Conference Of Mayors Research Articles

Survey of mayors cite MH crisis a top concern

An “unprecedented” mental health crisis is overwhelming U.S. cities, which lack adequate resources to address growing challenges, according to a new report released today by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the Bloomberg news agency reported June 3. In recent years, the COVID‐19 pandemic has exacerbated mental health issues, particularly those involving substance abuse, said a survey of mayors of 117 cities in 39 states. “The report also cited “staggering increases in stress, depression, isolation, loneliness and accompanying mental health hurdles faced by Americans of all ages.” In a survey conducted this spring, 97% of mayors said requests for mental health services increased in their city in the past two years, but 88% lack resources to address the crisis. Substance use disorders topped the list of mental and behavioral health problems in 65% of cities, followed by homelessness stemming from mental illness in 56%. Other challenges included shortages of mental and behavioral health workers, including school counselors, as well as a lack of access to behavioral health services. Although the vast majority of cities reported inadequate mental health resources, 82% have developed new initiatives and/or increased funding to mental health programs. Ninety‐three percent reported that they have improved their emergency response to behavioral health crises. Meanwhile, 94% of cities said their police department provides mental health programs to officers.

Justice and Faith: The Frank Murphy Story by Greg Zipes

Reviewed by: Justice and Faith: The Frank Murphy Story by Greg Zipes Florence Wagman Roisman Greg Zipes. Justice and Faith: The Frank Murphy Story. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021. Pp. 352. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paperback: $34.95. William Francis—Frank—Murphy was a Detroit trial judge, mayor of Detroit, governor of Michigan, governor-general of the Philippines, US [End Page 163] attorney general, and associate justice of the US Supreme Court. As a trial judge, he presided with notable fairness over the NAACP's most significant case of the 1920s—the prosecutions of Dr. Ossian Sweet, a Black physician, and his family and friends who were accused of murdering a White man who had been part of a mob that threatened the Sweets' occupancy of a home Sweet had purchased in a "white neighborhood." As mayor, Murphy opposed the Ku Klux Klan and sought to provide relief from the Great Depression; Zipes credits Murphy with helping to create the US Conference of Mayors and encouraging federal aid to cities. As governor, faced in the 1930s with autoworkers' sit-down strikes, he refused to use force against the strikers and instead "ordered the State Welfare Department to provide food to the striking workers . . . ." (154) Attorney General Murphy created the US Department of Justice's Civil Liberties Unit (later renamed the Civil Rights Division), continuing his lifelong support for positions urged by the NAACP and ACLU and spearheading important reforms in criminal procedure. Justice Murphy wrote important decisions with respect to labor law (choosing one such case, Thornhill v. Alabama, for his first majority opinion), as well as civil liberties, civil rights, and criminal justice. He early repudiated the "separate but equal" doctrine, introduced the word "racism" to US Supreme Court opinions, and authored one of the bravest—his dissent in Korematsu v. U.S., in which the majority shamefully upheld the internment of Japanese Americans in the United States. (The Supreme Court disavowed that decision in Trump v. Hawaii in 2018, not overruling it as Zipes says (259, 266), but stating that it "was gravely wrong the day it was decided [and] has been overruled in the court of history . . . ." Justice Murphy's dissent in Korematsu was cited in the 2018 dissent by Justices Sotomayor and Ginsburg.) As in Korematsu, Murphy's separate opinions, concurring or dissenting, often sounded a "fiery moral tone." (295) Murphy's devout Catholicism, political ambition, and possible homosexuality amplify the complications of his life. Murphy brings great honor to Michigan, but despite his many accomplishments, he is almost unknown today. Zipes makes a significant contribution by bringing new attention to Murphy. Zipes's admiring, brief book offers an enticing introduction to this important but oft-neglected figure. The first pages of Zipes's concluding chapter (290-295) outline what he lauds in Murphy: "his desire to uplift the truly destitute" and "defend unpopular groups from attack." (290) Unfortunately, the book's brevity and Zipes's adulation sometimes produce misleading praise of Murphy where a more nuanced assessment [End Page 164] would be appropriate. Thus, to take one example, Zipes's reference to the 1932 "Hunger March" of unemployed Ford autoworkers suggests that the Detroit police adhered to Governor Murphy's intention that they not "intervene" (101) when the workers crossed into Dearborn and were viciously attacked by police there, but the earlier, fuller account by Sidney Fine shows that the Detroit police were at least peripherally involved and Murphy made "no adequate effort" to determine how they had behaved (Fine, The Detroit Years, 409). Similar instances appear elsewhere in the book. Moreover, the book is marred by errors that a distinguished university press should have prevented. One hopes that Zipes's book will lead readers to the seminal three-volume biography by Sidney Fine (1975, 1979, 1984). The University of Michigan Press would perform a public service by reprinting those volumes, including the second, which was published originally by the University of Chicago Press. Zipes had access to material not available to Fine; an objective, thorough, balanced updating of the Fine biography also would be most welcome. [End Page 165] Florence Wagman Roisman Robert H. McKinney School of Law Indiana University Copyright © 2022...

