NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) – Armed with garden hoes while others held bamboo seedlings, students gathered outside their school in Kenya’s capital. They hoped that the fully grown bamboo would help filter dirty air from one of Africa’s largest landfills.

More than 100 bamboo plantings grow around Dandora High School, which shares its name with a landfill that was declared full 23 years ago. Hundreds of trucks pass by each day, taking away more garbage.

Allan Sila, 17, said sitting in his classroom was like studying in a stinking latrine.

Every morning, acrid smoke from burning garbage fills the air, obstructing visibility and causing respiration problems for some students.

“Asthma is a common disease,” Sila said.

The school’s principal, Eutychus Maina, remembers that when he was sent to school last 12 months, he was greeted by stench and smoke. He knew he had to do something.

“My motivation for initiating the bamboo project at school was to alleviate the effects of landfill. It really pollutes the air we breathe,” he said.

He said he searched online and got here across the use of bamboo. He believes this can help reduce the number of cases of respiratory infections in society.

The United Nations and other organizations promote fast-growing bamboo because of its high carbon sequestration.

Aderiana Mbandi is an air quality research and policy expert at the United Nations Environment Programme, based in Nairobi. She said the effects of air pollution are felt in all parts of the body, including the brain, and the best way to reduce its effects is to minimize exposure.

The seedlings, which the students began planting in August last 12 months, are already three meters high. The giant bamboo variety is predicted to reach 40 feet when mature, depending on soil conditions.

Students hope that the bamboo will help transform the school grounds right into a green haven in the litter-ridden Dandora district.

The publicly funded school relies on donations to purchase the seedlings, which retail for 400 Kenyan shillings ($3) each.

However, the school management is decided to proceed the work until bamboo lines the 900-meter wall separating the school from the landfill.

The Dandora landfill occupies about 50 hectares (123 acres) of land and receives greater than 2,000 tons of waste day by day from around Nairobi, home to 4 million people.

Its stench might be smelled for kilometers (miles).

UNEP, in cooperation with the Stockholm Environment Institute, deployed sensors in the Dandora district from October to April to monitor pollution levels from the landfill.

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Of the 166 days monitored, only 12 days had average daytime air quality that was excellent, in line with World Health Organization guidelines.

Nairobi’s air can be polluted by emissions from used cars, which make up much of the city’s transport. Other pollutants include smoke produced by industries often positioned near residential areas.

Dandora School also plants trees, including jacaranda and grevillea.

Student Josiah Nyamwata called them easy to obtain and simple to plant. “Another advantage is that the trees will help improve air circulation around our school,” he said.

Air is just not the school’s only challenge. Dump vultures are a nuisance at mealtimes. Students protect their plates from theft.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The very last thing standing between Ashnaelle Bijoux and her college dream is the FAFSA form, a financial aid application that was supposed to help students get into college, but is as an alternative blocking her. She tried to report it over and over. It fails each time.

“I feel overwhelmed and stressed,” Bijoux, 19, said. The last time she tried this kind, she was close to tears. “I feel like I’m being held back.”

This spring, often a time of celebration for prime school graduates, was marred by the federal government’s botched rollout of the brand new FAFSA application. By May 1, students often know where they are going to go to college in the autumn. This 12 months, most still haven’t received financial aid offers. Three months before fall classes start, many individuals do not know where they are going to study or how they are going to pay for it.

“We are asking them to make perhaps one of their most important financial decisions – and the decisions that will have the greatest consequences for their future lives – without all the information,” said Justin Draeger, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

FAFSA, the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, has undergone a significant overhaul to make it simpler and shorter. But a series of mistakes by the Department of Education have made this tougher than ever, delaying college decisions for months and raising fears that a whole lot of hundreds of scholars will drop out of college altogether.

Across the United States, the number of scholars passing the FAFSA is down 29% from this time last 12 months, according to the National College Attainment Network, and the situation is even worse in schools with more low-income students. National College Attainment Network data.

The group’s CEO, Kim Cook, warned members of Congress this month of a potentially “catastrophic” decline in college enrollment that may make the pandemic decline appear mild.

According to Bijoux, of Norwich, Conn., FAFSA problems threaten to undermine the guarantees of upper education.

College is a probability for her to make the most of opportunities that weren’t available to her mother, who emigrated from Haiti to the United States as an adult. Bijoux hopes to change into a therapist and set a positive example for her three younger brothers.

If her FAFSA passes, she should qualify for enough financial aid to cover her $13,000-a-year tuition at Southern Connecticut State University. If not, she will be able to go to a area people college, but even that can require loans if she will be able to’t complete the FAFSA.

