At the National People’s Action Conference this year, groups will focus on improving neighborhood schools by taking their concerns directly to the Department of Education officials at a meeting scheduled for Monday, March 29.

NPA leaders are concerned about long standing problems that are being ignored by No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) mandatory procedures and funding allocations. NCLB’s goal is to increase public school accountability, but it ignores the programs and services public schools need to improve. NCLB was passed in 2002.

One problem targeted by NPA leaders is overcrowded schools. In many low- income urban neighborhoods, schools are so overcrowded, districts are violating building and fire codes with the high numbers of students they house.

“Classes are held in school hallways because there aren’t enough classrooms,” said Pablo Rendon, a Brighton Park Neighborhood Council leader, about the condition of the schools in his neighborhood. “Chicago Public Schools has leased space from three Catholic churches to get more classrooms and lessen the overcrowding in schools in Brighton Park. A new school was built as well, but by the time it opened, it was already over recommended capacity.”

NPA leaders are also concerned about children’s desperate need for learning support tools and services. Programs to support students with special education needs have never been fully funded or fully enforced. Parents continually fight for their children’s rights to have a school day that offers them the opportunity to learn.

These issues are being ignored as law makers turn their attention to the requirements of NCLB. The law makes the issues of overcrowding and support services more urgent than ever because schools have to show their students are achieving, but do not have the facilities and services to actually help students learn.

“No Child Left Behind is bad for our kids, unfair to our teachers, and destructive to the entire public school system, said Dave Mossburger, a leader from Creston Neighborhood Organization/ Michigan Organizing Project, based in Grand Rapids.

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