NEWSCHILD POVERTY

Victory! Gov. John Kasich today reduced the charges against Kelley Williams-Bolar, a single African-American mother jailed and convicted of a felony earlier this year for enrolling her children in a school district in which she did not live.

The news comes after more than 184,000 Change.org members emailed Kasich’s office in support of Williams-Bolar since January of this year, when her conviction sparked a viral campaign on Change.org created by Massachusetts resident Caitlin Lord (read Lord's account of why she started the petition).

Alongside African-American citizen coalition ColorOfChange.org, Change.org members from around the country called Kasich’s office on Tuesday, September 6, urging him to pardon Williams-Bolar. Ohio’s Parole Board had recommended that Williams-Bolar not receive a reduction in sentencing.

This guest post comes from Darell Hammond, CEO of KaBOOM!, a national nonprofit dedicated to saving play for America's children.

This week, our Congress will be returning from their August recess--a yearly tradition that recognizes the human need to take a break from a grueling schedule and spend some time playing.

At the same time, as children across the country return to school, some will find that they have no recess at all. Others will find that their combined recess and lunch period is so short, they have to choose between food and play.

Play is under attack in our nation's schools--and shrinking recess periods are only part of the problem. Homework is increasing. Cities are building new schools without playgrounds. Safety concerns are prompting bans of tag, soccer, and even running on the schoolyard.

Despite countless studies proving that play is integral to children's learning and health, most kids aren't getting enough space and time to play during the school day. These seven absurd stories from last school year say it all:

UPDATE: 7:24 p.m., Tuesday, April 26: Kelley Williams-Bolar has just released a statement through her attorney, David Singleton of the Ohio Justice and Policy Center:

Original Post: Most nights, Tanya McDowell sleeps in a minivan. Other nights, she sleeps at a shelter or at a friend's house. So when it was time for her 5-year-old son, A.J., to go to school, she wrote down her babysitter's address to sign him up for kindergarten.

Little did she know, sending A.J. to kindergarten at Brookside Elementary School in Norwalk, Connecticut could mean 20 years in jail and a $15,000 penalty for the unemployed single mom. Tanya was arrested this month and charged with first-degree larceny for allegedly "stealing her son's education." Norwalk authorities say that since A.J. doesn't live within district limits, it's illegal for him to attend kindergarten in the district - and his mom is a criminal for enrolling him there. A local activist has created a petition on Change.org, urging Norwalk officials to drop the charges and stop punishing a mother who wanted what was best for her child.

"I'm still in shock," Tanya said in an interview with the Norwalk Patch this week. "What did I do wrong? I just want the best for my kid. It's like any mom or any dad out there."

The fact that a parent could do jail time simply for sending her child to public school is reminiscent of the story of Kelley Williams-Bolar of Ohio. Nearly 100,000 Change.org members signed a petition started on the site early this year, demanding that Ohio Governor John Kasich pardon Williams-Bolar, who was convicted of a felony for sending her children to a neighboring school district. Her case became a national story, used by advocates and politicians to argue for school choice and against criminalizing parents. Gov. Kasich referred her case to the state's Parole Board; a decision is expected this summer.

After hearing that class sizes in Detroit Public Schools could be raised to 62 students a class, voices around the nation were outraged.

The next proposal? Close half the city's schools. That didn't get any more support.

Severe budget cuts and mandates from the state meant Robert Bobb, emergency manager of the Detroit Public Schools, has been forced to make some drastic decisions.

But now he's proposing another idea that may mean schools stay open, but many teachers could still lose their jobs - massive charter conversion.

Activists around North Carolina honored Martin Luther King Jr. day yesterday by shouting, "Forward together - not one step back," trying to stop the re-segregation of Wake County's schools.

Wake County's made headlines in recent months for undoing its heralded student assignment policy, which ensures each school is socio-economically diverse, making sure low-income students aren't concentrated in a few schools. Tea Party leaders have been behind the push to stop busing and move to a neighborhood model of school assignment, effectively segregating the county's schools.