Marshall Islands

Marshall Islands Monica C. Labriola (bio) Several issues took center stage in the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) from July 2014 to June 2015, revealing ongoing tensions between the government’s duty to attend to the everyday needs of the Marshallese people and its necessary engagement with macro-level political, economic, and environmental concerns. These tensions were perhaps most apparent in the Marshall Islands’ ongoing lawsuit against the United States and eight other nuclear-armed nations, top leaders’ vocal participation in global climate-change discussions, several controversial government expenditures and continuing financial mismanagement, less-than-desirable rankings on several regional and international reports, and increasing outmigration. That said, government leaders, nongovernmental organizations, educational institutions, and private citizens made noteworthy efforts to address these issues through governmental and institutional policy, direct action, and participation in local, regional, and international organizations. Meanwhile, the run-up to the 2015 election kicked off in September 2014, with local and national elections scheduled for the third Monday in November—recently designated a national holiday by the Nitijeḷā (Parliament). As of this writing, it remains to be seen whom the people of the Marshall Islands will elect to steer their country’s course over the next four years. With the 2015 election looming, a few key issues consistently made headlines during the period under review. Among these were two lawsuits filed in April 2014—one against the United States and eight other nuclear-armed nations (China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and the United Kingdom) at the International Court of Justice (icj) in The Hague and the other against the United States in a federal district court in San Francisco (Radio Australia 2014; Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy 2015). [End Page 193] RMI Minister of Foreign Affairs Tony deBrum initiated the lawsuits in consultation with the US-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation—a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that advocates for a world free of nuclear weapons. The lawsuits charged the nine nations with violating international law and failing to uphold the goals of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, which aims to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and to promote nuclear disarmament worldwide. While the “Nuclear Zero Lawsuits” generated widespread attention and the support of the US Conference of Mayors, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, and other world leaders, some questioned the lawsuits’ value for the Marshallese people. Among the suits’ most vocal opponents was David Paul, Marshalls Energy Company general manager and one of seven candidates vying for three Nitijeḷā seats for Kuwajleen (Kwajalein) Atoll—where Minister deBrum has held office since 2007. Despite the Marshall Islands’ nuclear legacy, Paul and others questioned the Marshall Islands’ pursuit of the lawsuits when the Nuclear Claims Tribunal, the Changed Circumstance Petition, and leaking radioactive waste on Ānewetak (Enewetak) Atoll continue to affect the health and well-being of Marshall Islanders. Critics also warned of the lawsuits’ potential impact on the Marshall Islands’ relationship with the United States and expressed concern that activists lacking expertise in disarmament law have used the Marshall Islands to advance their cause through means unlikely to yield desired results. This warning seemed to come true in early February, when a US district judge granted the US government’s motion to dismiss that lawsuit on the grounds that it was based on speculative harm and that the court lacked jurisdiction on the issue. Meanwhile at The Hague, only three of the nine nuclear-armed nations—India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom—accepted icj jurisdiction in relation to the lawsuit, and China declined to accept the court’s authority. The Marshall Islands’ ongoing participation in regional and international climate-change debates also captured headlines, particularly in the weeks surrounding UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s Climate Summit in late September 2014. Leading the discussion was RMI President Christopher Loeak, whose “Clarion Call from the Climate Change Frontline” called attention to recent droughts, king tides, and beaches flooded by rising seas. Proclaiming a “full-blown climate emergency,” the president warned that the Marshall Islands is the climate “canary in the coal mine”—if the Marshall Islands is to be devastated by sea-level rise, others will follow (Loeak 2014). The president also...

