Media

Effective Student Discipline

Keeping kids in class
September 25, 2011
Sharon N. Hill - Georgia Appleseed Center for Law & Justice

The late Art Linkletter (and then Bill Cosby) made us laugh by pointing out that “kids say the darnedest things.” Kids, being kids, are still saying (and doing) the darnedest things, especially in our public schools. But it is no laughing matter. Often these words and deeds result in the child being suspended from school and, perhaps, referred to juvenile court. Read the Full Article...

Georgia Schools Not Making the Grade With Discipline Practices, New Report Finds
July 7, 2011
Chandra R. Thomas - Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

The Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice is pushing for some major changes in how discipline is doled out in Georgia's public schools. The recommendations come on the heels of the Atlanta-based non-profit organization's release last month of its final student discipline report titled Effective School Discipline: Keeping Kids in Class. Read the Full Article...

Are minority and poor kids disciplined more harshly in Georgia schools?
June 16, 2011
Maureen Downey - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

One of the most volatile topics on this blog is school discipline and whether there's too much of it, too little and whether it's applied equitably and sensibly. The Georgia Appleseed Center for Law & Justice released a report Wednesday called "Effective Student Discipline: Keeping Kids in Class." Read the Full Article...

Georgia Out-Of-School Suspension Rate High
June 16, 2011
Maura Walz - Georgia Public Broadcasting

A new report says that the state's rate of out-of-school suspensions is one of the highest in the nation. Last school year, roughly 8 percent of Georgia students were suspended out of school at least once. And in some school districts, nearly one in five students receives out of school suspensions. Read the Full Article...

Survey for Georgia Teens and Parents: Your Views On School Discipline
November 5, 2010
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

A new survey to gauge what parents and students think about public school discipline is being fielded right now by the Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice. The non profit group is analyzing student discipline issues across the state. Read the Full Article...

JUSTGeorgia

Appleseed Centers Spark Gains with Legislation to Improve Children's Lives
April 8, 2011
Appleseed

This week, New Mexico Appleseed celebrated a victory for low-income children in New Mexico after Gov. Susana Martinez signed the nation's first mandatory breakfast-in-the-classroom bill. The bill's passage means that any school in which 85 percent of the children are eligible for free-or-reduced meals would be required to serve breakfast after school starts. Read the Full Article...

The Child Protection and Public Safety Act Gains Commitment for Action in 2012
March 29, 2011
JUSTGeorgia

This week, the Child Protection and Public Safety Act (Children’s Code Rewrite) received commitments from Governor Nathan Deal, as well as the Georgia House and Senate leadership, to ready the measure for a vote in 2012. Read the Full Article...

Can the new council plug the school to prison pipeline?
March 10, 2011
Laverne Lewis Gaskins & Sharon N. Hill, Georgia Appleseed - The Valdosta Daily Times

In a promising show of solidarity, the leadership of all three branches of Georgia’s government recently joined together to endorse the creation of the 2011 Special Council on Criminal Justice Reform. Read the Full Article...

Additional Cuts Will Close a Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and Hinder the Judicial Systems' Ability to Handle Caseloads
March 8, 2011
2020 Georgia

The release of Choice 15 and 16 of 20 Choices for Georgia’s Future speaks to the consequences a cuts-only approach will have on the lives of youth offenders already in the juvenile justice system and the courts infrastructure. Read the Full Article...

Legal and social experts push for family counseling over incarceration for juveniles
August 19, 2010
Carroll County Times-Georgian

Carroll County child advocates recently told a Georgia Senate subcommittee that when dealing with juvenile crimes known as “status offenses,” counseling for the entire family of the youth should be an alternative to locking the child up with more serious delinquents. Read the Full Article...

Maintaining School Safety & Opportunity
August 19, 2010
Appleseed

Ensuring educational opportunity for all students requires public schools to accomplish two goals at once: maintaining a safe learning environment while providing effective discipline for those children whose non-violent problem behaviors can be remedied at school. Read the Full Article...

Getting Smarter
August 14, 2010
Savannah Morning News

Georgia's juvenile law code should be overhauled to give state judges more options that get at the heart of bad behavior. Child advocates in Georgia are asking a valid question: Would an "unruly child"--found to have skipped school or imbibed alcohol or run away from home--be better helped by jail time or by services? Read the Full Article...

