TALAS E-newsletter – July 15

“We are extremely proud of all of our mariachi programs in SISD,” said SISD Fine Arts director Armando Martinez. “During these unprecedented times, having three mariachi programs qualify for state is just a reflection of the amazing teachers and students we have in SISD, and we could not be any prouder.”

Immunize El Paso is expanding immunization opportunities and clinic hours to help families get their students vaccinated before the upcoming school year.

The non-profit offers a Wednesday evening clinic at its San Juan Clinic and is open Saturdays at its eastside & central location.

The federal government is sending more money to Texas schools. Here locally, school districts are hoping to use it to help students who fell behind during the pandemic.

“The gaps that really already existed have just widened,” said Janis Jordan, the Deputy Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction for Northside ISD.

Mentioning temp jobs can either impress recruiters or make them think you are a job-hopper. The first scenario is the best. Follow our guide and get the most out of your short-term experience in your resume.

Temporary work means that an employee is hired for a limited time. It can be several days, weeks, months. Everything depends on the employer’s needs.

Many stereotypes surround this type of employment. Some people think that it mainly works for students or unskilled personnel. However, companies may temporarily hire lawyers, IT specialists, crisis managers, project managers, business consultants, copywriters, designers, etc. Temporary work can be challenging, creative, and lucrative, and professionals with diverse backgrounds can use it as a career opportunity.

A coalition of 19 advocacy groups are urging school administrators to ban the use of “eproctoring” apps over concerns that the systems are invasive and can be harmful for students. 

Software that uses AI-powered systems to monitor students as they take tests, often through required webcam recordings and facial recognition technology, is known as eproctoring. 

As district and state education agencies plan to obligate and spend nearly $200 billion in COVID-19 relief funding, the Department of Education should consider including obligations data in its annual report on education local and state education spending, the GAO said. That change, the organization suggests, could better reflect the anticipated gaps between when a district commits to using the funds and when they are actually recorded as spent.

“The [Department of Education] agreed with this recommendation and plans to collaborate with states to develop reporting processes that provide greater clarity on state and school district spending,” the GAO letter said.

The data on the foundational literacy skills of the class of 2032—the children who were in kindergarten during the shutdown and 1st graders during this bumpy and inequitable 2020-21 school year—are terrifying. According to one commonly used reading assessment, the DIBELS benchmark measures, the percentage of students falling into the “well-below benchmark” category that predicts future reading failure grew from 26 percent in December 2019 to 43 percent in December 2020. All demographic subgroups were affected, but Black and Hispanic students were particularly impacted. There is no precedent for this kind of decline in the last 20 years of using these reading measures.

The main federal program supporting students from low-income backgrounds would increase by more than 100 percent, and overall funding for K-12 schools would increase by more than 60 percent, under an spending bill for the upcoming fiscal year proposed by House lawmakers.

The fiscal 2022 spending legislation for the U.S. Department of Education, released Sunday by a House appropriations subcommittee, is a dramatic departure from past spending bills that typically provided incremental increases for education programs. It shows that House Democrats endorse the President Joe Biden’s call for a huge influx of new federal money for schools to help them address the affects of the coronavirus pandemic. But the proposal still has far to go before reaching Biden’s desk.

Ensuring success for students at California’s community colleges must be at the heart of racial justice efforts in higher education. Our state’s community colleges enroll the majority of Black and Latinx students in California higher education. But enrollment does not equal degree attainment.

Not enough students are reaching the finish line.