Latest news with #GenerationHope
GMA Network
26-05-2025
- Politics
- GMA Network
DepEd: Classroom shortage still at 165,000
'We're now at around 165,000 [classroom shortage] and growing kasi hindi na kakayanin nung current budget to meet the ano eh… It would take us 30 years, probably, if we work with the current budget,' Angara told reporters. Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Sonny Angara on Monday said the classroom backlog nationwide still stands at 165,000—a problem expected to have once again an impact when the incoming school year starts. Three weeks before School Year 2025-2026 opens on June 16, Angara admitted that some public schools may again need to implement shifting of classes—some double, others triple, even—due to the lack of classrooms. 'We're now at around 165,000 [classroom shortage] and growing kasi hindi na kakayanin nung current budget to meet the ano eh… It would take us 30 years, probably, if we work with the current budget,' Angara told reporters. (We're now at around 165,000 classroom shortage and growing because the current budget will not be able to meet the need to construct these. It would take us 30 years, probably, if we work with the current budget.) 'Buong bansa kasi ang kakulangan eh especially in populated areas like Region 4-A and NCR, grabe 'yung… All the cities actually all over the country, mataas ang backlog,' he added. (The classroom shortage is all over the country, especially in populated areas like Region 4-A and NCR, it's serious... The classroom backlog in all the cities in the country is high. There are hundreds of thousands per city.) School Year 2025-2026 is set to open on June 16, 2025 and end on March 31, 2026. Angara underscored the need to provide a strong internet connection in key areas so that 'independent learners,' particularly incoming senior high school students, may be able to study at home, just like in other countries. Under the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), P28 billion was appropriated in DepEd's budget for the basic education facilities, which includes P7.18 billion for the construction of new kindergarten, elementary, and secondary school buildings. It also includes a P6.13 billion budget for the rehabilitation, renovation, repair, and improvement of the school buildings under the 'Repair All Policy." 'Para 'yung mga kailangan talagang nasa loob ng classroom, kailangan kausap talaga ang mga teachers, 'yun 'yung mga Nursery, Grade 1, Kindergarten dahil 'yun palang ang natututo at kailangan matuto magbasa, kailangan matuto magsalita. 'Yan talaga kailangan nasa loob ng classroom,' he explained. (This is so learners who really need to be in classrooms and learn directly from teachers—those in Nursery, Kindergarten, and Grade 1—will be able to occupy the classrooms instead.) Angara on Monday afternoon attended the launch of Generation Hope—a partnership of several brands with DepEd to help address the urgent need of building more public school classrooms in the country. The DepEd chief emphasized that such a partnership would help hasten the classroom construction and also help DepEd in meeting its deficits, considering the incoming school year. 'Malaking bagay 'to kasi nga diba nabawasan kami ng budget nitong 2025 so ito, makakatulong do'n sa kakulangan natin sa classrooms. 'Yung ibang programa ng DepEd, mabigyan ng focus tapos may katulong tayo dito,' he said. (This is a big help because our budget for 2025 was cut, so this will help address our lack of classrooms. The DepEd can focus on its other programs, and we will be assisted in classroom construction.) –NB, GMA Integrated News
Boston Globe
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Student-parents face uncertain future as federal child care program wanes
Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but d The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Advertisement 'We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care,' said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. 'Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar' for students to be able to complete degrees. Advertisement At Southern Connecticut State's drop-in child care center, teacher assistant Kayleigh Morgan greets Cai-Lonni Haywood and her son. Having good child care for her son has enabled Haywood to return to college, where she is pursuing a social work degree. Yunuen Bonaparte for The Hechinger Report The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced 'see-campus,' it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. 'I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school,' she said. 'If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it.' Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees th program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. Advertisement The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. 'You play the long game in federal policy,' said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. 'Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future.' Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. 'Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better,' said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. 'We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need,' said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Advertisement Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. 'Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner,' said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. 'A lot of students are not just a student anymore,' said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. 'We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working.' But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Advertisement 'The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly,' said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. 'But that's because it's really effective and important.' At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. 'We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough,' said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center 'was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are.' The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. 'The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people,' she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. Advertisement 'It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me,' she said. 'He just walks in and goes and lives his best life.' This story was produced by , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our . Listen to our .
