February 2011
Petersburg Residents Speak Out Against Cuts To Already Struggling Schools
"If we don't start investing in our school system, we're going to be at this point every year," said John A. Hart Sr., president of the Petersburg Citywide PTA. "Nothing is going to change. If we don't do things for these kids, we're going to continue to fail."
Legal Aid Programs Hit Hard By Funding Cuts from All Directions
Here's a compelling piece from The Nonprofit Quarterly on the past, present and future of Legal Aid funding. The Legal Services Corporation, which provides funding to local agencies that offer direct civil legal services to low-income families and individuals, faces a significant cut at the federal level.
Additionally, IOLTA (Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts) funds have been shrinking rapidly over the last several years, in response to the economic downturn -- a downturn that has increased the number of people eligible for legal aid services. With supply decreasing and demand increasing, Legal Aid programs -- and the clients they serve -- are facing a tough road...
Click here to access the full article.
Three Legal Aid Justice Center attorneys to participate in 12th Annual Conference on Public Service & the Law
The University of Virginia School of Law will kick off the 12th incarnation of its Conference on Public Service & the Law on Friday, February 11th, wrapping up the event on Saturday, February 12th. Three Legal Aid Justice Center attorneys, Brenda Castañeda, Angela Ciolfi and Karen Minatelli will participate in several of the panels organized for the popular event.
Brenda Castañeda, housing and consumer attorney with the Civil Advocacy Program in the Charlottesville office, will serve on the panel "Property Rights as Human Rights," which is to be held from 1-2pm on Saturday, February 12th in UVA Law lecture room Withers-Brown 103 (WB103).
JustChildren Legal Director Angela Ciolfi, who also teaches the Law School's Child Advocacy clinic, will be moderating the panel "LGBT Bullying in Schools." Among the panelists is UVA School of Education Professor and Youth Violence Project Director Dewey Cornell, who served on our school discipline panel during our "Dropped Out" event in October 2010. "LGBT Bullying in Schools" will also be held from 1-2pm on Saturday, February 12th, in UVA Law lecture room Withers-Brown 101 (WB101).
Finally, Karen Minatelli, managing attorney of our Falls Church office, will serve on the panel "Women in Public Interest," also on Saturday, February 12th from 1-2pm, in UVA Law lecture room Withers-Brown 105 (WB105).
The full conference schedule can be found here.
What We're Reading: Legal Aid Staff Members Share What's Informing Their Work
Here at Legal Aid, we couldn't accomplish everything that we do without seeking out relevant news and learning from the good work others are doing, as well. In this ongoing feature, we'll highlight Legal Aid Justice Center staff members and some of the sources they are currently turning to in order to inform their work.
Here's what JustChildren Legal Director Angela Ciolfi had to say about UVA Law Professor James E. Ryan's new book, Five Miles Away, A World Apart:
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"The case of the Ohio mom who was jailed for fraudulently seeking improved educational outcomes for her children in a neighboring school district has everyone talking about the unfair relationship between educational quality and artificial school district boundaries or attendance zones.
Whether they are foster youth placed across district lines, immigrant youth and other children living in informal kinship custody arrangements, or low-income children stuck in low performing schools, at JustChildren we see the devastating consequences of rationing educational opportunity according to zip code every day.
In Five Miles Away, A World Apart, Jim Ryan uses a vivid portrayal of schools in the metropolitan Richmond area to illustrate the fatal political flaw in the last sixty years’ worth of education reform. In short, Ryan explains why the system is set up the way it is, and what we can do to move beyond it."
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The Legal Aid Justice Center's JustChildren program works to improve Virginia’s public education, juvenile justice, and foster care systems. JustChildren advocates use direct representation, education and organizing outreach, and state-level advocacy to achieve positive outcomes for low-income families in the Commonwealth.
Angela is a long-time member of the JustChildren team, becoming its legal director in 2010, the same year in which she won the Child Advocacy Award from the American Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division.
New formula shows many more Americans living in poverty than previously thought
Adjustments for cost of living, as well as necessary expenses like medical and transportation costs, show that many more Americans are currently living in poverty than previously known, says an AP report in The Boston Globe.
The adjusted data within preliminary 2009 census reports shows that about 1 in 6 Americans, many of them 65 years of age or older, are struggling financially and have fallen below the poverty line. The revised formula puts the overall poverty rate at about 15.7%, or 47.8 million people. Compare that to the non-adjusted 2009 rate of 14.3%, or about 43.6 million people.
Census Bureau researchers noted that without supplemental government assistance programs and the earned-income tax credit, the poverty numbers would jump even higher. Those researchers also say that out-of-pocket medical expenses contributed significantly to the high rates: without those expenses, the adjusted rate would have dropped to about 12.4%.
Read more about the Census Bureau's new report here.