystems and ruined lives. Named best documentary at the SXSW Film Festival, Margaret Brown’s documentary dives deep beyond the news coverage you may remember into a tale of corporate greed and lasting environmental damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDw1budbZpQ

9. If You Build It

Two designers travel to the poorest county in rural North Carolina to teach a year-long class, culminating in building a structure for the community. In this heartwarming story, 10 students learn much more than construction skills.
http://vimeo.com/79902240

8. The Kill Team

An infantry soldier struggles with his wartime experience after alerting the military his Army platoon had killed civilians in Afghanistan. On the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ long list for best documentary, Dan Krauss’s challenging film shows how morality dissolves in the fog of war and terror of battle.

7. Starfish Throwers

Three people — a renowned cook, a preteen girl and a retired teacher — inspire an international movement to end hunger. Jesse Roesler’s film includes the story of Allan Law, the man who handed out 520,000 sandwiches during the course of a year in Minneapolis, which we featured on NationSwell.

6. Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story

A former Navy SEAL (formerly named Christopher, now Kristin) says that changing genders, not military service, was the biggest battle of her life. In retrospect, her SEAL experience takes on new importance as she comes to understand the true value of the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

5. The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

An online pioneer who developed Creative Commons with the academic and political activist Lawrence Lessig at age 15 and co-founded Reddit at 19, Swartz crusaded for a free and open internet. Another potential Oscar candidate, the film poignantly recounts how Swartz ended his own life at age 26 after aggressive prosecutors initiated a federal case against him.

4. True Son

A 22-year-old black man recently graduated from Stanford returns to his bankrupt hometown of Stockton, Calif., to run for city council. Michael Tubbs convinces his neighbors (and the movie’s audiences) you can have “a father in jail and a mother who had you as a teenager, and still have a seat at the table.”

3. The Hand That Feeds

After years of abuse from their bosses, a group of undocumented immigrants working for a New York City bakery unionize for fair wages and better working conditions. Led by a demure sandwich maker, the employees partner with young activists to fight their case against management and the food chain’s well-connected investors.

2. Rich Hill

Three boys confront impoverishment, learning disabilities and dysfunctional families in this human portrait of growing up in small-town America. The backdrop to the teenagers’ lives is their Missouri hometown of 1,396 residents, where one in five lives in poverty and where the fireworks still glow every Fourth of July.
 

1. The Overnighters

Our top film and a favorite for an Academy Award nomination details how an oil boom draws a city-sized influx of workers to a small town in North Dakota, where they scrape by on day labor and live in their cars. With the heft, detail and narrative twists of a Steinbeck novel, Jesse Moss profiles the Lutheran pastor Jay Reinke, who welcomes these desperate men into a shelter called “The Overnighters,” to his congregation’s dismay.
 

Are there any documentaries that should have made the cut? Let us know in the comments below.

What Do Standout Innovative States Have in Common?

Posted on by robbie

Innovation districts have become the norm in cities across the country, but creation of these areas do not always equate to success. Previous research has shown just because a city supports entrepreneurial efforts or is in close proximity to a research university doesn’t mean it will produce more innovation.
But one business school professor is measuring the best indicators of innovation by looking at the effectiveness of research and development (R&D) investment of all public firms in all 50 states using a measure called research quotient (RQ). Washington University business professor Anne Marie Knott’s method measures the effectiveness of a company’s R&D compared to the competition to see what changes affect the bottom line and a company’s market value.
Knott found that California and Minnesota are leading the way when it comes to innovation. California notches a RQ score of 103.5, with the highest number of publicly-traded firms doing R&D (435), while Minnesota earned an above average score of 101.5 and also had a big portion of companies doing R&D (38).
So what makes these states so successful? Both welcome a wide range of industries and no single type of work comprises more than 15 percent of companies in either state. It’s certainly not features, as California’s sunny climate is a far stretch from Minnesota’s freezing temperatures. Both states are also vastly different in culture and each located in very different parts of the United States.
According to Knott, California and Minnesota share one institutional component: how they approach non-compete agreements. Both states restrict the enforcement of a non-compete, thus creating an environment that enables more people to pursue entrepreneurial ventures without having to leave the state.
As research has shown, states that de-emphasize non-competes result in more innovation as employees have more freedom to start new business ventures in the same industry, which creates an innovation cluster around a successful larger innovator. Comparatively, states that enforce non-compete contracts may retain some employees in the long-term, but the entrepreneurs who are going to leave regardless will end up leaving the state, ultimately hurting the overall production of innovation.
So while California and Minnesota’s friendliness may look like it hinders business production, it’s one of the biggest reasons these states are leading the way in entrepreneurship.
MORE: 7 Key Drivers to Turn Social Innovation into Success

