Add this to the list of short-sighted money-savers being perpetrated in the name of balancing the budget. Turns out there was plenty of fat in the child-care subsidy system. A recent study by Ready to Learn Providence (a program under The Providence Plan) shows how precarious the ‘working’ status of our working poor is right now. Next stop? Welfare.

Between February and April 2008, R2LP conducted a survey of 482 licensed center-based and home-based providers throughout Rhode Island to investigate the impact of the revised eligibility requirements for the state’s Child Care Assistance Program…. The 2007-2008 state budget restricted eligibility for child-care subsidies to families falling below 180 percent of the federal poverty level – down from the previous threshold of 225 percent. At that time, a family of three at 225 percent of the federal poverty level had an income of $37,350; at 180 percent it was $29,888. The average annual cost for full-time preschool care for one child ranges from $8,140 for family child care to $8,736 for center-based care, according to R.I. Kids Count. The average cost of infant care in a center is $10,557.

The new requirements disqualified about 1,900 children statewide.

Although I’m terrified and bored by anything that has a website that lists bell hooks first under recommended reading, this event at New Urban Arts tonight sounds pretty neat:

 “I WANT TO DO THIS ALL DAY“

Audio Documentary on Radical Education

    In March and April of 2006, Amina Althea and Amber Woods visited 23 radical learning spaces, including free schools, charter and privateschools, community centers, and after school programs. They interviewed students, parents, teachers, and administrators about creating and sustaining these non-compulsory, non-coercive environments for learning and projects.
Based on these interviews and extensive research, Althea and Woods produced an audio documentary, entitled “I Want To Do This All Day.” It illuminates a grassroots movement of people and communities taking power over their own education and creating learning environments based on freedom, cooperation and social change.
In May of 2008, the pair will launch the documentary with a national tour of 17 cities. At each stop four dancers and two visual artists will offer a performance piece, that weaves excerpts from the documentary with dance, song, and projections to bring to life the stories of young people making their own paths in learning and life.

With public schools cutting programs faster than you can say Every Child Left Behind and private education out of the reach of most people, it definitely makes sense for a movement to start happening right about now.

Sliding scale $3-6 no one turned away for lack of funds

Does it count as shameless self-promotion to promote my promotion of a friend’s event? Hopefully not. Scope my piece in this week’s Phoenix on the upcoming criminal justice reform festival, Justice or Just Us?, taking place at AS220 real soon.

Many of you know that, for the past two years, I have been facilitating arts and writing workshops at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) through Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE).

This Sunday, May 4, SPACE will be opening its annual exhibit of art and writing from the ACI. The exhibit will take place in the Youth Gallery at AS220, 115 Empire Street from 4 PM to 7 PM.

In addition to displaying art and writing, we will be reading selections of poetry written by the men and women who participate in our workshops. We will also be distributing our annual Zine, a collection of their work. Refreshments will be served. If you can’t make it on Sunday, the exhibit will be up in the AS220 Youth Gallery through July; please stop in and check it out!

More about SPACE and the exhibit after the jump.

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Don’t spvill yuh kawfee oa nuthin but the Juhnal sez that:

While it might be a badge of honor for some, others with a wicked strong accent might want to get rid of it.

Whether considered an impediment to clear business interaction or a source of embarrassment, many Ocean Staters have turned to an accent-reduction class offered by the community-based education network, Learning Connection.

What does Don Bousquet think about all this?

Liberal columnist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Anthony Lewis, will be speaking Wednesday, March 19th, at the Roger Williams University School of Law. Following the lecture, Mr. Lewis will sign copies of his books, including Freedom For the Thought We Hate. (Turns out the First Amendment was designed for guys like Ralph Papitto. But shunning is still pretty effective.)

lecture March 19/starts 5PM/ RWU School of Law rm 283

RSVP by March 12 to Barbara Slover whose email addy is, I kid you not, bslover@rwu.edu. Or call (401) 254-4573.

Well, maybe he didn’t. Yet.

Carcieri cut state funding for a program that brings education to kids with cancer. KIDS WITH CANCER. How do you get behind that? Even the most whiny fiscally conservative Rhode Islander would find a way to save a program for KIDS WITH CANCER:

Since 1977, the school at Hasbro Children’s Hospital has provided academics to patients as one of the oldest hospital-based education program of its kind in the country.

For two hours a day, these children are not cancer patients and cystic fibrosis sufferers — they’re just students learning to read and write like their peers, succeeding and sometimes failing.

