This is what we are reading, watching, listening to, and experiencing to fuel our growth and understanding.
Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity by Charles L. Marohn Jr.
The darling of the downtown revitalization crowd, but popular for a reason. We're all about reinvesting our time and money into our neighborhoods. The book has inspired an ongoing conversation here in Springfield, and you can even participate in online sessions to dive deeper.
Amazon Indiebound Lincoln Library
As Yet Untold
A national leader in public education policy and process, The Hunt Institute has branched out into podcasts. The first episode is a conversation with founder Governor Jim Hunt, with more inspiring episodes to come.
The Pandemic Reveals Racial Gaps in School Meal Access
Civil Eats compared data from big cities and the rural South in order to investigate access gaps to school meals. While many cities prioritized sites that were accessible for their students of color, the rural areas investigated here often did not. Overall, there are few national best practices or guidelines for meals when students cannot be served at school.
How Are They Faring: Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Lives of Young Children and Families in Massachusetts
The Saul Zaentz Early Education Initiative at Harvard happened to begin a longitudinal study with young children and families in 2017, and that data helped this publication accurately characterize the many impacts of the pandemic on families in 2020. Listen to a Hunt Institute panel discuss the results and the critical needs of early childhood education and childcare here.
The Effects of Police Violence on Inner-City Students
A deep-dive published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics. Using hyper-local data from Los Angeles high school students, the author explores the causal relationship between police violence and decreases in GPA, increased incidence of emotional disturbance, and lower rates of high school completion and college enrollment.
National Register of Historic Places Thematic Survey of Springfield's African-American Community, and the Central East Neighborhood, Springfield, Illinois
This is a DEEP dive into Black History in Springfield, from 1818 forward. Photos and maps, historical and contemporary, tell the story of settlement, riot, reconstruction, and resilience.
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