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Ten innocent lives were lost in Santa Fe, Texas on Friday. This marks the 22nd school shooting this year including the mass casualty incidents in Parkland, Florida and now in Texas. No matter the scale, these incidents have traumatized our nation’s school children.

Communities In Schools hosted the inaugural Milliken Dialogues and Policy Summit on April 25, 2018 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.; the theme of which was college and career readiness. At the Summit, a new Gallup poll commissioned on behalf of Communities In Schools was released.

This year, in memory of two CIS alums who died attempting to rescue neighbors during the same hurricane, Communities In Schools will give the Tomas Carreon and Alonso Guillén Distinguished Service Award to a CIS alum who exemplifies the selfless bravery Tomas, Alonso, and VJ personify.  

The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have sparked a long overdue national conversation about   conduct and relationships in the workplace. While the conversation has initially focused on the issue of gender inequity, we must bring the same attention to how we can value differences and ensure fairness when it comes to issues of race, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and physical ability. 

Girls' Empowerment Group at Capital High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico, hosts an impressive cast of rotating weekly female speakers.

The CIS National Office will engage in the national dialogue over school safety that has gripped the nation since the school shooting in Parkland, Florida

Every February, the conversation around racial representation in the media reignites. This year, the release of Marvel’s much anticipated Black Panther has been a shot in the arm for the movement—inspiring hashtags such as #Isawmyself that accompany social media storytelling about the first time a young person of color saw themselves reflected in media or popular culture. While this is a vital conversation, it should expand into other other avenues that affect they way our young people percieve themselves. 

When Chris unexpectedly lost his mother his sophomore year, he sank into a depression. “I was just going through the motions of high school. I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know how to apply,” he says in retrospect.

Sometimes those with the most to bear are the least equipped to manage their burden on their own. For many, a mentor is someone who altered a career path and who gave good advice. But for first-generation college students, having a mentor can mean the difference between success and failure.   

Students can expect a lot from CIS—academic and emotional support, a caring adult, resources—but neither CIS of Central Texas site coordinator Naedean Herrera nor aspiring site coordinator Dominique Edwards anticipated finding a career.