TEXAS AFT LEGISLATIVE HOTLINE--THURSDAY, JULY 16, 2009
(copyright 2009 Texas AFT)
 
* New Look at an Old Idea:  Community Schools
* Blue/Green Alliance:  AFT Signs Up
 
Community Schools:  AFT President Randi Weingarten, AFT members, and their community partners got together this week at the AFT professional-issues conference to take a new look at an old idea that began with Chicago's settlement houses in the 1890s and evolved into public schools serving as hubs for a variety of social services. Such community schools reflect a vision of schools as the center of a web of social services aiding students, their families, and neighborhoods.

The discussion at the AFT conference pointed to some common characteristics of these schools, including conscious buy-in by civic and school officials, union leaders, and community partners and a commitment to measure results of their collaboration on children's learning and well-being. Participants cited instance after instance of the impact this model can have when you have that buy-in. At one community school, a job fair produced jobs for half the parents who attended. At another, a mobile health-services unit provides basic health care, saving parents trips to the doctor that can cost them a day's work.  At yet another school, mothers receive everything from mammograms to English-language instruction, with child care provided while they're in class.

Several AFT members stressed the necessity of having a facilitator at the school to coordinate services. For details on what works in community schools and what AFT members are doing to bring this model to their districts, see the AFT leadership brief on community schools at http://www.aft.org/quest2009/downloads/CommunitySchoolsBrief.pdf and the summer 2009 issue of American Educator at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer2009/index.htm.

Blue Green Alliance:  The Blue Green Alliance announced on July 16 that AFT has joined the fast-growing labor-environmental partnership. With the addition of AFT's 1.4 million members, the Blue Green Alliance (http://www.bluegreenalliance.org) unites eight million people in pursuit of good jobs, a clean environment, and a green economy.

"The American Federation of Teachers is committed to protecting the health of children and protecting the environment for the next generation of Americans," says AFT President Randi Weingarten. "Along with promoting green, sustainable schools, we are thrilled to ally with organizations like the Blue Green Alliance that are working to advance priorities such as public employee collective bargaining and the Employee Free Choice Act." With the Blue Green Alliance, AFT is working to advocate policies that will green America's public schools--making buildings more energy-efficient and improving the health of America's public school students.