The Focus of This Talk Show? America’s Heroes

Posted on by robbie

While most talk shows focus their content on makeovers, celebrity gossip and recipe tips, one special television program in Contra Costa County, Calif., is eschewing these topics and bringing important news to veterans and the families and communities that care about them instead.
Veterans’ Voices, funded by a $25,000 grant from the California Department of Veterans Affairs, airs once a month and provides a forum for discussion about all issues facing veterans. Marine Corps veteran Nathan Johnson and Kevin Graves, regional outreach specialist for the California V.A. serve as the show’s hosts. Graves’s son, Spc. Joseph Graves, was killed in 2006 while serving in Iraq.
Veterans’ Voices tackles topics like coping with post-combat stress, preventing veteran suicide and supporting veterans’ caregivers. “We can have an actual dialogue about these issues that is straight from the veterans,” Johnson tells the San Jose Mercury News.
The show features special guests who are making a difference in vets’ lives, such as former combat medic Jason Deitch, whose project War Ink documents how veterans express the stories of their service through tattoos.
Every episode introduces a veteran to talk about some aspect of his or her experience. “It may be an event that they’ve experienced or a challenge that they’ve overcome, or even just who they are as people, who they are as service members,” Johnson says.
The hosts encourage veterans, military members and civilians to call in or email with their questions for discussion on the show.
Graves stresses, “It takes a complete community to help reintegrate and support our military. By having a show like this where we can bring guests on and make the public more aware of what veterans’ needs are, the intent is that those needs will be met better.”
MORE: This Radio Host Reaches Out to Female Vets

Why Are Goats Snacking on Discarded Christmas Decorations?

Posted on by robbie

What happens to all those Christmas trees once the holiday is over?
When most of us take down our decorations, that once well-loved tree gets deposited at the end of the driveway awaiting pickup by the trash man. Until this year, that is.
That’s because a group in Truckee, Calif., found a way to recycle them: Goats.
Although it sounds a little strange, the Truckee Meadows Fire Prevention District has enlisted these animals to help dispose of the trees to make the district a little safer. Provided by Goat Grazers (a family-owned goat herding business), 40 goats will eat the needles off the trees, leaving only the valuable bark.
“All the trees will be taken to the Truckee Meadows fire station in Washoe Valley, which has a lot more room for all them,” Truckee Meadows Fire Prevention volunteer fireman Vince Thomas explains to the Reno-Gazette Journal. “Then, we’ll toss them over the fence and let the goats have at them.”
Christmas tree pine needs are highly flammable and, when left in landfills or used as mulch in parks or in the forests of California, there’s an increased risk of forest fires. But, with the assistance of the goats, the pine needles are disposed of and then the bark can be mulched and safely used in parks.
J.Merriam is the communications manager for Keep Truckee Meadows Beautiful. Her group also runs a tree-recycling program and notes how important it is to properly dispose of trees.
“A lot of people dump it out on the desert and that’s really a problem because people think it’s a natural thing and it will decompose,” Merriman says. “But because we’re out in the desert, they don’t decompose, it will just get drier and drier and it really becomes a serious fire hazard.”
This isn’t a one-way relationship, though, as the goats receive benefits as well. First, pine needles are a natural de-wormer, which will help with the goats’ digestion. Additionally, needles are packed with vitamin C.
The program began on December 26 and continues through January 11 with multiple drop-off sites in the area.
Maybe Santa should think of trading in his reindeer for some goats?
MORE: 5 Ways Californians Have Changed Their Behavior Because of Drought

For Students Struggling to Learn English, This Border State is Providing Specialized Help

Posted on by robbie

Being a land of immigrants, America is filled with people speaking a variety of languages. Unfortunately, however, children of these new Americans aren’t nearly as proficient in the English language as they need to be. So one state is doing something about it.
California’s initiative to define and identify “long-term English learners” is the first of its kind and comes in the form of a state law and programs by school districts.
The reason for this move? Data from a California study reported that 350,000 students in grades 6 to 12 that have been enrolled in California schools for at least seven years still aren’t fluent English speakers, according to Governing.
Of that group, 90,000 have been identified as long-term learners. To be labeled as such means that the student hasn’t progressed on California’s English proficiency exam for two consecutive years and scores below grade-level on English standardized tests.
According to a 2010 study by the nonprofit Californians Together, there are three main reasons why English language learning students are performing so poorly: (1) schools aren’t effectively monitoring student progress, (2) the curriculum isn’t suitable and (3) teachers need to be re-trained.
Governing reports that California school district LA United has taken a few steps to reverse their current situation: a third of their 600,000 students are still learning English and after five years, about 35,000 still aren’t at grade level. The district has added two new classes to its curriculum aimed at language skills, and it’s revamped its teacher training program. Additionally, since a relationship between teachers, parents and students is required, all three parties are involved in each student’s progress.
“These kids need to be visible,” Shelly Spiegel-Coleman of Californians Together tells Governing. “In many instances, these students are sitting in mainstream classes and are not getting any specialized help.”
Dasha Cifuentes is one such student. Currently enrolled at Fairfax High in Los Angeles, Cifuentes is the daughter of Mexican immigrants, but a native-born American. She has been in California public schools for 11 years, but is still not proficient.
“I should be more confident in English because I was born here, but I’m embarrassed that I haven’t improved myself,” Cifuentes says. “Now, I’m regretting my life not developing myself into a better person, and that hurts me the most,” Cifuentes tells Governing. “I’m more motivated, like a turtle coming out of its shell.”
MORE: This City Gives Dropouts a Realistic Way to Earn Their Diplomas

Why Does This Housing Complex Have Seniors Reaching for a Paintbrush?