Getting to the root of urban tree health

Getting to the root of urban tree health

News Briefs

AT&T awards $2.25 million for mobile education app. Microsoft joins 100 Resilient Cities cybersecurity initiative. Wells Fargo partners with U.S. Conference of Mayors on community improvement program. MasterCard Foundation commits $50 million to African economic initiative. Mars pledges $40 million for new agriculture institute at UC Davis. Study shows Giving Tuesday surging in popularity. ServiceMaster awards $75,000 for youth development program. Footwear maker KEEN to award $100,000 to customer‐supported charities.

In Memoriam: Philip W. Brickner, MD

Dr. Philip W. Brickner, the founding editor of the Journal of Long Term Home Health Care and immediate past editor of Care Management Journals, a pioneering figure in the field of community medicine for the homeless and homebound elderly, a prolific writer, and a charismatic mentor to countless trainees in medicine and social sciences, died on March 24, 2014, at his home in Riverdale, New York.Brickner received many awards from various organizations for his work at St. Vincent's Hospital and, notably, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Health Care for the Homeless Clinicians Network. He was the author of more than 100 scientific papers, six books, 25 chapters, and many other letters and publications. His latest focus had been on the use of ultraviolet (UV) radiation on air systems for the control of tuberculosis (TB) transmission. This work has been supported by a $7 million grant for the Tuberculosis Ultraviolet Shelter Study. This work is now helping developing countries prevent airborne transmission of tuberculosis.Dr. Brickner was a graduate of the Swarthmore College and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and a proud alumnus of the Bellevue Hospital medicine training program in late 1950s under the famed director, Dickenson W. Richards, MD. After his training and early positions, Phil was poised to apply his deep convictions of care to the indigent in what was then the perfect medium of charitable medical endeavors, St. Vincent's Hospital. From the start, his passion resonated with the mission of the hospital's founders, The Sisters of Charity, as they had forged it in the 1800s.From its inception in 1968, the Department of Community Medicine at St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village was led by Dr. Brickner. He saw the great need of the many who suffered in the interstices of a flawed health care system. As a colleague reflected to me upon the news of Phil's passing, still remember my internship interview with Phil as I was graduating from Cornell Medical School when he told me that, 'St. Vincent's is a place where you can walk into the president's office and propose a plan to help a forgotten group, have no plan as to how to make money from it, and they won't kick you out of the office!' At that interview, the colleague chose St. Vincent's and has gone on to a distinguished career in geriatrics. Similar stories abound: personal accounts of physicians, nurses, health educators, social workers, and others all serving as testimony to Brickner's charisma and beliefs. To those who shared his sense of mission and devotion to the sick poor, he imparted the wisdom that they too would be rewarded by personal growth in their discipline, ability to write, and teach those who follow.Dr. Brickner and his colleagues started a hands-on health care service at homeless shelters. At the time, no such direct-care programs existed in New York City for this population. The indigent men (and women) served here were the start of the St. Vincent's single-room occupancy program who quickly grew to bring teams of physicians, nurses, and social workers to many of the singleroom occupancy hotels in the area at that time. In 1983, Brickner was chosen to direct the Health Care for the Homeless demonstration program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Pew Memorial Trust, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. With his team from St. Vincent's Hospital, he helped develop projects in 19 cities and oversaw the implementation of multidisciplinary primary care efforts, which were based on the work in New York City. The program is regarded as an extraordinarily successful demonstration, having been replicated with the 1987 Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act and now including 249 federally funded homeless health care projects nationally.In 1969, Brickner and colleagues began service to the frail homebound aged in Greenwich Village and Chelsea. It became known as the Chelsea-Village program and later grew to include many monolingual Chinese-speaking patients. …

