After conducting a survey, administrators at Carroll T. Welch Elementary School in the Clint Independent School District found that about a quarter of its students felt they did not “fit in” at school.

“There’s some students that feel like they have to be different. Like, ‘I can’t be my true self because of what (other students) might say about me,’” said Daisy Garcia, principal of the school in Horizon City.

Now she hopes to create a more welcoming and affirming environment for them through the El Paso School Design Collaborative, which aims to reimagine how schools can better serve students and communities.

As part of the 10-month program which started in May, schools were tasked with identifying an issue at their campus and coming up with a plan to address it with the help of experts from Transcend, a nonprofit with the goal of improving education systems in the U.S. Out of the dozens of schools from across El Paso that applied to be part of the program, eight were selected.

“Our vision is to help young people learn in ways that enable them to thrive in and transform the world. And the way that we do that is by supporting communities to create and spread extraordinary equitable learning environments,” said Transcend Managing Partner Dottie Smith.

The program was brought together by the Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development, or CREEED, a nonprofit that aims to improve academic performance in El Paso, and the El Paso Community Foundation, a nonprofit that funds initiatives in health, education, human services and more throughout the city.

“The broad stroke idealistic goal is for there to be a systemic change in how schools approach school design,” Vice President of Operations for the Community Foundation Stephanie Otero told El Paso Matters. “We hope that each school in our region will have a student centered model where student voice is at the core of decision making.”

With Transcend at their side, each of the participating schools set out to form teams of teachers, administrators and parents tasked with finding out how to improve their campuses. While the teams work directly with students, experts at Transcend help administrators conduct surveys, process data and provide them with examples of other schools that have centered student well-being in their education model.

“(We’re) deepening their understanding of the research and science, and what their young people are saying they want,” Smith said.

Some schools like the East Side’s O’Shea Keleher Whole Child Academy in the Socorro Independent School District included two fifth grade students, counselors and the school nurse in their redesign team to get their input on how to improve their campus.

Others talked to students to get their perspective.

Daisy Garcia said her team at Welch Elementary interviewed 75 of the school’s 700-plus pupils from all walks of life, ranging from Spanish speakers to at-risk students to get their input.

“We wanted to make sure we had a really big pool of who we interviewed,” Daisy Garcia said. “We didn’t want just high achieving students who we know feel loved and they feel like they have leadership skills.”

Many of the schools in the collaborative program focused on , also known as SEL, which aims to help students understand their emotions and build social skills as a way to improve educational outcomes.

Silvestre and Carolina Reyes Elementary in the Canutillo Independent School District and O’Shea Keleher put an emphasis on the social part of SEL, hoping to improve the way students connect with one another.

“One of the things that we’ve found is that our students feel very well connected to the adults in the building, but many of them are still struggling with having that peer to peer interaction,” said O’Shea Keleher Principal Laura Garcia. “So we’re trying to find the root of that problem and then help give them tools to interact with their peers in a very positive manner.”

While educators say students were already struggling to connect before the pandemic, lockdowns exacerbated the issue and were especially hard on younger students.

“There were a lot of skills that we lost, as far as interaction between our kids. It was problematic at all levels, but I think our babies in pre-K through first (grade) never learned those skills through the pandemic,” said Reyes Elementary Principal Jessica Melendez-Carrillo.

After conducting research and learning about student’s needs the teams can move on to the “envisioning” stage to make plans to address the issues they identified.

Melendez-Carrillo said her team at the Upper Valley school has been looking into implementing “morning circles” where students can have discussions, resolve conflicts and connect at the start of the day. She said the team is currently brainstorming and learning from other schools who have implemented these circles to see what that will look like.

“We’re collaborating, we’re thinking, we’re revisiting our protocols that we currently have and seeing how can we improve and make them better?” Melendez-Carrillo said.

The team at Welch Elementary has looked into implementing a similar concept they call “talk circles” that allow teachers and students to have conversations on an equal playing field in the hopes of encouraging children to be themselves at school.

“When they do the circles in the morning the teachers are going to participate just like the students so there’s not any kind of power or authority there. Everyone has the same type of authority and it goes back to that feeling of belonging and having a voice,” Daisy Garcia said.

Laura Garcia said the team at O’Shea Keleher is still gathering data and working with Transcend on creating a parent survey before they plan their next move.

Once the teams have finalized their plans, Smith said Transcend will help implement them, evaluate their success and start the process all over again.

“We take schools through this to help them create a model that will match their vision,” Smith said.

