October 28, 2015
Inside the Ferguson Commission Report
Putting children front and center Recipes
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By Dr. Tiffany Anderson Submitted photo
Jennings Superintendent Dr. Tiffany Anderson helps children cross the street on the first day of classes this year.
Supporting education and ending childhood poverty seen as key in building a better future By Sara Hardin Editor’s Note: This is the fourth in a four-part series looking deeper into the Ferguson Commission Report and how area leaders are responding to these challenges. This section will focus on children and education. The Ferguson Commission Report addresses the issues surrounding education and child hunger under its section titled “Youth at the Center.” Here, the Commission proposes calls to action in the areas of education infrastructure reform, including the importance of “Investing in Early Childhood Education,” “Supporting Education Innovation,” and “Fixing School Accreditation.” The report suggests implementing a school accreditation system which addresses racial, health and income equity issues, as well as creating an innovative education hub which places focus on employing school leaders who have training in cultural competency and anti-bias. An extraordinary example of measures that are presently being put in place to face these various issues is Jennings School District under Superintendent Dr. Tiffany Anderson, who has tackled the district’s issues due to generational poverty head-on. Jennings currently hosts a food pantry which provides 8,000 pounds of food each month. Each school in the district has washers and dryers, which are made available to parents in exchange for their time volunteering in the schools. The Commission Report, under its section discussing school accreditation reform, outlines the issues surrounding the 1993 Missouri law which allows students in unaccredited districts to
transfer to an accredited district, while requiring the unaccredited school district to foot the cost for the transferring students’ tuition and transportation. School districts such as Riverview Gardens and Normandy School District, once they had become unaccredited in 2006 and 2013, respectively, were left to pay more than $9 million to educate students who had transferred to other school districts. As the report states, “while these accreditation and transfer laws add considerable strain to both the districts that lose accreditation and the districts who receive transferring students, they fail to fix the schools that have lost accreditation or to address the core issues that led to losing accreditation. They simply send motivated students, and money, away.” Anderson, who began her time as Jennings’ Superintendent around the same time the district was close to becoming unaccredited in 2012, talks about the challenge of educating students who come into the schools behind while also maintaining the accreditation standards. Her focus, and therefore the focus of the district, lies in the success of meeting the standards within each student by keeping the goals and expectations for success high. “We really have to look at how to teach students at a higher level who come into our schools behind, standing in a ditch while other people have a running start. While changing standards and testing instruments is a challenge, because it’s just another thing that you have to become familiar with, the constant for us
Community News’ four-part coverage of the Ferguson Commission Report Opportunity to Thrive Racial Equity Justice for All
Youth at the Center is focusing on our student standards and we don’t veer from that.” For those in poverty, Anderson explains that much of the challenge lies in a lack of exposure. By providing free lunch and organizing community programs such as Jennings’ monthly food drive, the district combats the issues that poverty creates by doing what it can as a district, before the suggestions of the report start to take their form. See FRONT AND CENTER page 2
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