One week after wildfires forced Mareesha Backman’s family to evacuate, she brought her youngest son to a Spokane Public Schools day camp and took what the source describes as her first deep breath of relief. The Hechinger Report described the district’s free day camp for families affected by the fires, which began as part of a resource center offering donated supplies, insurance help, child supervision, and meals from the district’s summer lunch program.
A safe place for kids can also be the thing that lets parents handle the next impossible task.
Across this week’s reporting, the strongest stories were not about one miracle program. They were about adults making care concrete enough that a child could actually use it.
Spokane treated child care as disaster response
The Spokane-area wildfires forced at least 60,000 people to evacuate, scorched a little more than 10,000 acres, and left about 920 structures destroyed, The Hechinger Report reported. Spokane Public Schools said 169 students and 38 staff members lost homes, and an additional 20 students in the much smaller Nine Mile Falls School District also lost homes.
Within a day of the fire, Spokane Public Schools had begun coordinating with national nonprofits, local churches, and small businesses so families touched by the fires could use a free day camp, The Hechinger Report reported. More than 120 children were dropped off on the first day, and the number grew to 300 by midweek.
If your school or program ever has to respond to a crisis, the lesson worth keeping is simple: do not treat children’s routines as secondary. A safe place for kids can also be the thing that lets parents handle the next impossible task.
Philadelphia coaches are changing what toughness means
At Martin Luther King High School in Philadelphia, head football coach Jordan Alexander is trying to turn around a team that lost nine of 10 games in 2025 while also supporting players who have experienced loss at home, shootings involving friends, parental incarceration, housing instability, or contact with the law, Chalkbeat reported. Alexander is among dozens of Philadelphia-area football leaders trained in trauma-informed coaching methods.
The training is led by Valencia Peterson, known as Coach V, whose organization Open Door Abuse Awareness Prevention has trained 30 coaches and has 15 more signed up for this fall, Chalkbeat reported. Coaches receive a stipend and continuing education credit for 30 hours of cognitive science coursework.
At Vaux Big Picture High School, Coach Jordan Holbert had players sit at desks with helmets beside notebooks and circle emotions from a handwritten list, Chalkbeat reported. At M.L.K., Alexander now asks players whether they are in a red brain or blue brain state, using red for anger-driven decision-making and blue for calm thinking.
New York’s child care promise depends on paying providers
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged $43 million to rebuild staffing at the Education Department’s Division of Early Childhood Education as payment delays threatened the rollout of free child care for 2-year-olds, Chalkbeat reported. He also said the city would reassign staff from other agencies, speed contract registration, and expedite interest-free loans to providers whose contracts had not been approved.
In its first year, free 2-K is expected to serve about 2,000 toddlers in five school districts, while the city’s Education Department relies on private daycare operators to provide subsidized child care for about 150,000 children under age 5, Chalkbeat reported. Some providers for 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds had been waiting weeks or months for money needed for staff, electric bills, and supplies.
The open question is not whether families need seats. The open question is whether the adults running those seats can survive the system built to fund them.
Colorado’s ratings show progress and unfinished work
Colorado released preliminary school ratings showing that more than 50 schools exited the state’s accountability clock, the watchlist that can lead to state intervention after years of low ratings, Chalkbeat reported. The number of schools on the clock fell from 176 to 148.
Of Colorado’s more than 1,700 schools, nearly two-thirds received the top green rating, and about 55% of the state’s 184 districts and co-ops earned a high rating, Chalkbeat reported. Only one district and 30 schools earned the lowest red rating, fewer than last year.
New Jersey teachers are making safety understandable
As New Jersey students return to school, teachers are preparing for a year shaped by uncertainty for immigrant families, Chalkbeat reported. From May to July, ICE arrests in New Jersey increased by nearly 150%, and July was the highest month in at least four years, according to Chalkbeat.
Teachers from Newark, Orange, and Passaic described different ways to support students, including classroom discussions, lessons on immigration enforcement in U.S. history, space to process anxiety, and steady routines, Chalkbeat reported. In New Jersey, state policy generally bars ICE agents from entering public schools unless they have a judge-signed judicial warrant, Chalkbeat reported.
If students are hearing frightening information outside school, one useful adult move is to separate what is known from what is rumored. Another is to keep the day predictable enough that school still feels like school.
Hawaiʻi is making money lessons a graduation issue
Hawaiʻi is adding financial literacy as a graduation requirement for the class of 2030, which has just started freshman year, The 74 reported. Students will document financial literacy lessons through personal transition plans, which they must complete to graduate.
The state education department has developed program standards, but schools may offer the requirement through stand-alone electives, existing classes, or online courses, and there are no training requirements for educators teaching the material, The 74 reported. Last year, 838 students were taking a financial literacy course, roughly 2% of Hawaiʻi’s high schoolers, while just over 5,750 middle and high school students participated in free online lessons.
Worth watching: whether the requirement becomes a real course of study for students, or a box schools must find a way to check.