Thu 7/14 @ 11:30AM
You wouldn’t know it by listening to our state legislature go on and on about guns and abortion and preventing that one trans girl plying high school sports in the entire state of Ohio from doing so, but education is probably the most important issue facing the state — and every other state.
Education is the best defense against a variety of social ills, from poverty to hunger to homelessness to drug abuse to violence. But those same factors often prevent kids from being able to succeed in school. That’s what the Ohio Department of Education’s Whole Child Framework hopes to address. It’s the premise of the Say Yes Cleveland program, which offers support services for kids beyond just classroom learning — services that assure they can be prepared to learn. And now these programs face an exploding mental health crisis.
That’s the situation the City Club forum “Supporting the Whole Child” will look at. They’ll ask “Is the whole child platform the solution to combat this crisis? And what can we learn from schools that have implemented this framework?”
Panelists include retired Cleveland Metropolitan School district teacher Meryl Johnson, now an elected member of the Ohio State School Board; Dr. Tracy Nájera, Executive Director of the Children’s Defense Fund – Ohio; and Wickliffe City School District superintendent Joseph Spiccia. The forum will be moderated by psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, Senior Advisor to the Schubert Center for Child Studies, at Case Western Reserve University.
The panel will be livestreamed starting at noon. If you have questions, you can tweet @TheCityClub or text 330.541.5794.
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