DC schools with more low-income, academically troubled students should get more money, panel recommends (DC Schools Insider): “The 15-member [Public Education Finance Reform Commission] panel concluded its work last week with a series of recommendations to the Gray administration [including]: add an additional “weight” to the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula so that schools receive more money for serving larger numbers of students who are both from low-income households.” The panel also recommended a year-long study on the real costs of “adequate” public education in DC to inform further funding revisions. The commission did not study the “appropriate role for the District in funding and/or finding buildings for charter schools,” although that was a key topic of conversation.

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Enjoy the long weekend, Greater Washington! Some great events are right around the corner …

CIVILIZATION (all you can eat) at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (641 D Street NW)

Six hungry city-dwellers scramble for sustenance in this provocative vaudeville of American enterprise and ingenuity, featuring an award-winning DC cast. Performance on Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 7 PM; nab your tickets here.

“Pre-Mardi Gras” Celebration at Downtown Cluster’s Geriatric Day Care Center (at Xi Omega Center, 4411 14th Street NW)

Line dancing, hand dancing, music by DJ- Mr. “C,” plus a light meal on Friday at 7PM. Proceeds to help provide therapeutic care and supportive services to at-risk older persons so that they remain in the community. Call (202) 347-7527 to purchase your tickets.

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Objections to Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (WAMU: Diane Rehm Show): “The widely praised Violence Against Women Act faces a tough reauthorization battle. Though introduced in a bipartisan way, it passed the Senate Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote with all the Democrats voting to move it to the full Senate and all the Republicans voting against.” Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women, explains that the bill “as passed out of the Senate committee, recognizes the LGBT community [and] immigrant women who are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse;” but the bill does not include a “mandate for holding batterers accountable” or a reparations provision. 17 CFP nonprofits, including the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence, focus particularly on girls and women and women; learn more right here.

President Obama’s Budget Request for the NEA: The Fine Print (Americans for the Arts blog): “We learned early that morning that President Obama is proposing an increase of $8 million (from $146M to $154M) for the NEA, which was a very positive start. In the past two years, NEA funding has dropped almost $22M and has yet to recover from the enormous cuts from its high of $176M in 1992. In particular, the budget of the Our Town program, which rewarded over half of its grants to communities of less than 200,000 in 2011, would increase from $5 million to $10 million. Two months ago, the NEA also announced Operation Homecoming, a partnership with the Department of Defense that will host “a new series of writing workshops for returning troops at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.”

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From “Designing a Fix for Housing” in the NY Times Opinion Pages:

Recent efforts to fix the housing market — including Thursday’s $26 billion settlement with five of the nation’s biggest banks — have focused purely on the financial aspects of the slump. A permanent solution, however, must go further than money to address issues that have been at the core of the crisis but have been wholly ignored: design and urban planning.

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Why Kids Drop Out: Identifying The Early Warning Signs (WAMU): “New graduation numbers to be released this month are expected to show that just more than half of public school students in the District actually graduate high school in four years. Students don’t drop out of school for any one reason. It’s usually a complicated mix, including individual traits, home life as well as school and neighborhood characteristics. But many researchers believe children exhibit clear warning signs early on that can help identify those at risk of dropping out. This report focuses on Turner Elementary School in Southeast, whose graduates attend a middle and high school “where approximately 20 percent of students can read and do math at grade level.” Attendance is the most critical challenge, as nearly 20 percent of DCPS students “had more than two weeks of unexcused absences last year.” To learn more about CFP education enrichment nonprofits, head this way.

Study: Child Abuse Affects More US Kids than SIDS (TIME): “When it comes to child abuse, the first year of life is the most dangerous for children. Although SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, attracts far more attention, the rate of hospital admissions related to SIDS is actually lower than the rate of child abuse — 50 per 100,000 children under age 1 for SIDS, compared with 58.2 per 100,000 births. [...] Researchers at Yale University found that abuse landed 4,569 children under 18 in the hospital in 2006; 300 of them died.” Locally, SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) of Northern Virginia and Alternative House are working for safe, permanent homes for children in need.

