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The Toxic Schoolhouse is a collection of articles on chemical hazards endangering students, teachers, and staff in the education system of the United States and Canada. Some of the articles were originally published in a special issue of New Solutions: A Journal of Occupational and Environmental Policy , but all have been updated and several new articles have been added. The book is organized in three sections. The first describes problems ranging from the failures of coordination, monitoring, and siting of school buildings to the hazards of exposure to toxic substances, including lead and PCBs. The second section captures the voices of activists seeking change and describes community and union organizing efforts to improve school conditions. The third section covers policy \"solutions.\" The authors include academics, union staff and rank-and-file activists, parent organization leaders, and public health professionals. Preface Acknowledgments Introduction PART I ~ The Problem Chapter 1. Who’s in Charge of Children’s Environmental Health at School? Jerome Paulson and Claire Barnett Chapter 2. Who’s Sick at School: Linking Poor School Conditions and Health Disparities for Boston’s Children Tolle Graham, Jean Zotter, and Marlene Camacho June 2012 Update on Who’s Sick at School Report Tolle Graham, Jean Zotter, and Marlene Camacho Chapter 3. Failing Our Children: Lead in U.S. School Drinking Water Yanna Lambrinidou, Simoni Triantafyllidou, and Marc Edwards Chapter 4. PCBs in School—Persistent Chemicals, Persistent Problems Robert F. Herrick Update on PCBs in School Robert F. Herrick Chapter 5. Healthy School Siting and Planning Policies: Linking Public Health, Education, and the Environment Alison K. Cohen PART II ~ Organizing for Change Chapter 6. “Serving Two Masters”—An Interview with School Teacher and Union Organizer Debra Askwith Madeleine Kangsen Scammell and Ema Rodrigues Chapter 7. “We Can’t Give Up, It’s Too Important”—Health and Safety Stories from Canadian and U.S. Schools Dorothy Wigmore Chapter 8. New Jersey’s Union-Centered Healthy Schools Work Eileen Senn Chapter 9. Negotiating Indoor Air—Case Report on Negotiation of Teachers’ Union, School Board on Air Contaminants Sarah Gibson and Charles Levenstein Chapter 10. School Custodians and Green Cleaners:Labor-Environment Coalitions and Toxics Reduction Laura Senier, Brian Mayer, Phil Brown, and Rachel Morello-Frosch PART III ~ Advances in Policy Chapter 11. Integrated Pest Management Policies in America’s Schools: Is Federal Legislation Needed? Andrea Kidd Taylor, Kyle Esdaille, and Jennifer Ames Chapter 12. Reducing Asthma Triggers in Schools: Recommendations for Effective Policies, Regulations, and Legislation Joan N. Parker Chapter 13. Building the New Schoolhouse: The Massachusetts School Building Authority Jennifer Ames and Charles Levenstein Contributors Index

\"All adults who are responsible for the care of children should be prepared for disasters. This guide provides caregivers, educators, and program staff with preparation tips and step-by-step responses to disaster situations that are based on national standards and best practices to keep children safe\"-- Provided by publisher.

Objective: To understand whether underserved populations attend to prescription warning label (PWL) instructions, examine the importance of PWL instructions to participants and describe the challenges associated with interpreting the information on PWLs. Methods: Adults from an underserved population (racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with low income, older adults) who had a history of prescription medication use and were able to understand English took part in semi-structured interviews. Participants were presented with eight different prescription bottles with an attached PWL. Participants were asked, \"If this prescription was yours, what information would you need to know about the medicine?\" The number of participants who attended to the warning labels was noted. Other questions assessed the importance of PWLs, the challenges with understanding PWLs, and ways a pharmacist could help participant understanding of the PWL. Results: There were 103 participants. The mean age was 50.25 years (SD=18.05). Majority attended to the PWL. Participants not currently taking medications and who had limited health literacy were likely to overlook the warning labels. Majority rated the warning instructions to be extremely important (n=86, 83.5 %), wanted the pharmacist to help them understand PWLs by counseling them on the information on the label (n=63, 61.2%), and thought the graphics made the label information easy to understand. Conclusions: PWLs are an important method of communicating medication information, as long as they are easily comprehensible to patients. In addition to placing PWLs on prescription bottles, health care providers need to counsel underserved populations on medication warnings, especially individuals with limited health literacy who are not currently using a prescription medication.

\"Security expert Kenneth S. Trump outlines school security issues and provides nuts-and-bolts strategies for preventing violence and preparing for crises. Includes a companion website\"-- Provided by publisher.

