The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is seeking to fund projects that directly serve or impact child education, safety and health and family economic stability.
The grant money assists public schools and non-profit, charitable or tax-exempt organizations via endowments, general operating support, research studies, public awareness, technology, lobbying and capital campaigns. Projects can benefit newborns, infants and preschoolers, elementary and secondary students including the homeless, low income and the disabled.
More information is available through the Dell Foundation.
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Five sisters were charged with fighting on a school bus earlier this month in Oakland Park, Fla., following an earlier altercation at the bus stop between one of the sisters and another student. The Broward Sheriff’s Office said the 11-year-girl left the bus stop after getting into the fight but caught up with the bus later and boarded along with her four siblings, two of which are also juveniles. The others are 18 and 23 years old, respectively. The onboard bus video shows the girls boarding the bus and fighting with another student despite the attempts of the bus driver to get them to leave.
Unfortunately, there is another current case from Georgia involving two sisters who beat up another school bus rider, as the school bus video shows.
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Student transportation in New York City has come under fire of late, especially on Staten Island, where earlier this year the school board voted to end school busing for seventh and eighth graders in response to budget cuts. Parents in Queens are still fuming after the New York City Department of Education announced similar cuts just 24 hours before the start of the new school year earlier this month. Many students are being forced to take several city buses each day to get to class and to make it home in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, in the Bronx, officials are trying to determine how a bus-load of special education students disappeared and was “incommunicado” for several hours. Some students did not arrive home until after 9 p.m.
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Police officers northeast of Pittsburgh may soon be riding school buses to be on the lookout for motorists that illegally pass stopped school buses that are loading or unloading students as well for misbehavior on board the bus. Leechburg Area School District Superintendent Jim Budzilek told the Valley News Dispatch that the idea was initially floated by Dan Clark, police chief of the nearby Gilpin Police Department. The school board was reportedly working with the three local police departments to develop a school bus safety program.
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The U.S. Border Patrol said an 18-year-old Mexican national illegally entered the country by hitching a ride on school bus operated by Deming (N.M.) Public Schools. The school district’s transportation director, Ray Trejo, said similar cases have occurred “from time to time.”