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Welcome to February, Greater Washington! Here are some great destinations for the weekend …

Arlingtonians Meeting Emergency Needs (N 16th Street and Sycamore Street off Roosevelt Street, Falls Church)

Join a 3-month training program to prepare for the Parkway Classic Ten Miler and 5K on April 22, 2012 — new and experienced runners are all welcome! This Saturday at 9:00 AM marks the first of the training runs. Learn more on the AMEN page.

L’Arche Greater Washington, DC (Call (202) 232-4539 for event location)
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Last week, we linked to this Chronicle of Philanthropy piece, which reported that the nonprofit sector “added jobs at an average annual rate of more than 2 percent from 2000 to 2010, while for-profit jobs were cut by 0.6 percent each year on average.” Drawn from a study by the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, these findings invite the question: if nonprofit organizations are indeed the third largest private employer in the country, should more job training programs prepare employees to work at them? More broadly, why do nature and arts and human services nonprofits not play a larger role in the national employment discussion?

In “Putting Americans to Work,” published on the Huffington Post yesterday, Kennedy Center president Michael Kaiser tackles a similar topic:

But at a time when unemployment is the key political issue and when virtually everyone in politics is struggling to find ways to reduce the ranks of the unemployed, why doesn’t some smart politician realize that the arts are one way to help solve this problem?

Who better to train young people to think creatively, to exercise their own unique ways of thinking than we in the arts? The success of arts organizations and artists depends on the ability of people to be creative and make something new.
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Maryland’s ‘achievement gap’ highlighted by new advocacy group (Washington Post): “Maryland has the second largest disparity in the country between low-income students and their wealthier classmates on the 8th grade math test [and] the fourth largest socio-economic disparity in the country on the corresponding 8th grade English test,” MarylandCAN reports in their “State of Maryland Public Education.” Says MarylandCAN executive director Curtis Valentine, “We have a lot to be proud of in Maryland when it comes to educating our kids … but we struggle to serve all Maryland students.”
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Tackling Alzheimer’s Disease (WAMU: The Diane Rehm Show): “We all understand that Alzheimer’s disease is a major challenge for the country and for patients and their families, and, until now, we have not had a unified national effort to address this challenge. So a year ago, the president signed the National Alzheimer’s Project Act into law, and through his commitment, this law requires our Department of Health and Human Services to establish the first-ever national Alzheimer’s plan,” said Howard Koh, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. The IONA Senior Services (a CFP nonprofit) Director of Consultation, Care Management, and Counseling Deborah Rubenstein was a guest on the show, which you can listen to right here.
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14 percent of VA children live in poverty (WTOP): “The percentage of Virginia children living in poverty in 2010 was at its highest rate since 1998, an anti-poverty group reported Tuesday. The total number of children living in poverty totals nearly 265,000, or 14 percent of children under 18 in the state, Voices for Virginia’s Children said in a report to be presented to the General Assembly. While well below the US rate, the number in Virginia has increased steadily since the start of the economic downturn in 2007, when it was 12.9 percent, according to the report. In raw numbers, an additional 33,000 children are living in poverty.” You can learn more about CFP’s Children, Youth, and Families non-profits right here, twelve of which are based in Virginia.

In Maryland, a prescription for better health care (Washington Post Local): “Maryland is near the top of the national rankings in median household income, but the state’s great wealth does not equal good health for everyone. Instead, the state has troubling clusters of chronic disease, low-birth-weight babies and limited access to health care for those who lack the means to pay. Areas with large minority populations, including Prince George’s County, are especially hard-hit.” A new proposal, unveiled by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, “urges lawmakers to create health-care zones, which would mimic economic-enterprise zones” and state and local governments offer tax incentives for medical professionals who establish practices in underserved areas. It also would monetary awards for communities or nonprofits that find innovative ways to improve the overall health of a community.
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