Massachusetts

"Citizen Schools, a national nonprofit organization that partners with middle schools to expand the learning day for low-income students, announced a $250,000 grant from the Biogen Idec Foundation to help fund Citizen Schools' innovative STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) apprenticeship programs in Massachusetts and North Carolina."

"Started in 1965 as part of the War on Poverty, Head Start aims to address the social, emotional, and academic needs of more than a million children in classrooms nationwide as well as aid their families. Students learn ABCs, numbers, and science basics, most notably, in one Jamaica Plain classroom, about caterpillars. Head Start is one of a broad range of programs, such as those that provide housing for the poor and shelter for the homeless, that are beginning to suffer from the impact of sequestration, the term applied to sweeping federal spending cuts intentionally forged to be so dire that they would force Washington lawmakers to reach a compromise on reducing the nation's deficit."

"The Let�s Get Ready program has been awarded a $3,000 grant from the Betty Beland Greater Lawrence Summer Fund, a fund of the Essex County Community Foundation (ECCF). Let�s Get Ready will use the money to support its Lawrence program and help low-income and first-generation, college-bound students from the Greater Lawrence area attend college."

"Examples of housing instability include a student in the foster-care system or in a joint-custody situation, or families that face homelessness or are in temporary shelters due to an inability to pay rent or a mortgage. Lauren Greene, a representative of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), said homelessness looks different in the Berkshires than it does in urban areas, leading to a lower student mobility rate in the county when the two are compared."

"It can be as much as a three-month loss for kids from low-income families, a month for those in more advantaged situations. The difference? Middle-income families can afford tutors if a child needs such, they may take vacations that stimulate the brain, they may enroll their offspring in camps and other programs that keep them thinking. Head Start families may not be able to afford any of those things."

"Here in Massachusetts, Endicott College's Keys to Degrees program which has an 80 percent employment rate among graduates and has spawned almost a dozen similar programs at colleges around the nation holds real promise to help mothers and their children achieve their dreams together. It's the right thing and the smart thing to do."