Every day, you see how cyberbullying hurts students, disrupts classrooms, and impacts your school's culture. So how should you handle it? What are the right things to do and say? What can you do today that will help your students avoid this pitfall of our digital world? We created this free toolkit to help you take on those questions and take an effective stand against cyberbullying. So start here. Use it now. Rely on it to start your year off right. FREE Toolkits for elementary, middle and high school. 

Understanding and Supporting Children Living with Parents with Mental Illness:  Eight Key Lessons for Therapists     

Over 5 million children in the United States have a parent with a serious mental illness.  Although each child's experience is unique, living with a parent with a mental illness can be embarrassing, confusing, lonely, and scary.  Youth growing up with parents dealing with emotional problems are at greater risk of emotional problems themselves due to both genetic factors and harmful psychosocial experiences.

Sadly, these children have received little attention.  British child and adolescent psychiatrist, Alan Cooklin, MD, described the situation as follows:  "Children with a parent with mental illness often fall through the cracks and are seen as nobody's responsibility.  Nothing is explained to them, and they often receive no help at all . . . These children need to be seen and heard" (Cooklin, 2007).  Mental health providers--both those specializing in treating adults and youth--have a tremendous opportunity to SEE and HEAR these children.  Complete article.

New School Year Brings More State Funding Cuts    

States have made steep cuts to education funding since the start of the recession, and in many states those cuts deepened last year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Elementary and high schools are receiving less state funding in 2012-13 than they did last year in 26 states, and in 35 states school funding stands below 2008 levels -- often far below. In many states, the cuts of 2012-13 come on top of severe cuts made in previous years. Some states are restoring school funding, but those restorations are, for the most part, far from sufficient to make up for cuts in past years. Thirty-five states are providing less funding per student than five years ago. Seventeen states have cut per-student funding by more than 10 percent from 2008 levels. Three states -- Arizona, Alabama, and Oklahoma -- have reduced per-pupil funding by more than 20 percent. The cuts have forced districts to lay off teachers and other employees, reduce pay for the education workers who remain, and cancel contracts with suppliers and other businesses. Local districts have eliminated 328,000 jobs nationally since July 2008, federal data show. In addition, education spending cuts have cost an unknown but large number of additional jobs in the private sector as districts have canceled or scaled back private-sector purchases and contracts (for instance, purchasing fewer textbooks).  Read more.

University of Southern Florida 2012 Youth Suicide Prevention School-Based Guide    

The Youth Suicide Prevention School-Based Guide is designed to provide accurate, user-friendly information. The Guide is not a program but a tool that provides a framework for schools to assess their existing or proposed suicide prevention efforts (through a series of checklists) and provides resources and information that school administrators can use to enhance or add to their existing program. First, checklists can be completed to help evaluate the adequacy of the schools' suicide prevention programs. Second, information is offered in a series of issue briefs corresponding to a specific checklist. Each brief offers a rationale for the importance of the specific topic together with a brief overview of the key points. The briefs also offer specific strategies that have proven to work in reducing the incidence of suicide, with references that schools may then explore in greater detail. A resource section with helpful links is also included. The Guide provides information to schools to assist them in the development of a framework to work in partnership with community resources and families.  Download parts or complete guide, free.

This segment of the population has been unlucky-in some cases tragically so. Some special education students are born with severe limitations that affect their ability to learn. Others are not so much disabled at birth as they are ill-served by an education system that generally fails to respond well to individual needs and circumstances.

The landmark Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (formerly the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, dating to 1975) confers on all such children the legal right to a "free and appropriate public education" in the "least restrictive environment," a right to be ensured through an army of advocates, a legion of lawyers, unusual leverage for parents-and a maze of procedures and mandates. . .

The four-year graduation rate for black males has steadily improved over the last decade, but remains dismally low compared to the rate for their white male peers, according to a study released this morning.

In its fifth biennial report on graduation rates for African-American males, the Schott Foundation for Public Education found that in 2009-10, 52 percent of black males graduated from high school with a regular diploma within four years. It's the first time that more than half of the nation's African-American boys did so, according to Schott's report.

But the significance of that progress would seem to be blunted by the comparison to white, non-Hispanic males, whose four-year graduation rate for the same school year was 78 percent. The gap between black and white males has closed by only 3 percentage points over 10 years. The Schott Foundation also included the national graduation rate for Latino males for the first time, which was slightly higher than that for black males at 58 percent.  Full Report: The Urgency of Now.

Stopgap Spending and Highly Qualified Teachers        

courtesy of Education Week 

The biennial Nestlé Very Best in Youth program was created to spotlight the best in youth leadership by identifying and honoring teenagers in the United States whose community service efforts are making a profound difference in the lives of others.  Nestlé seeks to help young people who want to make a difference realize their dreams by donating $1,000 in the name of each winner to the charity of his or her choice. Nestlé also awards the winner a trip to Los Angeles, California, for the Very Best in Youth awards ceremony. More. 

NEA Foundation-Nickelodean Big Help Grant