RNZ News
23-05-2025
- Politics
- RNZ News
Budget 2025: The teenagers feeling ignored by government's decisions
Rangatahi from Save the Children and Kelson Boys' High School at the Child Poverty Action Group Budget analysis. Photo: Supplied "Do not just invest in stats and numbers, invest in us." That is the message from a group of teenagers grappling with some of the decisions made by the government in this year's Budget. They came together along with child advocates, researchers and rangatahi to unpack the budget. with KiwiSaver, pay equity, employment and climate change all top of the discussion. Save the Children Generation Hope Youth ambassadors opened the post-Budget chat hosted by the Child Poverty Action Group in Tāmaki Makaurau with these words. "A budget is numbers, but numbers don't heal people, a budget is a promise but promises break without action, a budget is pointless without a plan. "We've heard the speeches we've seen the headlines roll in; the words roll in like tides the tides that never quite reach the shore." One of the youth ambassadors is 17-year-old Sonya. She was concerned about what she feels are important parts of daily life that were missing from the budget. "There was a lot about infrastructure and funding for big things, but not really the things that matter or the things that impact people on their daily lives. "Kids that go to school, what are we going to do about buses? What are we going to do about traffic? What are we going to do about families and school lunches?" One of the big changes affecting rangatahi is the tightening of the job seeker and emergency benefits. 18 and 19-year-olds on those will now have them means tested against their parents' incomes. Year 12 students at Kelston Boys' High School Uelese and Nikolao are concerned about this. "Do they know, especially in Polynesian households like our parents, have their own struggles, relying on them for the funding will put more stress and you know, more troubles on our parents," said Uelese. "Yeah, I think it all goes back to the purpose of the government itself to provide positive outcomes for the general public, whether or not you have stable parents, I feel like everybody deserves what they're promised," Nikolao said. The issue was of particular relevance for Uelese - whose mother has been impacted by the pay equity reform. Year 12 Kelston Boys' High School student Uelese speaks at the event. Photo: Supplied While its overhaul will save the government $2.7 billion a year. The changes mean workers now face a higher threshold to prove they are underpaid due to sex discrimination. Uelese is worried about how it will affect his mum and dedicated his opening speech to her. "If my mom can't get ahead, how am I supposed to? "This year's budget was meant to be about growth, but for so many families, especially those led by women, it feels more like being told to grow something from dry soil. "You can't cut down the people who carry the load and expect the next generation to rise. "This budget forgets the people who hold our communities and our children together, women, especially mothers." Then there is KiwiSaver. From July, 16 and 17-year-olds are eligible to get the government contribution and requirements for employers to match their deposits will kick in next year. But the minimum contribution will go up from three percent of wages to four percent over the next three years. The amount the government is contributing is being halved to a maximum of $261 a year. The government said the increase in the default amount could leave KiwiSaver members with more than $100,000 in retirement. But the Labour Party claims not everybody will benefit, especially younger people. It claims the changes could mean an 18-year-old ends up with $66,000 less for their retirement. Uelese and Nikolao are disappointed with the change. "You know, finance is everything it would be good to, like, have that support that they've sort of halved. "I mean, it's still there, but is half really enough to start something in, in this ever growing society," said Uelese. The students also said there is one big thing missing in the budget, addressing climate change. Instead, the government has set aside $200 million to invest in fossil fuel development at gas fields, reduce climate finance to the pacific and clawed back funds for government agencies working on ways to save energy. Uelese said it was worrying. "We're really educated on climate change and we know that it's like one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest issue that we're facing right now. "We actually need to get our butts up and start moving." Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
Miami Herald
16-05-2025
- Health
- Miami Herald
A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support
NEW HAVEN, Conn. - When Cai-Lonni Haywood left the Navy, she wanted to go back to school to become a nurse. She tried a for-profit college, but it shut down suddenly. So she started attending community college in her hometown of New Haven, Connecticut. Soon something more important came up: a son, Landin. Once Haywood, now 31, gave birth, she needed child care to attend class. When she couldn't find any that she could afford, she dropped out. It's a story as common as it is little known across American higher education. More than 1 in 5 American undergraduates is a parent. For many of them, kids come first and school falls by the wayside. Colleges and policymakers alike need students with children to finish their degrees and fill jobs, including jobs in high-demand fields such as nursing. Providing more on-campus child care is one way to help them do that, but despite a growing recognition of the challenges faced by students with children, the opposite is happening. The number of colleges offering on-campus child care fell by 24 percent between 2012 and 2021, according to the left-leaning think tank New America. Now, the Trump administration's budget proposal calls for eliminating the only federal program that specifically helps student-parents with child care. Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. "We've seen many parenting students stop out of their degrees because they did not have consistent, adequate, accessible, high-quality child care," said Brittani Williams, director of advocacy, policy and research at the nonprofit Generation Hope, who was a student-parent herself. "Even from my own personal experience, the ability to have child care was absolutely a centering pillar" for students to be able to complete degrees. The federal program is called CCAMPIS. Pronounced "see-campus," it stands for Child Care Access Means Parents in School. Created in 1998, CCAMPIS provides grants to colleges to create on-campus child care centers, subsidize access for low-income students and partner with nearby child care facilities. