Alicia Stenard believes that a topic percolating just below the consciousness of the American public — school lockdowns — needs to be addressed. As a longtime Albany teacher, she worried about the effects lockdown drills had on her students’ psyches.
“The county is not in the business of finding children for families. Rather, it is finding families for children,” says foster mother Sharon Astyk. “That sounds like a small difference but it’s an important distinction. The county is child-centered. This is not about going and picking out a kid.”
Sharon Astyk has this to say to people who are considering becoming foster parents: “If you ever want to run a marathon or climb Mount Everest, this is the home-life version of that.” She stressed, “You can do it as an ordinary person.”
More foster homes are needed in Albany County not just because the number of children in the system has increased but also because 2018 federal legislation, which prioritizes family-based foster care, will limit reimbursement for certain residential placements in New York in 2021.
The requirement for a child’s placement should be a loving home. To deny children in need access to such homes because of prejudice codified into government rules is against the founding principles of our nation.
For some of the kids from Albany’s South End Café, their trip next week to the Altamont Fair will be the first time they have seen a cow, or horse, or goat, or sheep.
The Knox town park will be upgraded over the next few years, with a new playground that people with disabilities can use, to be put in with grant money from New York State.
Jennifer Romano says her child, a first-grader, suffered “a violent attack of a sexual nature” on the playground by a classmate at Westmere Elementary School, so she is now advocating for better outdoor supervision and more exterior cameras.
We support a project to build a new playground at Voorheesville Elementary School, replacing the quarter-century old one, but urge that this time the playground not be built beneath power lines.
The child’s tale about stone soup is being played out in Westerlo as people are contributing to a farm that Dennis Peterson is setting up for his autistic children, hoping it will serve others with disabilities as well.