Realizing the Future State of K-12 Public Education: Data Exchange and Functional Integration with Local Government

INTRODUCTION The Condition of Education 2008 (Planty, 2008) has addressed the areas that most concern the public about U.S. public education. It reports * Persistent disparities in educational performance between Hispanics, other minority students, and whites * Rising public school enrollments * Lagging public high school graduation rates * A long-term rise in spending on public education, and, on the positive side, * A long-term rise in students' reading and math performance. These concerns reflect the embedded logic behind national and state policies and actions: * The problems of public education can be traced to minority and immigrant populations. * These problems are growing quickly. * Success is possible, but only over the long term. * Success is linked to increased funding. * Problem districts have the least financial resources. * The only hope for success is increased state and federal funding. Thus, too often, school districts spend grant money on projects that promise to solve problems and improve student performance, but are not truly sustainable and fail to deliver over the long term. School districts can, however, focus their efforts toward a practical future state that, at the highest level of generality, comprises * A reduced achievement gap * By providing instructional opportunity with current resources and best methods * By providing support services in the school and in the community. * Accommodation for changes in the size of student populations * Cost containment and reliable funding. This paper proposes a best-practices approach that school districts can take, using current methods and resources, to achieve possible goals. It entails * Planning around local conditions and current resources * Planning for sustainability * Maintaining ongoing stakeholder and leadership commitment * Aligning functions and processes * Establishing continuity of funding * Establishing integrated, aligned IT functions * Leveraging current and emerging technologies * Involving partner institutions * Establishing data exchange relationships * Consolidating common functions. Opportunities for improving K-12 education are all around. But few are sustainable, few are sustained, and few survive to deliver real benefits (U. S. Conference of Mayors, 2006, p. 29). Sustainable improvement begins with understanding that dreams entail responsibilities: success comes from institutional alignment behind the vision and not just from the vision alone. Planning receives strong emphasis because it is a process of developing self-knowledge. It opens opportunities, but also exposes vulnerabilities. Emphasis falls especially on understanding the services that information technology provides in the K-12 context and the functions and dependencies that affect service delivery. Institutional planning leads to setting the right priorities, but also to anticipating and remedying causes of failure. Understanding the functional dependencies in the institutions of K-12 education is essential for taking advantage of the opportunities that current and emerging technologies offer for reaching the future state. Emphasis here falls on the opportunities opened up by data exchange technology and the organizational and technical requirements for realizing data exchange between school districts and communities. The methods and considerations discussed here are not new. They are just seldom if ever put together as a strategy for success. PLANNING AROUND LOCAL CONDITIONS State and federal governments commonly attempt to advance K-12 educational improvement by enacting programs that target specific high-level, high-visibility problem areas. …

All (Food) Politics is Local: Increasing Food Access Through Local Government Action