Thanks to the Providence Journal’s obsessive 24-hour, 7 day a week coverage of the budget crisis, the cuts to the Hasbro Children’s Hospital program were brought to light. Suddenly the governor’s office began scrambling to save the program, claiming that they didn’t know the budget cuts would effect KIDS WITH CANCER: more »

Which one is Ben Stein?  Here he is in the Projo, going off on Darwinism. And here he is on O’Reilly:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWMGD1Dg6L8]

Stein gets this right (while taking on the tone of the godless evolutionist Christopher Hitchens):

Maybe we would have a new theory: We are just pitiful humans. Life is unimaginably complex. We are still trying to figure it out. We need every bit of input we can get. Let’s be humble about what we know and what we don’t know, and maybe in time, some answers will come.

But how does that jibe with broad assertions of Creationism, predicated on nothing?

Not in the headline: Tuition will increase for higher income students. Yay, redistribution! Huge move for Brown, keeping itself competitive for our nation’s best and brightest students.

The NYT has the story:

Brown University is eliminating tuition for students whose parents earn less than $60,000, after decisions by fellow Ivy League universities to bolster financial aid as their endowments grow.

The university, in Providence, R.I., said on Saturday that it also planned to substitute grants for student loans in the financial aid packages of students whose families earned less than $100,000 a year. The new program cuts reliance on loans for all students regardless of family income, the university said in a statement posted on its Web site.

Brown also announced plans to increase tuition by 3.9 percent for the 2008-9 academic year to $36,928. With room and board, the costs are $47,740 for one year.

Brown’s admission policies favor Rhode Island students, and one has to imagine that this policy is going to help RI students who are admitted but unable to fathom being yoked by a six-figure student loan package.

Partly to remind you about our Parade for Accessible Education tomorrow at Brown (right) and partly because my friend Mike Da Cruz is really articulate, here are six reasons why Brown Students for a Democratic Society is calling on the Brown Corporation to freeze tuition:

1) High tuition sticker prices, even when they are defrayed in actuality by aid discourage many lower-income people from applying to universities at all.

2) At a time when the asking price for a year Brown exceeds the US median household income by thousands of dollars, it seems unreasonable to continue to raise tuition only to increase aid, if fully half of Americans couldn’t afford to go to Brown even if their families live in their dorms and ate on meal plan without massive aid. Brown is in a position to stop asking for money the vast majority of people don’t have.

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As members of the Brown corporation descend on Bruronia’s fair campus for their semesterly meeting this Saturday, join Brown students and our allies in a parade calling for a “More Open and Public Brown.” Festivities start at 10AM:

Education is a Right! Join a Parade, Marching Band, students, and community members to call for:

Grants not Loans!
A Tuition Freeze!
Expanded Finical Aid!
Brown Support for Public Funding of Education!
Expanded Brown Programs for Providence Community Members!

Sponsored by Brown Students for a Democratic Society

Changes in the Andes: Realities, Challenges, and Opportunities for Inter-American Relations will take place at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies on February 12-13. The conference will analyze the current democratic transformation in the region, its implications for US and international policy, and its lessons for other world regions.

Keynote roundtable: Mario Gustavo Guzman Saldana, Bolivian Ambassador to the US; Luis Benigno Gallegos Chiriboga, Ecuadorian Ambassador to the US; and Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, Venezuelan Ambassador to the US - introduced by former US Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

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This is pretty cool news, off of the East Side Public Education Coalition’s website:

Arts supporters and dedicated ESPEC readers will remember that the theater progam at Hope High was almost killed in the summer of 2006, but was saved at the last minute through the efforts of many supporters. This week, Ari showed us why it was all worthwhile.

Ari Brisbon, a student at Hope High School on Providence’s East Side, has won the state Shakespeare Acting and Recitation competition.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UreJZMY_2IY]

Apparently, there is a school named the “Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School” in her village of Nyangoma-Kogelo. On the issue of restoring America’s credibility in the world, there ain’t no Hillary Clinton Elementary schools in East Africa, folks.

Also looking pretty weak…. an MBA from Harvard
The New York Times reports that the dollar is so weak abroad that “the Taj Mahal has stopped accepting dollars for the entrance fee”. Meanwhile, back in New York City “East Village Wines, a liquor store at 138 First Avenue, accepts payment in euros as well as dollars.” What what what?!!!!!!

I wonder if the government would consider issuing the upcoming tax rebates in something Americans can actually use, like euros or rupees or toilet paper.