In the end, the school leaders taking part in the collaborative program hope it helps improve their student’s lives and prepares them for the future.

“I want to ensure that every one of our students who we send to middle school has that strong sense of self and confidence that they can be whoever they want without worrying about being judged,” Laura Garcia said.

CREEED’s Choose to Excel Director Nadia Tellez said the program aims to help students succeed beyond school.

“We’re excited to support an initial group of eight schools to explore new models of student success that ensure students not only can go on and succeed in college, but that they’re prepared to succeed in our workforce and in their local communities,” she said.

Other schools involved in the program include Vista Del Sol Environmental Science Academy, Jose H. Damian Elementary, Gonzalo and Sofia Garcia Elementary, Jose J. Alderete Middle School and the Canutillo Middle School STEAM Academy.

Smith said that once this first cohort has completed the 10-month program, Transcend hopes to continue working with them and expand to other schools throughout El Paso.

Disclosure: The Council on Regional Economic Expansion and Educational Development and El Paso Community Foundation are financial supporters of El Paso Matters. Financial supporters play no role in El Paso Matters’ journalism. The news organization’s policy on editorial independence can be found .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Girls will soon be able to access period products for free in Ohio school bathrooms.

The state’s new operating budget includes a $5 million appropriation for the current fiscal year to install dispensers that will provide free period products in schools that enroll girls in grades 6-12. The bill also allows schools to offer free period products to students younger than sixth grade if they so choose.

“There are cheers all across the state right now from women and girls who are going to be so excited to find out in the future girls will be able to access period products at no costs in their schools,” Senate Minority Leader Nickie J. Antonio, D-Lakewood, said Wednesday afternoon during a press conference.

The budget allocates up to $2 million in fiscal year 2024 for public, non-public and charter schools to install dispensers for feminine hygiene products in each of their buildings. It also provide $3 million toward purchasing the products.

“We have regulated the provision of toilet paper and paper towels in public restrooms, so too we should do the same for menstrual products,” Antonio said. “It’s unhygienic and a danger actually to one’s health not to have access to menstrual products, so just like toilet paper, we need to have free and accessible access.”

Twenty-three other states have , including Alabama, California, Illinois and Maryland.

Missing school

Nearly because they don’t have access to period products.

“It really gets in the way of them being able to rise to their fullest potential,” Antonio said. “When students lack access to period products, they face barriers and may avoid going out in public while wearing period stained clothing in public without the necessary sanctuary products.”

Girls shouldn’t have to choose between going to school and being able to purchase period products, said State Senator Stephanie Kunze, R-Dublin.

“Missing a school day or missing partial school days over time is a really significant loss of educational time for girls,” she said.

Lawmakers and advocates expect to see girls attendance in schools improve as a result of Ohio’s budget provision.

School attendance at a New York City high school went up providing free tampons and pads in bathrooms.

Period poverty

About two-thirds of low-income women could not afford menstrual products at some point, according to research published in the .

One in six women and girls between the ages of 12 to 44 are below the federal poverty line in Ohio, said Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus. Ohio’s federal poverty line for .

“Translation: they can’t always afford period products,” she said

This budget provision aims to reduce period poverty.

“It’s going to be so important to those students in those schools to be able to have the best education they can,” Driehaus said.

In an effort to cut costs, some women use the same period products for too long without changing it.

“That’s a health risk,” she said. “If they are accessible products in school bathrooms, that would not be an issue. You go in and get the product and away you go.”

The average women in the throughout her lifetime, according to a 2015 article in Huffington Post.

“Providing no-cost period products in Ohio schools enables students to attend class, reduces period poverty and fosters gender equity,” Driehaus said.

Kinsey Sullivan, a high school student at St. Ursula Academy in Cincinnati, knows firsthand how important it is having free period products accessible in schools.

“I don’t know if you know how awkward it is to slide a pad up your sleeve to walk to the bathroom,” she said. “Everyone is looking at you. You have to ruffle through your backpack to just find one and it would be so much easier if they were provided for you in your bathroom.”

Sullivan said this will improve girls’ mental health and confidence overall.

“All students deserve this opportunity to learn, thrive and feel supported in schools,” she said. “It’s time that tampons and pads are provided for in the same way as toilet paper and soap.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on and .

Outraged at the new Black history standards in Florida, Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday blasted what she called revisionist history promoted in the state’s African American history standards approved this week by top education officials.

Just two days after the the standards, Harris told the crowd in Jacksonville at the Ritz Theater and Museum that Florida’s book bans, LGBTQ+ rights restrictions, and Black history revisions are part of a national right-wing agenda.

“Adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape; it involved torture; it involved taking a baby from their mother; it involved some of the worst examples of depriving people of humanity in our world; it involved subjecting people to think of themselves and be thought of as less than humans,” Harris said.

“So, in the context of that, how is it that anyone could suggest that, in the midst of these atrocities, that there was any benefit to being subjected to this level of dehumanization?”

Harris continued: “And so, let us be clear: Teachers want to teach the truth. Teachers want to teach facts. And teachers dedicate themselves to some of the most noble work any human being could take on: to teach other people’s children — for the sake of the future of our nation.

“And so, they should not then be told by politicians that they should be teaching revisionist history in order to keep their jobs. What is going on?”

Critics of the first stand-alone say they largely limit elementary school instruction to identifying famous Black people. At the middle school level, the standards describes slavery as personally beneficial in instances where the enslaved learned skills. High schoolers will learn that the 1920 Ocoee Massacre involved violence against and by African Americans.

Extremist leaders

While Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t address any of the specific criticisms against the standards, he took to his campaign Twitter account to ahead of her arrival.

“Democrats like Kamala Harris have to lie about Florida’s educational standards to cover for their agenda of indoctrinating students and pushing sexual topics onto children,” the governor wrote. “Florida stands in their way and we will continue to expose their agenda and their lies. The Harris-Biden administration is obsessed with Florida … yet they ignore the chaos at the border, crime-infested cities, economic malaise, and the military recruitment crisis.”

Aside from criticizing the standards, the vice president called out the state government’s lack of action against gun violence. Instead of wanting to arm teachers, leaders should be promoting gun safety, she said.

Ultimately, Harris characterized extremist leaders as figures fomenting culture wars meant to divide Americans.

“Let’s not fall in that trap,” she said. “We will stand united as a country. We know our collective history; it is our shared history. We are all in this together.

“We know that we will rise and fall together as a nation. We will not allow them to suggest anything other than what we know: The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us.”

The whole story

For now, members of the work group that developed the African American history standards are focused on explaining how they concluded that Black people benefitted from slavery because they learned skills. A spokesperson from the Florida Department of Education published a statement on Thursday from two members of the work group, citing people like John Chavis and Booker T. Washington as examples of slaves who developed trades from which they benefitted.

“Any attempt to reduce slaves to just victims of oppression fails to recognize their strength, courage, and resiliency during a difficult time in American history,” according to a statement by William Allen and Frances Presley Rice who helped develop the standards. “Florida students deserve to learn how slaves took advantage of whatever circumstances they were in to benefit themselves and the community of African descendants.”

Allen and Rice added: “It is disappointing, but nevertheless unsurprising, that critics would reduce months of work to create Florida’s first ever stand-alone strand of African American History Standards to a few isolated expressions without context.”

Even so, the work group’s statement didn’t tackle the backlash against other aspects of the standards.

Black lawmakers speak out

This teaching of the 1920 Ocoee Massacre is more personal for Orange County State Sen. Geraldine Thompson. In 2020, she helped champion a bill to add the massacre to Florida’s K-12 education curriculum. She spoke out against the standards during the Wednesday meeting.

“When you look at the history, currently it suggests that the [Ocoee] massacre was sparked by violence from African Americans,” she wrote in a statement on Friday. “That’s blaming the victim, when in fact it was other individuals who came into the Black Community cand killed individuals and burned homes, schools, lodges, etc. So we want to tell the whole story.”

Other politicians such as State Rep. Dianne Hart from Hillsborough County commended Harris for her visit. Hart is the chair of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus.

“It is unfortunate that Florida has become the leader in all the wrong areas, and this new attempt to continue to diminish the importance of African-American history, and to present our students with a lack-luster version of the truth is evidence to that fact,” she wrote in a statement. “As chair of the Black Caucus, we have made this a priority issue and we will continue to advocate for truth, for facts, and for age-appropriate curriculum.”

There has been no shortage of criticism toward the standards, but no concrete actions have been announced. Though, State Sen. Bobby Powell of West Palm Beach said the “so-called” standards needed to be thrown out.

“When the dogs and the water cannons, the police batons, and the lynching mobs were let loose on these former African American slaves, was that for their ‘personal benefit’ as well? He wrote. “These so-called standards need to be thrown out immediately, and a full and honest examination of what’s really driving this one-sided agenda needs to begin.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com. Follow Florida Phoenix on and .