The Future of Nursing explores how nurses' roles, responsibilities, and education should change significantly to meet the increased demand for care that will be created by health care reform and to advance improvements in America's increasingly complex health system. At more than 3 million in number, nurses make up the single largest segment of the health care work force. They also spend the greatest amount of time in delivering patient care as a profession. Nurses therefore have valuable insights and unique abilities to contribute as partners with other health care professionals in improving the quality and safety of care as envisioned in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted this year. Nurses should be fully engaged with other health professionals and assume leadership roles in redesigning care in the United States. To ensure its members are well-prepared, the profession should institute residency training for nurses, increase the percentage of nurses who attain a bachelor's degree to 80 percent by 2020, and double the number who pursue doctorates. Furthermore, regulatory and institutional obstacles-including limits on nurses' scope of practice-should be removed so that the health system can reap the full benefit of nurses' training, skills, and knowledge in patient care. In this book, the Institute of Medicine makes recommendations for an action-oriented blueprint for the future of nursing.

\"A timely investigation of the history, legislation, and perpetrators of school violence, this guide debunks the myths and misconceptions about this terrible problem of national concern\"-- Provided by publisher.

As the incomes of affluent and poor families have diverged over the past three decades, so too has the educational performance of their children. But how exactly do the forces of rising inequality affect the educational attainment and life chances of low-income children? In Whither Opportunity? a distinguished team of economists, sociologists, and experts in social and education policy examines the corrosive effects of unequal family resources, disadvantaged neighborhoods, insecure labor markets, and worsening school conditions on K-12 education. This groundbreaking book illuminates the ways rising inequality is undermining one of the most important goals of public education—the ability of schools to provide children with an equal chance at academic and economic success. The most ambitious study of educational inequality to date, Whither Opportunity? analyzes how social and economic conditions surrounding schools affect school performance and children’s educational achievement. The book shows that from earliest childhood, parental investments in children’s learning affect reading, math, and other attainments later in life. Contributor Meredith Phillip finds that between birth and age six, wealthier children will have spent as many as 1,300 more hours than poor children on child enrichment activities such as music lessons, travel, and summer camp. Greg Duncan, George Farkas, and Katherine Magnuson demonstrate that a child from a poor family is two to four times as likely as a child from an affluent family to have classmates with low skills and behavior problems – attributes which have a negative effect on the learning of their fellow students. As a result of such disparities, contributor Sean Reardon finds that the gap between rich and poor children’s math and reading achievement scores is now much larger than it was fifty years ago. And such income-based gaps persist across the school years, as Martha Bailey and Sue Dynarski document in their chapter on the growing income-based gap in college completion. Whither Opportunity? also reveals the profound impact of environmental factors on children’s educational progress and schools’ functioning. Elizabeth Ananat, Anna Gassman-Pines, and Christina Gibson-Davis show that local job losses such as those caused by plant closings can lower the test scores of students with low socioeconomic status, even students whose parents have not lost their jobs. They find that community-wide stress is most likely the culprit. Analyzing the math achievement of elementary school children, Stephen Raudenbush, Marshall Jean, and Emily Art find that students learn less if they attend schools with high student turnover during the school year – a common occurrence in poor schools. And David Kirk and Robert Sampson show that teacher commitment, parental involvement, and student achievement in schools in high-crime neighborhoods all tend to be low. For generations of Americans, public education provided the springboard to upward mobility. This pioneering volume casts a stark light on the ways rising inequality may now be compromising schools’ functioning, and with it the promise of equal opportunity in America.

\"Creating a truly national school system has, over the past fifty years, reconfigured local expectations and practices in American public education. Through a 50-year examination of Alexandria, Virginia, this book reveals how the 'education state' is nonetheless shaped by the commitments of local political regimes and their leaders and constituents\"-- Provided by publisher.

Born out of the call by Virginia Tech's Zenobia Hikes for urgent action to stem the tide of societal violence, and the NASPA \"Enough is Enough\" campaign that she inspired, this book provides guidance on how to be proactive in preventing violence, and be prepared to provide a comprehensive response to a crisis. Enough is Enough presents first-hand accounts and experienced counsel from professionals who have lived through a violent incident and continue to deal with its aftermath. They cover violence, suicide prevention, and mental health promotion, in an integrated way, and offer a comprehensive plan to create a campus-wide system for collecting information about students at risk for self-harm or violence toward others.