Jackson, MS, Nov. 21, 2008 — Three Echo staff received 5 days of day-long intensive training on website management from Samiya Bashir, principal consultant of Lead Time Consulting of Austin, TX.

Kahlil Johnson and Keith French, Southern Echo interns and students at Tougaloo College, and Mike Sayer, Southern Echo Senior Organizer and Training Coordinator learned how to post news stories, add pages, incorporate photos and videos, develop web-based emails and the use of the web to promote donations to the organization.

Samiya Bashir works with grassroots community organizations to build and utilize websites to bring their work and their stories to life on the internet, and to integrate their information and visuals with social networks to expand understanding across generational lines.

Samiya’s easy demeanor, perpetual smile and joyful presence facilitated a smooth transition from the grim visage of HTML training into easy-to-understand and visually accessible posts on the internet.

Jackson, MS, Nov. 19, 2008 – First state officials adopted policies to transform education policy regarding underperforming schools, then the children of Barr Elementary in Jackson entertained by singing a series of educational and patriotic songs.

The Task Force on Underperforming Schools met in the Board Room of the MS Dept. of Education on Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2008 to adopt a set of recommendations to the 2009 state legislature that were designed to improve low-performing schools. This was intended to be the last meeting of the Task Force.

State Supt. of Education Hank Bounds told the Task Force and about 60 educators, parents and education activists that the proposed recommendations will hold school leadership, including school boards and superintendents, accountable to newly-developed benchmarks and standards of leadership based on the premise that school leadership must be responsible to ensure that the children are provided the education to which they are entitled. The proposed recommendations were adopted unanimously by the Task Force. (more…)

Southern Echo will participate in the Pushback Network Steering Committee meeting in NYC Dec. 2 to Dec. 4, 2008 where representatives from 8 states will analyze the voter registration and turnout work in the November election and strategies for building grassroots civic engagement in several regions in the nation.

State Legislature will spend three months wrangling over public policies and appropriations. Public education, health care and tax reform will be major battlegrounds. Citizen participation in this process has had a major impact on education, health care and tax policy in recent years.

Also 3rd convening of South X Southwest Experiment. Intergenerational delegations from SWOP in New Mexico, SWU in Texas, and Southern Echo and Catalyst Roundtable in Mississippi will share histories, analysis and strategic planning for 2009.