Our national and international system has implications for a wide range of issues that are important across the political spectrum and include improving health outcomes, reducing environmental impacts, increasing social justice, fostering economic development, and even improving homeland security. This article focuses on healthy-food access, one of the most urgent policy issues because of its social and economic effects, as well as its public health impacts. In 2010, thirty-six percent of Americans were obese and another thirty-three percent were overweight, while eight percent of Americans were diabetic and thirty-five percent suffered from pre-diabetes. Though access is not perfectly correlated with public health outcomes, those with limited access to healthy foods often suffer most acutely, as people living in areas with access to a supermarket exhibit a twenty-four percent lower prevalence of obesity than those living in areas without supermarkets. Increased access has been linked to results as diverse as improved educational outcomes and crime reduction.Local governments have been particularly attentive to policy concerns. Thirteen cities in North America now have a paid local policy director or coordinator, and more than 130 cities and counties in the United States and Canada have local policy councils, comprised of diverse stakeholders interested in improving the way is produced and consumed. Municipalities have enacted a range of policy reforms, such as increasing governmental procurement of local or healthy foods, improving access to in schools,15 and incentivizing consumers to purchase healthy foods. Many recent local actions focus explicitly on increasing healthy-food access, including amending zoning codes to increase urban agriculture, creating new mobile vending outlets, and enhancing transportation routes to healthy-food retailers. In January 2012, the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) convened its first ever Food Policy Taskforce, which immediately identified increasing access to healthy foods as one of its primary areas of concern. Local governments are also beginning to acknowledge that each locality faces its own food-system challenges with differing policy solutions, meaning that local responses to local issues can be more successful than federal or state approaches.This article aims to encourage those localities not yet active in policy to join the field. The discussion focuses on methods of fostering access to healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and other unprocessed, fresh products. Local governments are particularly well suited to increase access because they have the unique ability to identify areas of need and then work with local constituents to craft targeted responses. Part II explains the concept of food deserts, or areas that lack healthy-food access, and provides historical context about their development. As described in Part II.A, the federal government has attempted to respond to the problem, but its efforts have suffered as a result of its narrow food-desert definition and limited ability to work directly with affected communities. Instead, as explained in Part II.B, local government is better suited to address access because is such a cultural and community-based issue, and local input is vital to successfully expand access. This section identifies steps that local governments should take to engage the community and identify appropriate solutions. Part III highlights policy responses taken by localities around the country and across the system, illustrating that despite the similarities in the problem of limited access, local governments have a variety of tools to address this issue and can and should tailor responses to their specific needs in order to achieve success.

An Assessment of the Impact that Participation in Local Climate Networks Has on Cities’ Implementation of Climate, Energy, and Transportation Policies

AbstractMuch of the attention surrounding local climate protection in the United States is associated with two networks: ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability's Cities for Climate Protection and the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA). However, the impact of these networks on member‐city actions has not been clearly established. This paper examines whether, and to what extent, participation in climate networks leads to the implementation of greenhouse gas (GHG)‐reducing policies, above and beyond what would have been done in their absence. To account for the possibility that cities which join climate networks are systematically different from those that do not and control for self‐selection induced bias, three statistical techniques—propensity score matching, Heckman full information maximum likelihood, and instrumental variables—are employed to estimate the “treatment effect” of participation. Results suggest that impact is network specific: ICLEI membership causes small to moderate increases in cities’ GHG‐relevant activity, whereas the MCPA has no such effect. The characteristics of each network are evaluated in light of these findings.

Promoting positive parenting in the context of homelessness.

Recent national reports suggest that nearly 1,000,000 families with children experience homelessness and that this number is rising (National Center on Family Homelessness, 2009; U.S. Conference of Mayors, 2010; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2011). Families experiencing homelessness are disproportionately more likely to have experienced economic, health, and social risk factors. These experiences can adversely influence the parent-child relationship. The purpose of this article is to (a) review the literature on the determinants and contextual issues of parenting in shelters; (b) describe specific programs that are focused on positive parenting in the context of homelessness; and (c) provide practice, research, and policy recommendations for supporting positive parenting among families living without homes.

Health Impact Assessments A Tool for Designing Climate Change Resilience Into Green Building and Planning Projects

