What’s New?

Paterson Kids Count 2015 posts gains for kids

Posted on December 10, 2015

Download Report.
Download Report.

More Paterson students are starting their school day with the nutrition they need to concentrate and learn, while fewer of the city’s children lack health insurance, improving the chances they will receive regular medical care that can prevent serious illness, according to this second Kids Count report.

The city also made some progress in improving the number of 3rd graders who are reading on target, although more work remains in this area.

Despite these gains, the majority of Paterson children live in poor or low-income families that struggle to meet their children’s basic needs and many struggle with health problems that can impede their chances for school success.

Read the release.

View report.

Urge Congress to support child care funding!

Posted on December 8, 2015

Last year, Congress re-approved the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), strengthening child care health and safety standards, requiring background checks for all child care staff and mandating new training for child care providers. Currently, no new dollars have been earmarked to pay for these improvements.  We need to stand together to urge our elected officials to increase funding for this critical service for our youngest children.

Send a message to your congressional representatives now! It only takes a minute.

NJ working to combat chronic absenteeism in schools

Posted on November 17, 2015

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Download the report Showing Up Matters: The State of Chronic Absenteeism in NJ.

This fall ACNJ released a report highlighting school districts with 10% or more of their students chronically absent.   The response has been overwhelmingly positive, bringing to the spotlight the problem.  As a result, we are happy to report that Sen. Diane Allen has introduced a bill to address chronic absenteeism in schools!

The bill would require the state Department of Education to report data for every school on chronic absenteeism as well as suspensions, and directs schools with high rates to identify and address the issues that lead to chronic absenteeism.

Read more about the bill on NJ Spotlight.

Learn about chronic absenteeism in NJ.

View districts with high chronic absenteeism rates by county.

Urge your member of Congress to co-sponsor the Summer Meals Act

Posted on October 28, 2015

Decisions are being made right now that will impact anti-hunger programs, including the Summer Meals Act, which will make it easier for school and cities to feed children in the summer months, when they are not receiving school meals.

Urge your Congressional representative to support this critical act.

The Summer Meals Act is the only bill that improves and specifically invests in out-of-school time meal sites, providing critical support to afterschool and summer providers who run programs that offer both healthy food and enrichment activities. This investment is essential to ensuring that low-income children get the nutrition they need when school is out, and also can access learning and enrichment activities offered at the sites.

Get social with them.

Research shows that 30 or fewer social media posts about the same topic are likely to get the attention of a Member of Congress, but they need to be posted quickly or they may not be seen. We’ve made it really easy. Just click the link below and you can easily share our tweets.

Click to tweet!

Keep the momentum going! Urge your Member of Congress to co-sponsor the Summer Meals Act.