Budget Blogging

President Obama released his budget for the 2010 fiscal year. The document is a kind of roadmap for the President’s initiatives over the next several years, but he’s left lots of room to Congress to fill in details.

Anyway, I thought I’d put up some topics of potential interest to our readers:

• Early Childhood – The President will build on the investments made in the stimulus bill (e.g. doubling Early Head Start slots), as well as expand early childhood eduation by encouraging state and local investment, promote coordination among state, local, and federal partners, and improve information about program options and quality. Additionally, the budget proposes to create the Nurse Home Visitation program to “provide home visits by trained nurses to first-time low-income mothers” and expectant mothers. This program is based on the evidence-based Nurse Family Partnership model, of which Oklahoma’s Children First is a part. the Read more here.
• Quality Jobs – The Labor Department budget supports transitional jobs and career pathway programs that help low-income Americans attain quality jobs that pay a living wage and offer opportunities for advancement. New workforce programs will continue to focus on “green jobs” that prepare workers for jobs in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
• Savings and Economic Stability – Building on the work of behavioral economists that demonstrates automatic enrollment in 401(k) programs dramatically boosts participation, the President seeks to create a system in which every employer would automatically enroll every worker into a retirement or pension program. If the employer didn’t offer such a plan themselves, the money would be deposited into an IRA account instead. Such programs have been shown to boost participation rates to as high as 90%. See this article in Harvard Magazine for more on automatic enrollment and behavioral economics. The budget also boosts the Saver’s Credit by providing a 50% match on the first $1,000 of savings for families earning less than $65,000.
• Promise Neighborhoods – The President includes his campaign commitment to supporting “Promise Neighborhoods,” which would be modeled after Harlem Children’s Zone and seek to improve “life outcomes in high-poverty areas” through intensive services and innovative educational strategies.
• Social Innovation – Finally, in a move sure designed to forever win the hears of people like Diama, the President proposes a Social Innovation Fund, which would support new approaches to major challenges and leverage private and philanthropic funding. The Stanford Social Innovation Review recently published an article suggesting four federal policies to promote social innovation and entrepreneurship.

Did you see anything else of interest to you?

Obviously all these well-laid plans must still ultimately be funded by Congress, so keep watching.

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Image used under a Creative Commons license from flickr user Ma1974.

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I like school better with Grandmas and Grandpas – Liam

This month’s Edutopia magazine featured none other than our very own Jenks.  With a title of “Senior Citizens Help Young Children with Reading – and Relationships” I was pretty sure where the article was going, but was I in for a surprise…

In 1998, Don Greiner started construction of a nursing home in Jenks next door to a district-owned daycare with rundown playground equipment. Mr. Greiner contacted the district about building a playground at the nursing home if children could come and play for residents to watch.  From there a great collaboration was born and a playground became much more. Today Grace Living Center in Jenks is part nursing home, part school: permanent home to two classrooms of roughly 60 prekindergarten and kindergarten students and 170 “grandmas” and “grandpas.” 

GLC residents wait for children to arrive in the morning and interact with children throughout the day as they are able. Teachers follow the district curriculum while finding unique ways to rely on the help and knowledge of the resident elders. Children and the elders do hands-on activities and dramatic play together.  The article sites several examples, including their “book buddies” partnership which pairs rotating groups of residents and kindergartners to read to each other 30 minutes several times a week.  Since 2004, Jenks has tracked the number of entering first graders whose reading skills are below grade level. Ten percent fewer GLC students have required reading intervention in the first grade than their peers at the local elementary school.  

With a waiting list of children, low staff turnover for nursing home staff, and high satisfaction cited by the elder residents and teachers – the program has drawn attention from around the country in support of intergenerational programs. The article has some great anecdotes and an audio slide show of pictures.    

For additional information and more great stories on this also check out a 2002 American Profile Article: School of a Lifetime. Favorite quote:  while explaining how snails move around by making a wet trail with their tongues, Ellen Pongrace, a kindergarten teacher asked her students how the snails get around if they don’t have arms or legs. Expecting the children to talk about scooting or wiggling on their bellies, young Christopher has another idea “They could get around on wheels like the grandmas and grandpas.”

Also see a 2002 CNN Live Today transcript of an interview with Don Greiner.

Besides the great stories woven throughout the articles and the program itself, I really liked the idea that a conversation about playground equipment could generate a completely new and innovative school set up. It would be great to learn more about what that process looked like – or examples of other collaborations taking similar paths. Anyone?

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Image used under a Creative Commons license from flickr user I, Timmy’s photostream.

 

 

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The Power of Germ-x

Researching the consequences of elementary school absenteeism (or, if you’re an optimist, the benefits of attendance). Came across a study that found that the availability of an  “alcohol gel hand sanitizer” (i.e. Germ-x) in elementary classrooms reduced child absences school wide by 20% and teacher absences by 10%. Specifically, teachers and students used the product every time they entered and left the classroom.

Maybe we should re-think that theory of change.

 

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Your Congress is Busy

Doing some research into the workforce development provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka stimulus package), and I’m looking for the bill’s “joint explanatory statement.” It has proved elusive thus far.

Anyway, while searching around on the Senate website I discovered that the pressing topic of this afternoon is:

2:00 p.m.: Convene and proceed to the reading of Washington’s Farewell Address.

Thereafter, resume consideration of the motion to proceed to consider S.160, the D.C. voting rights bill.