Historical records have documented considerable changes to the global climate, with significant health, economic, and environmental consequences. Climate projections predict more intense hurricanes; increased sea level rise; and more frequent and more intense natural disasters such as heat waves, heavy rainfall, and drought in the future (1; 2). The coast along the Gulf of Mexico is particularly vulnerable to many of these environmental hazards and at particular risk when several strike simultaneously—such as a hurricane disrupting electricity transmission during a heat wave. Due to its significant contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the building sector already plays an important role in climate change mitigation efforts (e.g., reducing emissions). For example, voluntary programs such as the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Rating System (3), the Architecture 2030 Challenge (4), the American College and University Presidents' Climate Commitment (5), and the Clinton Climate Initiative (6) focus almost exclusively on reducing energy consumption and increasing renewable energy generation. Mandatory regulations such as the International Energy Conservation Code (7), the International Green Building Code (8), and CalGreen (9) also emphasize GHG emission reduction targets. This leadership role is necessary. After all, the United States EPA estimates that the building sector accounts for 62.7% of total annual GHG emissions in the U.S., when the construction sector, facility operations, and transportation are factored in. In fact, the construction sector alone is the third largest industrial emitter of GHGs after the oil and gas and chemical industries, contributing 1.7% of total annual emissions (10; 11). As significant as these contributions appear, the built environment's true contribution to climate change is much larger than the GHG emissions attributed to building construction and operations. It is also a major determinant of which populations are vulnerable to climate change-related hazards, such as heat waves and flooding (12; 13). Architecture and land use planning can therefore be used as tools for building community resilience to the climate-related environmental changes underway (13). Climate change regulations and voluntary programs have begun to incorporate requirements targeting the built environment's ability to work in tandem with the natural environment to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect its occupants from the health consequences of a changing climate. For example, 11 states have incorporated climate change adaptation goals into their climate action plans (14). In 2010, the not-for-profit organization ICLEI: Local Governments for Sustainability launched a climate change adaptation program (15) to complement their existing mitigation program, which supports municipalities who have signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement (16). New tools have been introduced to measure community vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. One of these tools, Health Impact Assessments (or HIAs), has emerged over the past decade as a powerful methodology to provide evidence-based recommendations to decision makers and community planning officials about the likely health co-benefits and co-harms associated with proposed policies and land use development proposals (17). While HIAs are becoming a more common feature of community planning efforts, this paper introduces them as an approach to designing climate change resilience into specific building projects. HIAs have been used in Europe and other parts of the world for decades to provide a science-based, balanced assessment of the risks and benefits to health associated with a proposed policy or program (18). In the U.S., they have been used over the past decade to evaluate transit-oriented developments, urban infill projects, and California's capand-trade legislation, among other topics (17; 19). To date, HIAs have been used mainly to inform large-scale community planning, land use, industrial, and policy decisions. However, the recommendations generated through the HIA process often bring to light previously unforeseen vulnerabilities, whether due to existing infrastructure, building technology, or socio-economic conditions. Designers can make use of the HIA process and its resulting recommendations to prioritize design/retrofit interventions that will result in the largest co-benefits to building owners, the surrounding community, and the environment. An HIA focused on the health impacts of climate change will likely generate recommendations that could enhance the longevity of a building project's useful life; protect its property value by contributing to the resilience of the surrounding community; and result in design decisions that prioritize strategies that maximize both short-term efficiencies and long-term environmental, economic, and social value.

A Line in the Sand: Oral Arguments

Abstract Not since Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005), has there been the level of interest in property rights in the U.S. Supreme Court as there was on December 2, 2009, during the oral arguments in Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Department of Environmental Protection et al. The case focuses on whether Florida’s Supreme Court effected a so-called “judicial taking” when it upheld the state’s actions to renourish a beach along the Florida Panhandle. More than a dozen organizations filed amicus briefs supporting the beachfront property owners, including the National Association of Home Builders, the Cato Institute, and the Pacific Legal Foundation. On the other side, there were attorneys general from 26 states, the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and the American Planning Association.

A Friend of the Court:Massachusetts v. EPA

Abstract It seems so long ago. In August 2006, the American Planning Association joined the U.S. Conference of Mayors, National Association of Counties, International Municipal Lawyers Association, and the cities of Seattle; Albuquerque; Burlington,Vermont; and San Francisco to file an amicus brief in the seminal climate change case, Massachusetts v. EPA. Many believe Justice Stevens's decision for the 5–4 majority was a watershed moment, acknowledging a truth that today both presidential candidates agree with.

The Maturing Mayoral Role in Education

Edelstein, F. (2006). Mayoral leadership and involvement in education: An action guide for success. Washington, DC: U.S. Conference of Mayors. Edelstein, F., & LaRock, J. D. (2003, October 1). Takeovers or toeholds? Mayors don’t need to run the schools to make them better. Education Week, pp. 34, 44. Friedman, T. L. (2005). The world is flat. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Hodgkinson, H. (2003). Leaving too many children behind. Washington, DC: Institute for Educational Leadership. Kirst, M. W. (2002). Mayoral influence, new regimes and public school governance. Philadelphia: Consortium for Policy Research in Education. National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk. Washington, DC: U.S Department of Education. Rothstein, R. (2004). Class and schools. Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. Usdan, M. (2005). The surprise architects of an intrusive federal role. School Administrator, 62, 49–50.

