August 2016

John Deasy, the controversial former superintendent who led the Los Angeles Unified School District for three-and-a-half turbulent years, is embarking on a new venture that could prove just as challenging: keeping juvenile offenders from returning to jail. Deasy wants to do that by opening alternative juvenile prisons in Los Angeles and Alameda counties that could include activities such as yoga, meditation, art, counseling, athletics and education. His goal is to reduce recidivism by 50%.

The computer Shyama Rose got for her 14th birthday was a boxy Macintosh Quadra 650. The year was 1994. People didn’t email; there was no Facebook; the founders of Google hadn’t even met. And news of the emerging World Wide Web hadn’t yet made its way inside the gates of Barsana Dham, the religious compound in Austin, Texas, where she lived. The compound sat on a spectacular stretch of lush property and featured a castle-like temple adorned with gold-leaf-covered pillars, marble floors,...

When I was twelve, I was coming home from swimming at my neighbor’s dock when I saw an ambulance’s flashing lights in our driveway. I still remember the asphalt burning my feet as I stood, paralyzed, and watched the paramedics take away my father. It was as if I knew those flashing lights were a harbinger that my childhood was over. At the hospital, a surgeon performed “minor” elective bowel surgery on my young dad. The surgeon made an error, and instead of my father coming home to the...

Children growing up during the Great Recession are believed to have faced a statistically significant uptick in their odds of developing mental or emotional health difficulties, according to a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research that indicates kids are hardly immune to economic downturns. Researchers found that children's mental health status "declines as economic conditions deteriorate, and this result is pervasive across nearly every subgroup we examine, including...

After being discharged from detox, Rory Gallegos had nowhere to go. So he made the street his home. A year later, he thought he had found a home when the Hillview Mental Health Center in Pacoima offered him an apartment with onsite mental health services. But to qualify for a voucher to pay for the room, Gallegos first had to prove that he was chronically homeless. He couldn’t produce the necessary documents. For another year, he languished in a bureaucratic holding pattern, living in a...

Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope — the second documentary about ACEs science by director/producer James Redford and producer Karen Pritzker — is now available to order for single-screening rentals through TUGG.com. Screenings can be scheduled on or after August 22, 2016. The cost is $175 for K-12 schools and public libraries, and $225 for universities, nonprofits and government organizations. You can order online here: http://licenses.tugg.com/products/resilience A...

U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) (above) delivered a strong and passionate call to address childhood adversity to reap a “huge payback” in combating addiction, family violence, and poor education -- the “challenges that confront American families.” [For a video of the briefing, click here . It begins at 17:13 minutes with the first presentation by Andrea Blanch. The sound improves at 23:11 minutes when Sen. Heitkamp's remarks begin.] The July 14th event was the second of three...

Native women in the U.S. are killed by police at a very high rate, at least according to this story [ LINK HERE ]. A young, petite Native woman is killed by a police officer for suspected shoplifting. The alleged weapon she is said to be carrying is a pair of medical scissors. I can't see them in the photo. There are two cops present, and as you can see, the one in the picture is big guy. The story references a story about another Native woman victim [ LINK HERE ]. A young pregnant tribal...

The Bitterroot Cares for Kids Network is presenting “ACES in the Bitterroot,’’ a day-long conference on identifying, preventing and alleviating the consequences of childhood abuse and neglect. Todd Garrison, director of the ChildWise Institute, will be the guest speaker at the Aug. 17 event, which also will feature the film “Paper Tiger.’’ The focus will be on the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which has identified childhood trauma as a major public health issue. According to the...

Kids love the unstructured days of summer, but parents need to be sure children get moving during their summer holidays, a physical education expert says. "I always encourage students to keep active in the summer," Martin Wurmlinger, a physical education teacher at a Los Angeles middle school, said in a news release from the University of California, Los Angeles. "I stress just getting out and finding an activity that keeps them moving and raises heart rate levels," said Wurmlinger. He's...

[Photo by Thomas Hawk ] America is afraid. There is fear of daily new terror attacks here or abroad. There is growing fear of rampant domestic gun violence. Fear that this person or that is ruining the country. It is fear aimed outward: witness the pervasive discourse of threat at the recent Republican National Convention. It is fear aimed inward: witness our 2.2 million people behind bars, a highly disproportionate number of whom are people of color . If our country were a person, we would...

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down key portions of North Carolina’s strict 2013 voting law on Friday, delivering a stern rebuke to the state’s Republican General Assembly and Governor Pat McCrory. The three-judge panel in Richmond, Virginia, unanimously concluded that the law was racially discriminatory, and it blocked a requirement that voters show photo identification to vote and restored same-day voter registration, a week of early voting, pre-registration for teenagers, and...