So we’re going to engage in some Revolutionary-era reenactment and then see if we can continue to deny Congressional representation to the nation’s capital.

Congress must hate Mondays as much as the rest of us.

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Image used under a Creative Commons license from Flickr user John-pa.

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Did you know?

Tulsa has more parking lots – statistically – than any other city that the planning firm Fregonese Associates has ever worked with. The company is facilitating the PLANiTULSA comprehensive planning initiative.

Speaking of which, you’re running out of opportunities to participate in PLANiTULSA if you haven’t already. The small area workshops are a chance to really define what you want that neighborhood to look like in the next 30 years – from the size of the parks to the types of housing and more. Just three remain:

• Forest Orchard / Hillcrest – February 18 (tonight), 6-9pm at First Evangelical Lutheran Church. 1244 S Utica Ave. Register online here.
• University of Tulsa / Kendall-Whittier – February 23, 6-9pm at Kendall-Whittier Elementary School. 2601 E 5th Pl. Register here.
• Southcrest Hospital area (91st & Mingo) – February 23, 6-9pm at Union Public Schools Educational Service Center. 8506 E. 61st St. Register here.

If you’re tired of hopping in your car every morning and hitting the BA, there’s also a city-wide transportation planning workshop February 24 from 6-9pm at the Centennial Park community center. 1028 E 6th St. Register here. If you know anyone who rides the bus in Tulsa, PLEASE encourage them to attend. There’s never enough transit users at these events.

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Thoughts on Residential Mobility

The Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored a webinar today called “Implications of Family Mobility for Place-based Work.” The event is part of a series titled Strengthening Families through Community Change, whose intent is to share lessons-learned from their Making Connections program. That program seeks to improve prospects for children by strengthening families and transforming communities through place-based strategies. Members include Denver, Des Moines, Indianapolis, Louisville, San Antonio, and Seattle.

We’ve been worried about mobility lately at CAP, because we think it mitigates some of the benefits of our early childhood program and makes it more difficult to build successful long-term relationships with our families. So I wanted to hear about how the Making Connections sites are responding to mobility in their communities. The fear, as expressed by a fellow listener, is that we are “wasting” our investments in a community when families remain highly mobile. (A moderator responded that that sentiment is a bit like saying we’re wasting our investments in elementary school because kids move into high school, as if the investments don’t benefit the people we serve.)

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Food Stamps Enrollees Approach Record Numbers

A few days ago I mentioned that Oklahoma was holding somewhat steady in the face of the economic downturn, with several indicators worsening but not horrible. I meant to write that it felt like being in the calm before the storm, to make it clear that I wasn’t arguing that Oklahoma would escape the recession.

So just to further reinforce the point:

The highest number of people receiving food stamps in one month came in December 2005 with 443,045 people. Last month, 442,299 Oklahomans were given food stamps.

“That is the second-highest total in history,” Johnson said. “They are approaching the record. If things continue in the economy the way they are going, more than likely, that record will be broken.” (Tulsa World)

So food stamps receipt is about to break records (although this isn’t adjusted for population growth). The economic challenges are real, even in Tulsa.

The article, published Sunday, is about a Tulsa woman who lost her job just as she was beginning to get her financial affairs in order, including taking advantage of CAP’s financial services offerings.

At Tulsa Initiative, we’ve been thinking about ways we can help move families into economic self-sufficiency, even through the financial crises people face along the way. The challenge for all of us in the social service sector in Tulsa is how to keep making progress through these difficult times.

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Stimulus on the Radio

If you’re like us and you’re a huge David Blatt fan* (and who isn’t?), you can catch him on the Studio Tulsa replay tonight at 7:30pm on Tulsa’s NPR affiliate, KWGS 89.5.  David will be talking up OK Policy Institute and what Oklahoma can expect to get from the stimulus package. So if you’re sitting in your rocker tonight at 7:30 and just can’t find anything on the radio, tune in! (They should have the show archived on their website in the next day or two.)

P.S.: By the way, alerting us to this appearance would have been a great use for OPI’s new twitter.

P.P.S.: Did you know that David Blatt is not only a pretty great policy analyst, but he also coaches the Russian national basketball team, too?

*Consider this post Blatt bait.

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The 20K House

Image used under a Creative Commons license from flickr user Public Design Center.

Physical poverty is not an abstraction, but we almost never think of impoverishment as evidence of a world that exists. Much less do we imagine that it’s a condition from which we may draw enlightenment in a very practical way.

A good friend of mine called me yesterday to tell me about the $20K houses being built in Hale County, Alabama, one of the poorest rural communities in the country. She had just read an article about it in Metropolitan Home and wanted to share it with me. (As a side note – this is what I love about being associated with the Tulsa Initiative – I’ve had a lot of friends start sharing their ideas, inspiration, articles, and creative approaches to solving poverty. It’s awesome.)

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Our success stories

It’s really easy these days to get caught up in the bad news. Seems like every time I refresh my multiple news sources, there’s some new catastrophic news event – more economic disasters, planes crashing losing many beloveds, unstable government, etc. You know the drill.

When I was little, my grandpa told me about an experiment that was conducted in the eighties called the good news channel or good news report. My six year old memory is failing me. No, it wasn’t evangelization either. Regardless, the report or channel only reported good news. It was a dismal failure. I guess we can deduce that we are compelled to consider bad news, newsworthy? I’ve often thought about this throughout my life and am always struck as to why we focus so much on the bad news or what we’re not doing right.

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