ELL News Headlines

On the ground floor of a 23-story apartment building in Uptown, Carol Dunbar and Tammie Dennis make sure 30 sets of little hands are washed. The meals served at the summer program inside the apartment building come from the Greater Chicago Food Depository, a 40-year-old food bank that’s partnering with more than 150 local organizations this summer to distribute lunches to children who rely on free or reduced lunch during the school year. 

The Excellence Project was developed by the after-school provider New York Edge. With a recent $3 million federal grant, the nonprofit will soon expand into six more schools, hoping to become a model for bringing gifted programming to students who are underrepresented in the city’s own starkly segregated gifted classrooms.

People across the country are searching for ways to support many of America’s children and young adults, who say they’re facing stress, anxiety, and depression. Remote school, shuttered activities, and family job losses during the pandemic often changed their lives – and their sense of well-being. 

HarperCollins Children’s Books has announced the launch of Allida, a new imprint at Clarion Books led by author Linda Sue Park and Anne Hoppe, v-p and editorial director at Clarion. Launching in early 2023, Allida—named for the Korean word that means to inform, announce, or make known—will publish books for children and teens. Created by Korean American type designer Lynne Yun, the Allida logo is inspired by the tradition of Asian seals, sometimes called chop marks, used to authenticate authorship on documents and artwork. “I want Allida to be creator-centered, because I feel strongly that when artists are supported in making work from their deepest passions, kids get better books,” said Park in a statement. “Stories and voices that come from outside the dominant culture are essential for giving young readers a richer understanding of our shared and complex world. With Allida, we have the exhilarating opportunity to build on the hard-won inclusion work of past visionaries by freeing artists from any content expectations other than good writing and great stories.”

Congress passed a bill Friday that aims to keep up the expanded, pandemic-era distribution of free meals for all students this summer. Final passage of the Keep Kids Fed Act in the U.S. House came less than a week before rule changes for child nutrition programs were set to expire June 30.

The federal Head Start program has contributed to multi-generational positive outcomes, including increases in education attainment and wages and decreases in teen pregnancy and criminal involvement, according to a recent study. The 122-page study said it is the first large-scale examination of the intergenerational effects of the 57-year-old Head Start program, created to improve the school readiness of preschool children from low-income families. 

The University of Arizona announced Monday that Native American students no longer would have to pay tuition or fees at its main campus in Tucson. The university hopes the new program better serves the state's large Native population. The program, a first of its kind in an Arizona public university, will be available for students registered to any of the state's 22 federally recognized tribes. More than 400 current students will be eligible at the school's main campus in Tucson, where tuition currently is $12,700 per semester.

It took Maggie Przytulinski seven years to get her younger brother, Mark, the help he needed in school. Przytulinski said Mark, who has autism, Down syndrome, and is non-verbal, had an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, a legally binding document that outlines the services for students with disabilities. It requires multiple meetings every year and a significant amount of legal paperwork.  Adding to the complexity? Przytulinski’s Polish-speaking mother knows only basic English.  Przytulinski, who speaks both English and Polish, said she often found herself taking on the role of translator in the IEP process. That should no longer be the case, thanks to a legal settlement reached earlier this month between Chicago Public Schools and a group of families, including Przytulinski’s. It will guarantee language interpretation services to the families of students with disabilities. The Illinois State Board of Education reached a similar settlement late last year. 

The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program has allowed hundreds of thousands of eligible young people whose immigrant parents brought them to the United States to get benefits such as a Social Security card, driver’s license and two-year work permit. It also opened the door for many to go to college. Still, DACA’s impact has always been tempered by uncertainty.

During the summer, Larry Ferlazzo is sharing thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past 11 years. You can see all those collections from the first 10 years here. Today’s theme is Schools and the Coronavirus Crisis.