The NAACP has been behind much of the push to get Wake County's school board to keep the district's integrated schools alive. In September of last year, they filed a federal civil right complaint against Wake County Schools. While justice department officials are still investigating that complaint, it may lead for more trouble for district. They're now in danger of losing their accreditation, making it harder for the students there to get into college and receive scholarships.

"Sandwiches" that come wrapped up like candy bars, vegetables that appear more grey than green, and chicken nuggets that make you wonder if anyone who wrote the menu has ever actually seen live poultry - that's the usual fare for millions of American school children who eat school lunch. But as of yesterday, their menu is about to get an improvement.

Yesterday was the day President Obama signed a bill into law that will  greatly improves the quality of school lunches and  allow more poor kids to access free and reduced price lunch. But the problem with the bill is that its name is a bit of a contradiction - the Hunger Free Kids Act - which gives more federal dollars for school lunches by cutting food stamps.

Yup, you read that right. So, a kid might be getting a better lunch, but dinner? Sorry, Bobby. Mommy's food stamp allotment is a lot smaller this month, so your stomach will go empty.

Does this make any sense? Frankly, no. President Obama has pledged that the money taken away from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program - SNAP or Uncle Sam's formal name for food stamps - will be made up somehow, someday soon.

The problem is someday sometimes never comes. This bill was no easy victory - it took years of lobbying and negotiating. But it's a victory now, and once it happens, its easy for politicians to chalk one up on the score board for themselves and forget about the losers. The losers in this case aren't just big agriculture and high-fructose corn syrup producers - the losers are poor families. And poor families are easily forgotten by politicians influenced by big money and political gains.

Turkey. Mashed potatoes. Pumpkin Pie. Today, kitchens all over the country are full of friends, family and delicious aromas.

Members of Congress today are at these gatherings, celebrating our tradition of eating too much and listing what they're thankful for. At Change.org, what would make me thankful? If Congress passed the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Bill - without stealing from the federal food stamp program to do it.

People working to fight hunger and poverty have been slammed with a dilemma this holiday season - do they cheer on the work lawmakers are doing to improve school lunch - legislation that would expand the free and reduced-price lunch program, make lunches healthier for all kids and strengthen nutrition? Sounds great, right? Except when you look at how Congress is going to pay for it. As it stands now, this great lunch program is going to be funded by a $2.2 billion cut to the federal food stamp program.

Today after school, 15 children plan to take a field trip to the City Council offices of Washington D.C. for a lesson on local government.

This won't be an ordinary civics lesson, though. This will be an education on whether city leaders can cut through red tape so that a local nonprofit isn't penalized for running a much-needed summer day camp for low-income DC children.

City Gate, a DC nonprofit that focuses on needy children, youth and international residents, is struggling to pay its bills this holiday season because a $60,000 grant they were promised from city money has still not been paid. Leaders at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) now say the grant, promised to pay for a summer day camp City Gate ran this past summer, no longer exists. It's an example of how organizations that pledge to do good can be hobbled by bureacratic inertia and a maze of contradicting regulations.

Trapped in bureaucratic red tape, a Washington D.C. nonprofit is in financial trouble through no fault of its own. What's at stake? A safe place to go after school for some of the District's neediest children. It's a story of broken promises and bureaucratic inertia, and it needs to be solved.

City Gate, a nonprofit, faith-based organization, recently celebrated its 10th anniversary of bringing aid to some of the District's neediest citizens. But what they're not celebrating is a $60,000 payment promised to them from city money -- that has still not been paid to them.

This summer, City Gate was promised $60,000 in funds from D.C.’s Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) to run a summer day camp at the Merrick Center, a new community center with a sparkling gym and computer lab located near public housing in Ward 8, a low-income ward in D.C.'s southeast quadrant. City Gate's summer day camp fed kids breakfast, lunch and dinner. The funds were to be filtered through a large grant OSSE gave to another nonprofit called Youth Engaged for Success (YES). 

But at the end of the summer, founder Rev. Lynn Bergfalk got some terrible news, he told D.C.'s The Fight Back radio program recently.