Community Outreach Programs

Call to Action in Education
Fair Housing
Prison Outreach Program

Call to Action Education Program

In January 2004, the Treasure Valley Branch officially announced the National NAACP Call for Action in Education Five-Year Strategic Plan.

The main goal of the NAACP Call for Action Education Plan is to ensure resource equity in education for minority students. Some of the identified areas of focus for the Call for Action Education Plan include:

• INCREASING RESOURCE EQUITY
• IMPROVING TEACHER QUALITY
• INCREASING ACCESS TO EARLY CHILDHOOD PROGRAMS
• INCREASING ACCESS TO A COLLEGE-BOUND CURRICULUM
• CREATING SMALLER CLASS SIZES
• CLOSING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
• HIGH-STAKES TESTING
• REDUCING THE DROPOUT RATE
• INCREASING PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT
• ADDRESSING SPECIAL EDUCATION AND THE OVERREPRESENTATION AND UNDERSERVICING OF MINORITY CHILDREN
• ELIMINATING RACIAL DISPARITIES IN THE SUSPENSION AND EXPULSION OF STUDENTS
• ADDRESSING RESEGREGATION TRENDS

To achieve this goal, the Plan calls for State, Federal and local educational communities to develop and submit a Five-Year Educational Equity Partnership Plan for closing the racial disparities in education.

• The Five-Year Plan includes an agreed upon method for measuring achievement. This method builds on the state’s assessment system required under federal law, and includes additional measures along dimensions reflected in this Call for Action. For example, the plan includes measures related to graduation rates, retention rates, etc. Source: OCR 1997 Elementary and Secondary School Compliance Report: Projected Values for the Nation (1999).

• The Five-Year Plan includes both a comprehensive system for measuring progress in closing the gap, and specific forms of corrective action that the State Board of Education will undertake in a timely way to achieve the plan’s goals.

• The requested Five-Year Plan should identifies the resources that our State Board of Educational plans to dedicate to this initiative and outlines the support needed to fully implement the plan.

The facts are clear: the persistent failure of schools to provide equality of opportunity for all students is having a devastating impact on communities of color and the future of our nation. The adverse impact of these inequities is long-term and is reflected in racial disparities not only in education but in future employment, poverty, and incarceration rates. These gross disparities in educational quality and achievement demonstrate the need for federal, state, and local educational agencies to partner with community agents. Together, these partners must develop and implement strategies to remove racial disparities and improve the quality of education in the district, state, and country.

Conclusion
This Call for Action seeks to guarantee that all students are provided an equal opportunity for a world-class education. Ultimately, however, we must measure success not by the inputs and efforts, but by the achievement of our students. Parents, taxpayers, educators, and elected officials must judge all of the efforts described in this document—and in the many policy pronouncements of legislatures and regulation writers, by whether we succeed in closing the gaps in achievement, which separate the races and, inevitably, our society. The NAACP recognizes that there are easy explanations for the circumstances of minority children, some say, found in their poverty, their families, their community, their culture or even their genes. These accounts stretch from mere intuitions, to rigorous social science, to rank racism. To confront this crisis successfully, we must insist on actions that lead towards progress and equity.
In several areas, we have called upon education agencies to formulate detailed Five-Year Plans that will include a strategy for accomplishing a set of goals and measurable benchmarks so that they and the community will know whether the plan is being implemented. All of this is a means to an end. These various plans and strategies must be integrated into an ambitious vision. That vision goes beyond ensuring the formal equality of opportunity that demands, for example, textbooks, able teachers and early childhood enrichment. Our vision is for excellence in education, so all children will in fact develop their God-given potential.

Prison Community Outreach Program

The NAACP Prison Project began on May 25, 1972 when the first NAACP prison branch was organized at the U.S. Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The program has grown to 47 branches with a combined membership of over 4,000 members located in various states from California to West Virginia.

The NAACP Prison Program is designed:

• Reduce the inmate recidivism rate
• Assist in providing voter registration and voter education
• Address disparate treatment of inmates
• Address disparities in the criminal justice system
• Develop collaborative partnerships to assist in providing services to inmates (skill set training, tutoring, pre-release counseling, etc.)
• Identify and assess appropriate offender re-entry programs
• Assist in national, state and local efforts to re-enfranchise former inmates
• Reactivate former prison branches and organize new prison branches

The by providing mentoring, education and trade skills for inmates, it is the goal of the program that upon release, former inmates do not find their way back behind bars.

Locally, the Treasure Valley NAACP and the Idaho Department of Corrections will work together to provide additional features to the existing inmate programs, including:

• Provide educational classes in English, math, and reading (focusing in ABE and GED pre-work)
• Creative writing workshops
• Job-securing seminars with an emphasis on resume writing and tips for the interview process

Fair Housing

The choices of where to live, work, play, and worship are some of the most far-reaching decisions an individual or family can make. Housing choice is an essential element of personal, family, and community well-being. Fair housing protects you, your family, your business, and your community.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your housing situation or if you have questions regarding your rights as it concerns, please contact the Treasure Valley NAACP or the Intermountain Fair Housing Council.

Intermountain Fair Housing Council
310 N. 5th Street
Boise, ID 83702
208-383-0695

The Fair Housing Act: It’s the Law

The Fair Housing Act prohibits a housing provider from exercising discrimination on the basis of:

• Race or color
• National origin
• Religion
• Sex
• Familial Status: Children under 18 years old living with parents or legal custodians; pregnant women, or people securing custody of those under 18 years old.
• Disability: Mental and/or physical

The term “housing” includes apartments, condominiums, duplexes, multi-unit dwellings, mobile homes/trailer courts, private homes, and vacant land.

The Fair Housing Act is a State and Federal law that covers most housing. In some cases, the Act exempts owner-occupied buildings with no more than four units, a single-family housing sold or rented without the use of a broker, and housing operated by organizations and private clubs that limit occupancy to members.

The Fair Housing Law prohibits:

• Advertising any discrimination or preference or limit in housing
• Refusing to show, rent, lease sell or transmit an offer to buy, rent or lease housing
• Causing unequal terms, conditions, and privileges of housing, including the obtaining and use of financial assistance for the purchase, construction or maintenance of housing
• Segregating and/or separating in housing
• Aiding an abetting in unfair housing practices or to prevent any person form complying with fair housing practices

Other prohibited practices include:

• Exclusionary lands use decisions by local governments
• Blockbusting
• Redlining
• Steering
• Channeling