Posted on by robbie

For some seniors — especially those who’ve engaged in the arts all their lives — watching TV or playing shuffleboard or bingo simply doesn’t qualify as stimulating entertainment.
That’s why the nonprofit EngAGE is bringing all kinds of high-quality arts activities, from painting to theater, to affordable senior housing complexes in southern California. The group even spurred the creation of several unique arts colonies just for seniors: the Burbank Senior Artists Colony, the NoHo Senior Arts Colony and the Long Beach Senior Arts Colony. These housing complexes ensure that residents’ lives are enriched with arts through such activities as theater groups, a fine arts collective, music programming, an indie film company and an intergenerational arts program that brings in the kids in from the Burbank Unified School District to create art with the seniors.
EnGAGE founder Tim Carpenter worked in the healthcare industry when he teamed up with housing developer John Huskey to build this new type of senior living community. To start, they offered a creative writing class at one housing complex. From there, the reach of their services expanded, touching people who don’t live in the retirement communities, but are attracted to the arts programming that they offer.
“You have this great synergy of the physical amenities with the intellectual ones,” Carpenter tells NEA Arts Magazine. “And so that tends to be powerful within the community itself. It also becomes an attractor to people from the outside community…to have a place where people want to go to learn because it’s a beautiful building and there are interesting people living there.”
Caroline McElroy is an artist “in permanent residence” at the NoHo Senior Arts Colony in North Hollywood. She teaches a weekly collage class that’s scheduled to run 90 minutes, but often ends up lasting for hours as seniors get lost in their creations.
McElroy says that the Colony “is a place of possibilities. My son-in-law goes, ‘So how long do you plan on living here?’ and I said, ‘Honey, they’re going to have to carry me out of here.’”
MORE: These Startups Offer Sleek Technological Innovations for the Elderly

After Enduring Homelessness Herself, This Veteran Helps Other Soldiers Find Opportunity

Posted on by robbie

Looking to take advantage of the educational benefits that the military offered, Anita Pascual joined the National Guard when she was just 19 years old.
Just as she was set to deploy to Iraq, however, she found out she was pregnant, so she left the Guard only to join the Army three years later and serve in Afghanistan.
After active duty, Pascual returned home to her three kids in Fresno, Calif. and hit a bumpy road. “One day I was me, a soldier, and the next day I’m mom again,” she tells Valley Public Radio. “Mom, and sister, and daughter and I had to do all that buckle up and it was just exhausting and overwhelming sometimes.”
Pascual couldn’t pay her bills and soon received an eviction notice. She turned to the nonprofit WestCare Foundation’s housing complex for homeless vets: HomeFront. The organization welcomed her and gave her an apartment to stay in while she got back on her feet; about four years ago, she was able to leave and move into her own home.
Now Pascual works for HomeFront, helping other female vets facing homelessness find jobs, education opportunities and support.
Elle, a veteran that Pascual is helping, appreciates the extra touches HomeFront provides to help homeless service members. “It’s not just a room and that’s it. You have all the capabilities of what can help you to move forward,” Elle says. “It doesn’t make you feel like you’re sitting under a park bench anymore.”
Elle credits Pascual with helping to put her life back in order. “I’m going to get my college benefits, she put me up with a good position with being able to get a job. Seven or eight years of back and forth it took seven weeks just for Anita to help me out.”
MORE: For Female Veterans Experiencing Employment Woes, This Organization Offers Strong Advice

Making the Invisible Wounds of War Visible

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How do you treat an illness that you can’t see?
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 11 percent of soldiers who served in Afghanistan and 20 percent of veterans of the Iraq war come home with PTSD. This ailment, which some refer to as an invisible war wound, has been linked to grave problems, including veteran homelessness and suicide. But now, testing is underway using new technologies that just might enable doctors to see the impact of both PTSD and Traumatic Brain Injury.
In San Diego, the Veterans Research Alliance raised $30,000 to fund a study by the V.A. using the magnetic encephalograph and high-definition fiber tractograph (two devices that allow researchers to view and record electromagnetic waves in the brain), something that has never before been possible.
Gery Schulteis of VA Healthcare Systems tells ABC 10 News, “With a traumatic brain injury, there may be gaps in the neurological connections in the brain. These devices may be able to detect that and in turn help lead to new treatments.”
Steve Lewandowski of Veterans Research Alliance adds, “Before, people were calling this an invisible injury. After this moment, it will no longer be invisible.”
The study is starting small, involving 10 special warfare veterans. Schulteis says, “We’re still going to be a ways away from having a new treatment, but hopefully this will be the gateway to a much larger study.”
With PTSD afflicting 7.7 million American adults, according to the National Institutes of Health, any breakthrough in its treatment would be welcome.
MORE: Meet the Marine Turned Doctor Helping Veterans Overcome PTSD