Daily Lumina News 040524

One of the biggest obstacles stopping students in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District from going to college is fear, say school officials. Fear of the unknown, fear of leaving Cleveland, fear of getting out of their comfort zone.
Enter Anthony Brown, who leads college bus tours with the energy of a cheerleader and a mission to change that mindset. The tours are part of the district’s ‘Parent University,’ an initiative aimed at boosting Cleveland’s low college enrollment rate.

Recruiting and retaining Black teachers has taken on new urgency in recent years as California lawmakers try to ease the state’s teacher shortage.
While the state and individual school districts are creating initiatives and programs to recruit teachers of color, educators and advocates argue that further action is necessary.

A nationwide shift to clean energy has left West Virginia’s coal-fueled economy struggling.
But Jacob Hannah, CEO of the nonprofit Coalfield Development, envisions a different future—one that offers paid on-the-job training in growing industries like renewable energy, construction, manufacturing, re-use and recycling, and agriculture.

Congratulations! You just got accepted to college. The next notification you’ll receive: a financial aid offer, telling you what it will cost.
But experts say those financial aid letters are notoriously indecipherable and often misleading, making it difficult to determine college cost comparisons or even know how much you’ll owe. This episode of College Uncovered peels back the curtain on financial aid offers and provides advice on what students and parents can do to get the best deal.

The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor is proposing a new “disruptive activity policy” that prohibits people from interrupting campus events, activities, and other university operations. Once finalized, it’ll be one of the first policy updates at a public college in response to protests over the Israel-Hamas war.
The proposal reflects that Michigan leaders are taking a more stringent approach to handling a recent uptick in campus activism, a trend that’s playing out nationwide. Students, meanwhile, say the policy infringes on their free speech.

The rocky rollout of a new Free Application for Federal Student Aid has already forced almost a quarter of the nation’s states to bump back their local scholarship application deadlines. Now, U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona is urging them to move that goal post once again.
Many local officials say they’ll do what’s right for students, but they also note that pushing the deadline back too far could have its own unintended consequences.