SchoolHouse: Equity in Education

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This week: CJSF’s Allison R. Brown speaks with Eric Mann, Director of the Labor Community Strategy Center in L.A., and Ashley Franklin, the center’s Community Rights Organizer, about the 1033 program and divest-invest strategies used in L.A. and across the U.S.

About the SchoolHouse: Equity in Education podcast:

SchoolHouse is a podcast created by the Communities for Just Schools Fund and hosted by Allison R. Brown. SchoolHouse shares stories about how young people, their families and communities, and other advocates and activists are working in and around schools to make them healthy, safe, and equitable places for children to be. In SchoolHouse, we will learn together about the global implications of local movements for change in our schools.

About CJSF:

The Communities for Just Schools Fund (CJSF) is a nationally-focused donor collaborative. CJSF provides resources in support of community-led organizations that are working to ensure positive and supportive school climates that affirm and foster the success of all students. CJSF’s community partners organize young people, parents and caregivers, educators, and other community members to advocate on behalf of students who are disproportionately impacted by the over-use of exclusionary school discipline practices, including suspensions, expulsions, and arrests in schools. They organize community members to stand up for positive, healthy, and supportive school climates that produce better academic and social outcomes for the students who enroll than school climates with a heavy police presence, zero tolerance school discipline policies, and over-reliance on exclusionary discipline methods. CJSF’s community partners educate students, parents and caregivers, school officials and teachers, police departments, and community leaders on highly beneficial alternatives to suspension, expulsion, and school-based arrests. For more information, email us at info@cjsfund.org and sign up for our newsletter at www.cjsfund.org.

About Labor Community Strategy Center:

Our work began in the early 1980s keeping the GM Van Nuys auto plant open for 10 years. We then moved in 1990 to Wilmington where we initiated a "clean up the refineries campaign." For the past 12 years, our work has focused on building and expanding the Bus Riders Union-the largest mass transportation membership organization in the United States. The work is built through a 12 person Planning Committee, 200 grassroots leaders, 3,000 dues paying members, 30,000 on-the-bus supporters, and hundreds of thousands of BRU supporters in L.A. County and California. Through the Center's organizing work and litigation we have won over the past 12 years: the retirement of 2,000 dilapidated diesel buses, the purchase of 2500 clean fuel CNG buses, and the creation of upwards of 1,000 green jobs through the hiring of bus drivers, mechanics, and maintenance people-$2.7 billion in funds for public transit. For more information contact: http://www.thestrategycenter.org/