Truant officers for parents. Collins High School outreach worker Deborah Michael is quoted in Catalyst (December) saying, “The initial response from many parents [of students who miss school] is: ‘I can’t do anything with my child.’ I look at them and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t do anything with them?’ I let them know that if they don’t get their child in school, their public assistance can be cut off.”
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Forget Cabrini-Green–let’s donate to Du Page County. From “Forumnotes” (January), newsletter of the Donors Forum of Chicago: “As Chicago’s suburban counties grow, so does the need for social services. ‘The suburbs as we knew them ten years ago no longer exist,’ says Nanette Silva, program officer at the Community Memorial Foundation in Hinsdale. ‘Yet there continues to be a misperception that the suburbs are mainly white and affluent, when in reality we are becoming a microcosm of the city.’”
“How does a poll-driven president summon the electorate to the routine burdens of citizenship, let alone heroic efforts?” asks conservative pundit Charles Colson in the suburban-based Christianity Today (January 8). “We have chosen a president-elect, not because he was persuasive on great issues, but because he promised wealth transfers to key constituencies and posed little threat to the comfort of everyone else.”