Honolulu, US Filter Receive Award From US Mayors

This article reports that the US Conference of Mayors has presented an Outstanding Achievement Award to the City and County of Honolulu, Hawaii, and US Filter Operating Services for their 20‐ year partnership that helps preserve the island of Oahu's drinking water resources and provides high‐quality water for area industries.

Grassroots Democracy: Putting the Public Back into Public Education

Even though decisions regarding a child's education are best placed as close to the school, home, and community as possible, today's schools tend to be governed by school boards that are far removed from their communities. Mr. Cunningham calls for a fundamental change in the educational governance system -- one that restores the traditions of grassroots democracy and local control. BALANCING public interests is a long-standing and contentious issue in American politics. Indeed, it dates back to the founding of the republic. Legitimate disputes exist between political parties, socioeconomic groups, races, cultures, value and belief systems, regions, and so on. And these disputes have typically played themselves out in the United States by means of grassroots democracy -- a cherished tradition -- in which every citizen is invited to participate and play a role in influencing decisions. One of the foundational beliefs regarding democracy is that, through widespread participation and representation, decisions will be made that best represent the interests of diverse groups. Grassroots democracy and local control depend on the freedom to participate and to have input into decisions that influence the institutions that serve the community. The further you remove decision making from the locality, the more you endanger the interests and sense of responsibility of individual citizens. These concepts of grassroots participation can be found in the writings of Rousseau, Jefferson, de Tocqueville, Dewey, and many others who have argued for the importance of a participatory society. Loss of Public Confidence Today, the very delicate balance between order and liberty that our modern democracy has sought to maintain is being threatened by the growing influence of politically powerful interest groups in American education. Citizens are becoming increasingly alienated as they see their government increasingly dominated by special-interest groups. Indeed, the rise of these powerful interest groups has weakened the sense of localism and led to feelings of discontent, frustration, disaffection, and ultimately cynicism regarding schooling and educators. These negative attitudes lead to diminished citizen participation and so become self-fulfilling prophecies when organized interest groups step in to fill the void. This pattern runs counter to our tradition of grassroots democracy and breeds inequality in political representation. Education today suffers from an undue responsiveness to private interest groups rather than a focus on the idea of the public good. As a result, private interests, politicians, and bureaucrats dominate policy making to the detriment of the wider public interest. Since the publication of A Nation at Risk, businesspeople and politicians have played an unprecedented role in setting policy for and reforming American education. Beyond the obvious education summits, political and business leaders work to influence education through such organizations as the National Governors' Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National Alliance of Business, the Committee for Economic Development, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Business Roundtable, to name but a few. Such interest groups have produced hundreds of reports highly critical of American education and educators, and many of their recommendations are now being adopted. In 1932 there were approximately 128,000 school districts. This number has shrunk to perhaps 15,000, even though the population has almost doubled. Approximately 80% of these are very small districts with under 2,000 students. That means that the vast majority of America's children attend schools that are governed by school boards that are far removed from their local schools and communities. School board candidates in some cities have spent more than $10,000 in campaign funds and work to secure political allies and make use of political consultants. …

U.S. Conference of Mayors

U.S. Conference of Mayors

Responding to ambiguity: HIV communication campaigns for gay and bisexual African Americans

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that "men of color account for nearly 35% of all AIDS cases diagnosed among men who have sex with men" (U.S. Conference of Mayors and the U.S. Conference of Local Health Officers, 1993). These rates are particularly high among rural populations in the South (Berry, 1993; Lam & Lui, 1994). The purpose of the following discussion is to analyze communication strategies that are being used to respond to these high percentages among African American men who sleep with men (MWSWM), including those who do and do not identify as gay. ~ Toward that end, this article will lay out the central communication issues important for HIV education designed for these target populations and report the findings of a research project that examined prevention programs throughout Alabama, a state that has a troubled history of race relations and public health and is currently experiencing disproportionately high rates of HIV/AIDS among African American MWSWM. Research on the state's efforts reveals that prevention programs for these communities are rare, and those that do exist are in early stages of development; this discussion concludes with a presentation of a well established, successful program in nearby Atlanta to illust rate a future direction for outreach to African American MWSWM in the South/