“That’s why it hurts, because you work so hard to go somewhere and do something and do something for yourself,” Bijoux said. “I believed I’d start at a four-year college after which work hard like I’ve done all my life. But it is not like that.”

The updated FAFSA form includes one section accomplished by students and one other by their parents. But when Bijoux finishes her part, nothing appears on her mother’s online account. He keeps trying, but nothing seems to change.

Similar problems have been reported across the country, together with many other errors that the Department of Education has sought to correct. Families calling customer support face long wait times or say the decision center has hung up on them.

“It sucks out all the momentum” for families trying to send their children to college, especially those that are combating the method for the primary time, said Anne Zinn, a counselor at Norwich Free Academy, where Bijoux attends school.

“I can only say, ‘Just be patient, just be patient,’ so many times before they throw up their hands and say, ‘Why am I doing this?’ I’ll just do it go discover a job,'” she said.

The implementation has faced bipartisan criticism in Congress and is being investigated on the request of Republicans. Last week, Richard Cordray, the federal student loan chief who oversaw the FAFSA update, announced he would step down at the tip of June.

Delays also pose a serious threat to universities.

Enrollment declines similar to those currently projected may lead to the collapse of many small colleges or require deep staff cuts. Some colleges are clamoring for emergency aid to stay afloat, said Angel Pérez, CEO of the National Association of College Admissions Counseling.

“If they don’t get checks from the federal government that would basically get them through next year, they won’t survive,” Pérez said.

The FAFSA has been a mainstay of student financial aid for many years. It is used to determine eligibility for the federal Pell Grant, grants for low-income students, and is required for federal student loans. Colleges and states also use the FAFSA to distribute their very own scholarships.

The FAFSA has long been maligned for being boring, difficult and intimidating for families without college experience. Congress passed laws in 2020 to simplify the shape. The Department of Education was ordered to reduce the variety of questions from greater than 100 to about 40 and alter the formula to extend help to more students.

Problems began to mount as soon as the brand new form went online in December, which was already several months late.

The first applications were incorrectly processed using outdated inflation calculations. A federal contractor later incorrectly calculated a distinct formula on greater than 200,000 claims. Each error caused delays, requiring students to wait longer for any financial aid information.

Even more troubling is a bug that prevented students from completing the shape if their parent didn’t have a Social Security number. Supporters say the system has excluded a whole lot of hundreds of scholars who’re U.S. residents or everlasting residents but whose parents should not.

The Department of Education announced Tuesday that it’s offering parents a brand new way to manually enter tax information. However, this week, some students reported that they were still unable to submit the shape.

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Federal education officials say they’re addressing persistent errors but are making progress. The agency said greater than 8 million student applications have already been processed and sent to universities, and latest applications are processed inside three days.

However, the wait isn’t over yet. It often takes several weeks for schools to prepare financial aid offers. Some universities have prolonged decision deadlines to give students more time to consider their options. Some, nonetheless, stuck to May 1, forcing students to select a college and make a non-refundable payment to keep their place, without knowing all of the scholarship opportunities available to them.

In West Virginia, Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency on Tuesday that permits students to receive state scholarships without the federal government having to process their FAFSA. West Virginia has the bottom college graduation rate within the nation, and the state’s FAFSA highschool graduation rate is now down nearly 40%, said Justice, a Republican.

“There’s really loads of kids sitting on the sidelines wondering, ‘Will I have the ability to go to college?’ – he said during a press conference.

In Baltimore, Camryn Carter waits to discover whether he can get a full ride to the University of Maryland or whether he faces tens of hundreds of dollars in student loans.

Carter, a top student and captain of his baseball and wrestling teams, sees college as a step in his life. He thinks back to the times he stood in line on the food market and had to put things back on the shelf because his mother couldn’t afford to pay the bill. The 18-year-old said graduating would give him stability he didn’t all the time have.

But when he looks at tuition, it’s intimidating. In addition to Maryland, he can also be considering McDaniel College, a non-public school in Maryland. If he enrolls there, he expects to borrow nearly $30,000 a 12 months.

“I try to make the best decisions now to ensure a good future,” he said. “I’m a little nervous that something won’t work out. But I am faithful.”

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Following recent clips circulating on social media highlighting black students’ learning gaps or lack of parental involvement, Ashley Thomas, an Indianapolis parent advocate and mother of three, says that is removed from the reality for a lot of black parents.

“A lot of times, a lot of us as Black parents, we hear negativity when something bad happens, or, ‘Oh, these parents aren’t showing up,’” Thomas said. BLACK ENTERPRISES.