Children in Need of Services
August 10, 2010
Juvenile Justice Information Exchange

Anyone passing by room 450 at Georgia’s capitol on Monday probably thought lawmakers were talking about facial parts. The Senate Judiciary Committee was actually discussing CHINS—the acronym for Children in Need of Services—an important concept in the rewrite of the state’s juvenile code. Read the Full Article...

Guest Column - Juvenile Code Re-Write:It's About Time
June 2009
Voices for Georgia's Children

Just prior to adjournment of the Georgia General Assembly's 2009 session, I introduced SB 292 - the Child Protection and Public Safety Act - a bill intended to help the state revise its Juvenile Code. This is an important piece of legislation designed to improve the manner in which our courts interact with children. Read the Full Article...

Senator Hamrick to introduce Child Protection & Public Safety Act
April 2, 2009
JUSTGeorgia

State Senator Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton) today initiated a sweeping revision of the state's Juvenile Code by introducing a 228-page bill designed to modernize and streamline the 38-year-old crazy quilt of laws that govern the way the state dals with children who are pulled into the state's civil and criminal justice system. Read the Full Article...

Juvenile code revision proposed; some hope for legislative revision this session
January 18, 2009
John Bailey - Rome News-Tribune

Almost everyone agrees that Georgia’s juvenile justice system needs to be revamped, but there appears to be some disagreement about how it should be done. "Common Wisdom: Making the Case for a New Georgia Juvenile Code" was released in December by the Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice and Just Georgia, a nonprofit legal advocacy group for children. Read the Full Article...

Other Topics

BC classes to focus on legal issues
August 28, 2009
Marcia McRae

Bainbridge College students will have the opportunity during fall semester to learn from two women attorneys who work with the Georgia Appleseed project, an organization that annually recognizes distinguished pro bono leadership that exemplifies the organization’s values and goals for its mission. Read the Full Article...

Georgia Appleseed's Heir Property Project
May 2009
Crystal Chastain Baker, Georgia Appleseed - Georgia State Bar Real Property Law Section Newsletter

Heir property is a relatively unknown term in the Georgia legal community. When "heir property" is mentioned, people usually look up to the sky, wondering perhaps why a strong public-interest law center and notable campaigner for social justice like Georgia Appleseed is concerned with 'Air Property.' Well, the precise reason is because an entire group of Georgians who are disadvantaged and marginalized face the threat of great social and economic losses due partly to a lack of knowledge about the issue of Heir Property. Read the Full Article...

Heir Property Project
Summer 2009
Crystal Chastain Baker, Georgia Appleseed - Georgia State Bar Real Property Law Section Newsletter

All real estate attorneys have seen those properties- the ones with titles that seem impossible to clear, with dozens of unknowns and generations of families spread throughout the country. As practitioners, most of us call our title insurance companies with bated breath hoping for answers other than the ones we suspect are inevitable in these situations. Read the Full Article...

GUEST COLUMN: Time to tell truth about schools
May 25, 2009
Cathy Henson - Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Richard Anderson, the chief executive of Delta Air Lines, recently was quoted in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution explaining why many of the Northwest Airlines employees relocating to Georgia from Minnesota will look for private schools for their children. Read the Full Article...

Georgia Appleseed Tackles Heir Property
May 14, 2009 - National Appleseed

As part of its ongoing Heir Property Project, Georgia Appleseed recently hosted a daylong workshop in Liberty Country, GA, a rural county along the coast, to educate landowners on how to secure - and protect - clear title to inherited property. Read the Full Article...

Georgia Appleseed Announces Good Apple Award Honorees
March 2009 - Georgia Appleseed

Georgia Appleseed Center for Law and Justice proudly announces its inaugural Good Apple Award recipients are Teri P. McClure, UPS Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Frank S. Alexander, Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law. The Awards will be presented at a dinner on Thursday, April 16, 2009 at the Park Tavern Garden Tent at Piedmont Park beginning at 6:30 P.M.. Read the Full Article...

Georgia Appleseed encourages dialogue on immigration reform
January 2009 - La Voz

Because they are designed to reflect goals and aspirations, mission statements have a tendency to sound idealistic, even overblown. But when you listen to Executive Director Sharon Hill, you realize that Georgia Appleseed is one social justice agency that has devised a concrete strategy to make those goals a reality. Read the Full Article...