Roosevelt, Mayors and the New Deal Regime: The Origins of Intergovernmental Lobbying and Administration

The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), founded in 1933 to give big city mayors an effective organizational base for lobbying Congress and coordinating with executive branch agencies, was a major force in New Deal politics. It lobbied Congress and the White House to support stronger urban programs and federal-city links. The USCM also acted as an informal extension of the federal bureaucracy by providing program information to municipalities and feedback about implementation and policy impact to the federal agencies involved in urban affairs. The close political relationship between FDR and the USCM was not only a central part of the New Deal effort to create a stronger administrative state, it also set a pattern of politics in national urban policy that would persist until the early 1980s.

Social Support of Homeless and Housed Mothers: A Comparison of Temporary and Permanent Housing Arrangements

Social Support of Homeless and Housed Mothers: A Comparison of Temporary and Permanent Housing Arrangements* Bethany L. Letiecq,** Elaine A. Anderson, and Sally A. Koblinsky This study compared the social support of 115 low-income housed mothers and 92 homeless mothers residing in emergency shelters (n = 31), transitional housing units (n = 44), and doubled-up arrangements (n = 17). All mothers had a preschool child in the Head Start program and the majority of the sample was African American. Results revealed that homeless mothers in emergencyshelters and transitional-housing had significantly less contact with friends and relatives, could count on fewer people in times of need, and received less help from their families over a six-month period than housed mothers. Findings suggest that family service workers should devise strategies to help homeless families access and mobilize existing familial supports and develop new social support networks. Additional implications for policy development and practice are discussed. Key Words: Head Start, homeless families, social support. Homeless families, generally headed by single mothers, are the fastest growing population among the homeless. Although accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, one study found that homeless families accounted for 43% of the sheltered homeless population in 1993 (U.S. Conference of Mayors, 1993). The Institute of Medicine (1988) further estimated that as many as one hundred thousand children are homeless every night. The recognition of family homelessness as a serious and growing social problem has resulted in several studies documenting the root causes of family homelessness (e.g., McChesney, 1992; Rossi, 1989; Wright, 1989) and the characteristics of homeless mothers and children (e.g., Bassuk & Rosenberg,1988; Shinn & Weitzman, 1996). Although previous studies have found that individual factors such as mental illness and substance abuse enhance families' likelihood of experiencing homelessness (e.g., Buckner, Bassuk, & Zima, 1993; Robertson, 1991), less is known about the relationship between homelessness and family variables such as social support. In general, social support is believed to enhance an individual's subjective well-being, buffer the negative effects of stress, facilitate positive coping, and strengthen family functioning (McLoyd, 1990; Rook, 1984). When social support is lacking, families who are vulnerable to homelessness may be left without a critical safety net to catch them before they lose their permanent housing (Bassuk & Rosenberg, 1988; McChesney, 1992; Shinn, Knickman, & Weitzman, 1991). The experience of homelessness may also strain existing social support because the sheltered homeless may live at great distances from their home communities and families, and may be more demanding of their friends' and families' resources. Finally, limited social support may hinder the sheltered homeless family's efforts to return to permanent housing. To provide a more precise framework for investigating social support, Barrera (1986) identified three concepts. The first, social embeddedness, refers to an individual's connections with significant in a social network, including the size, proximity, and/or amount of contact with network members. A second concept, perceived social support, is defined as the cognitive appraisal of being reliably connected to others (p. 416), and incorporates the perceived availability and adequacy of support. The last concept, enacted support, addresses the actual assistance provided by members of one's social environment. Over the past decade, several studies have attempted to investigate the relationship between social support and family homelessness. In one study of Boston homeless families, Bassuk and Rosenberg (1988) found that homeless families had significantly smaller social networks than housed families, as well as fewer extended family members living nearby. …