“We’ve seen numerous TikToks about what parents are doing, but parents are doing the whole lot they will and so they’re literally changing the sport… and we’re patting parents on the back for that and saying, ‘Hey, that drum beat, you possibly can keep doing that.’

A brand new report from the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) entitled “Hear Us, Believe Us: Centering the Voices of African American Parents in K-12 Education.” confirms Thomas’s feelings with research on the subject offers a comprehensive evaluation of experiences, challenges and aspirations African American parents on race, college aspirations, parental involvement, and more.

“We are really excited about this work and the opportunity to elevate parent voices because too often we know that parent voices are silenced, but we know that they have been making a difference in education for decades,” said Dr. Meredith BL Anderson , said UNCF Director of K-12 Research TO BE.

Although UNCF just celebrated its eightieth anniversary^vol anniversary of highlighting minority students pursuing higher education, the organization also has K-12 Advocacy shoulder to ensure the subsequent generation is college ready.

“For the past 12 years, we have been elevating the voices of the Black community on a variety of issues related to K-12 education, from race to college readiness to equity,” Anderson said.

“So my role is to produce research reports, talk to community members – whether they’re parents, students, counselors, teachers – and make sure that we’re dismantling some of these deficit narratives when it comes to our Black communities, because we know that they are engaged, informed and ready to make a difference.”

UNCF’s Advocacy Division creates college preparation tools and has over 20 publications and resources on the elementary and middle school levels alone. The latest report, released May 2, highlights the critical role African American parents play in their children’s education. It emphasizes the importance of understanding their unique perspectives and incorporating them into educational policies and practices.

UNCF conducted the study on a national sample of black parents using telephone surveys and focus groups. The study also oversampled black parents in Chicago, Indianapolis, Atlanta, Houston, New Orleans and Memphis. Some of the important thing ones report arrangements include:

1. Black parents report higher academic aspirations for their child and fewer school suspensions when more Black teachers work in their child’s school. For black parents and guardians whose children attended schools where many or most of the teachers were black, the likelihood that their child received exclusionary discipline is sort of 3 times lower than when their child attended schools with fewer black teachers.
2. Black parents highly value higher education and are deeply involved in and invested in their children’s education with 84% of black parents feeling it is crucial for their child to attend and graduate from college, and over 80% checking their child’s homework and talking to their child’s teacher repeatedly. Meanwhile, 93% of Black parents say they need more opportunities to be involved in their child’s education and have input on education laws.
3. Black parents want to see more Black leaders in education. Seventy percent of African American parents and guardians consider that involving African American leaders and organizations will make school improvement efforts more practical.
4. School safety is a key issue for Black parents and caregiverswith 80% of African American parents and guardians rating safety because the most necessary factor when selecting a college.

Dr. Anderson emphasized that the report focuses on the importance of Black teachers.

“We also found that black parents felt more respected when there were more black teachers. So we know that Black teachers are important,” she said.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations designed to address the concerns and aspirations of African American parents.

Recommendations for the K-12 sector

• Invest unapologetically in Black teachers.
• Create more intentional opportunities for parent involvement.
• Create a learning environment that reflects African American history and culture.
• Partner with local organizations to provide resources and services for families.
• Value and treat support staff in school budgets.
• Prioritize student safety.

Recommendations for higher education

• Make intentional efforts to provide students and families with college opportunities.
• Create intentional pipelines of collaboration with districts and charter organizations to increase teacher diversity.
• Ensure teacher training programs include anti-racist and culturally relevant teaching practices.
• Collaborate with K-12 schools and districts to provide students and families with financial and literacy resources.

For Thomas, an Indianapolis parent advocate, her personal passion for investing in her children’s education has translated into her skilled work as founder and CEO of an organization Consulting by the ANT Foundation, which provides community organizing training, strategic community mobilization, and organizational leadership development. It encourages parents and educators to “co-parent” for their child’s educational success and to take seriously the calls to motion in this report.

“I tell parents all the time, ‘When I move, you move, that’s just the way it is.’ We need to work together in the community to make something happen. So we also need to make sure that these reports don’t just sit there; we use them to empower parents to move and have a voice at the federal level, at the state level, at the political level, at the school district level – whatever it is – because our voices are powerful.”

Access to full report here AND Tune in to stream BLACK ENTERPRISE on Friday, May 3 at noon ET platforms down podcast where Dr. Anderson discusses the report’s findings and Ms. Thomas gives parents recommendations on working with schools.