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. CCAMPIS support allowed Haywood to go back to college. She started attending her current institution, Southern Connecticut State University, because she heard about the drop-in child care center the institution had opened with the help of a CCAMPIS grant in 2023. Related: See which colleges and universities offer child care The $159,000 the university gets annually from CCAMPIS not only helped launch the child care center, its director said; it subsidizes access for lower-income students like Haywood, who is now working toward becoming a social worker. She pays only about $1 a day and can drop her son off for three-and-a-half-hour blocks when she has class or other commitments. "I am two semesters away from graduating, which I never thought I would be able to do having a baby and deciding I wanted to go back to school," she said. "If Southern didn't have this child care program, I wouldn't be able to do it." Now, as with many federal government initiatives, the fate of CCAMPIS is uncertain. President Donald Trump's administration has effectively halved the number of employees at the Department of Education, which oversees the program, and issued an executive order to dismantle the agency. The department didn't respond to questions for this story. The number of institutions receiving CCAMPIS money declined from 327 in 2021 to 264 in 2023, federal data show. They received an average of $317,108. Many colleges have CCAMPIS waitlists, and higher education advocates had been hoping that funding for the program would be increased from $75 million a year to $500 million. But in the current environment, they're not optimistic. For now, they say, they hope to simply prevent its outright elimination. "You play the long game in federal policy," said Edward Conroy, a senior policy manager at New America. "Protecting the program's existence is likely to be where we're at in the near future." Related:Parents are quitting jobs, passing on raises - to qualify for child care Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have taken an interest in the program. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Massachusetts, introduced a bill last fall that would have increased funding for CCAMPIS to $500 million and raised the maximum grant award to $2 million. Rep. Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas, had similarly introduced a bill that would add flexibility to the program. "Not only is there bipartisan support in funding the program, but also in actually changing it to make it better," said Richard Davis Jr., a policy analyst at New America. This support from both the left and right gives advocates some optimism that CCAMPIS will survive the administration's spending cuts. "We would hope that Congress protects this program and funds this program so that student-parents can have the support they need," said Justin Nalley, a senior policy analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, which focuses on Black Americans. Helping adult students get degrees is increasingly a focus of politicians and colleges. Parents who use their degrees to get better jobs pay more in taxes and are less likely to need government assistance, research shows. Many states now have educational attainment goals that parenting students who graduate can help them meet. Many universities are facing enrollment challenges among traditional-aged students, brought on by demographic changes and questions about the return on the investment in tuition. In response, they're looking to bring in more adult students. But older students are more likely to have kids in tow. Related: As colleges lose enrollment, some turn to one market that's growing: Hispanic students "Schools are recognizing the need to serve and recruit and retain and support this new learner," said Jody Gordon, a consultant at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers who works with colleges on enrollment. Some states are focusing more on student-parents. New laws in California require public colleges to collect data on these students, give them priority registration and consider child care expenses in financial aid calculations. Illinois and Texas have passed bills requiring the collection of data about and provision of resources to students with children. "A lot of students are not just a student anymore," said AJ Johnson, policy director at California Competes. "We need this type of information to start to innovate and design for our modern students and their needs, which include parenting and working." But making child care affordable and accessible is still one of the most critical ways to help student-parents finish their degrees. Students who take part in CCAMPIS have higher persistence rates than students overall, according to the federal government's own research. On-campus child care for student-parents offers a payback to taxpayers, even if it's expensive to provide, a study by the Urban Institute found. Researchers concluded that a subsidized program in Virginia would lead to 8,700 more graduates through 2035 and offer a 24 percent return on every dollar spent. That's before looking at benefits down the line, such as making it more likely that the children of student-parents will pursue a higher education themselves once they've grown up. Related: Universities and colleges that need to fill seats start offering a helping hand to student-parents "The fact that it paid for itself at all was honestly a little bit surprising because child care can be so costly," said Theresa Anderson, a research associate at the Urban Institute and coauthor of the analysis. "But that's because it's really effective and important." At Southern Connecticut State, the existing CCAMPIS grant expires at the end of September. The center is helping about 66 parenting students this semester, and serves infants up to 12-year-olds. "We realized that we were always supporting parenting students, but the level of our support just was not enough," said Michele Vancour, who directs the center. Opening the center "was a great opportunity for us to demonstrate that there was a significant need and to find ways to make this part of the fabric of who we are." The university is looking for ways to maintain services after the grant expires, Vancour said. She said she speaks regularly with administrators at other institutions that are part of CCAMPIS. "The uncertainty, not knowing what to expect next, has been the most stressful for people," she said. Haywood said she wishes she could use the university's child care center even more than she does now. After working jobs at Lowe's and Stop & Shop, she plans to finish her social work degree and then pursue a master's degree. By the time she starts, Landin will be 5, and old enough to attend evening sessions at the drop-in center where he's already a regular. "It's been a year here now and he doesn't even say bye to me," she said. "He just walks in and goes and lives his best life." Contact editor Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or jmarcus@ This story about student-parents was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast. The post A federal program helped student-parents thrive. Now it's on life support appeared first on The Hechinger Report.
