Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op: serving and enriching families in need

by David Bass | Aug 31, 2022

Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op: serving and enriching families in need

Key Points

The Georgia Center for Opportunity has partnered with the co-op to offer Elevate, our relationship enrichment class, to the families it supports.
Depending on a family’s needs, Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op can provide up to 75% of the groceries they need in any given month, on a monthly basis and help with utility bills.
Prior to the pandemic, the co-op received an average of 6,000 assistance requests per year. Today that number has more than doubled.

The Southeast Gwinnett Cooperative Ministry provides food and financial assistance to the Grayson, Snellville, and Loganville communities, and is one of six cooperative ministries throughout Gwinnett County that share this mission. The Georgia Center for Opportunity has partnered with the co-op to offer Elevate, our relationship enrichment class, to the families it supports. In-person classes are currently in the planning stage.

Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op aims to “honor and uphold the Lordship of Jesus Christ by reaching out, in His name, to our neighbors in need. To the end that our clients will find encouragement, love, and hope and that the Kingdom of God will be manifest on Earth.”

“We accomplish this by satisfying two hungers: the stomach and the heart,” says Laura Drake, director at Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op. “We understand that not only what we do, but how we do it accomplishes much more than we can ever imagine.”

According to Laura, the why behind the co-op’s mission is simple: “Because God says everyone is important and we get to believe Him.” They put their mission into action by creating an authentic, supportive community that values every individual it serves.

“I believe that we are here to be gap fillers,” Laura says. “There are many people who have so much need in a month, but they have only so many resources, so there’s a gap.”

Depending on a family’s needs, Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op can provide up to 75% of the groceries they need in any given month, on a monthly basis. They also assist with utility bills, up to $300 total in a 12-month period.

The co-op has a strong relationship with the Atlanta Community Food Bank, in addition to the support it receives from the community. Families who receive assistance have access to fresh vegetables, dairy products, meats, and a host of other nutrient-rich foods. For those who receive food stamps, the co-op provides non-food necessities such as laundry detergent, feminine products, and diapers–all items that can’t be purchased with food stamps, but can still be costly for families in need.

Rebirth in the time of COVID

According to Laura, Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op recreated itself during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, it served families once a month. Now, they’ve built the resources to offer bi-weekly assistance. This has alleviated stress for many families impacted by the pandemic and its economic impacts, including job losses, business closures, and inflation.

Prior to the pandemic, the co-op received an average of 6,000 assistance requests per year. But when COVID hit, their requests skyrocketed, more than doubling to 15,000. With the help of the Gwinnett County government, the USDA, the National Guard, and the community’s generosity, the co-op was overwhelmed with support so they could continue to provide assistance even in the face of rapidly growing demands. In both 2020 and 2021, the co-op gave over one million pounds of food per year.

Even though demand isn’t quite where it was at the height of COVID, Laura says it’s beginning to rise again due to inflation and the current costs of gas and necessities.

“I believe that we are here to be gap fillers. There are many people who have so much need in a month, but they have only so many resources, so there’s a gap.”

Laura Drake, director at Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op.

“I believe that we are here to be gap fillers. There are many people who have so much need in a month, but they have only so many resources, so there’s a gap.”

Laura Drake, director at Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op.

GCO partnership: Looking toward the future

In addition to food and financial assistance, Southeast Gwinnett Co-Op plans to offer families access to GCO resources that help them strengthen their families and relationships. This approach will take the ministry toward a more holistic program. The team here at GCO is currently working to nurture our relationship with the co-op until they return to their building this fall.

Laura says she’s thrilled to expand the co-op’s offerings to further assist the community.

“We’ve spent years developing that relationship [with the community],” she says. “Now, we want to offer that foundation to organizations such as GCO and others in the community that have something to offer the people we serve in a space that is comfortable for them.”

Opinion: Expanded school choice can help pandemic learning losses

by Buzz Brockway | Aug 31, 2022

Opinion: Expanded school choice can help pandemic learning losses

Buzz Brockway, a former Republican legislator from Gwinnett, is vice president of public policy for the right-leaning think tank Georgia Center for Opportunity, which promotes school choice.

In this guest column, Brockway discusses solutions to pandemic learning loss.

Georgia students are flocking back to their classrooms, but in addition to the usual assortment of back-to-school supplies, kids are taking something else with them — profound learning losses from the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A 2022 research brief reveals that K-2 students are the greatest victims of learning loss. Furthermore, the literacy gap between minority and white students is now larger post-pandemic. Parents and teachers know that the earliest years of instruction are often the most impactful.

Read the full article here

Why student loan forgiveness plan is bad for the poor and working class

by Eric Cochling | Aug 31, 2022

Why student loan forgiveness plan is bad for the poor and working class

Key Points

A core part of our mission at the Georgia Center for Opportunity is to give the poor and working class a leg up on the economic ladder.
White House plan unfairly penalizes the poor and working classes, which disproportionately do not have college degrees and have not attended any college at all.
Instead of loan forgiveness, we should work with borrowers to structure their loan repayments in a way that’s manageable but also helps them honor their commitments.

This week, the Biden administration announced a plan to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of Americans. The plan applies to households making up to $250,000 a year (or $125,000 for individuals), an income threshold that targets the middle class and upper middle class and many high-earning professionals.

A core part of our mission at the Georgia Center for Opportunity is to give the poor and working class a leg up on the economic ladder. This doesn’t come through cycles of generational government dependence, but through career training and credentialing that provides the pathway to fruitful full-time work and, ultimately, a better life.

We believe the White House’s plan is wrong on many levels, but a top way is the way it unfairly penalizes the poor and working classes, which disproportionately do not have college degrees and have not attended any college at all.

Many of these individuals are working service-oriented jobs, entry-level positions, or laboring in the skilled trades. They are paying taxes. Yet under the Biden administration’s plan, they will bear the burden of paying off the student loans of their wealthier neighbors through their tax dollars.

Here are four additional ways that student loan forgiveness is ill-advised:

1. It will contribute to already high inflation

Another way this plan hurts the poor and working class is by increasing inflation. This demographic spends a disproportionate share of their income on essentials like food and gas that have seen the most dramatic price increases in recent months.

As the Brookings Institution points out, $10,000 in debt forgiveness “would involve a transfer that is about as large as the country has spent on welfare … since 2000 and exceeds the amount spent since then on feeding hungry school children in high-poverty schools through the school breakfast and lunch program.”

2. It doesn’t actually forgive anything

The White House has labeled the plan a “forgiveness” of student loan debt. But in reality, this approach simply transfers the burden onto the backs of taxpayers.

3. It penalizes hard-working Americans

We’ve already discussed how the poor and working classes are treated unfairly by this plan. But the unfairness extends to many middle class families as well who worked hard to pay off their student loans or their children’s student loans. Once again, government policy is punishing hard work.

4. Finally, it does nothing to address the affordability problem in higher education

According to Forbes, between 1980 and 2020, the cost of a college education jumped 169%. Meanwhile, the economic value of many four-year degrees has declined. The rapid inflation in the cost of college is, in large part, due to rampant government subsidies in higher education. Forgiving student loans only makes that problem worse.

The Success Sequence is a formula that outlines areas we can work in that will reduce poverty.

A better way forward

Instead of loan forgiveness, we should work with borrowers to structure their loan repayments in a way that’s manageable but also helps them honor their commitments. We should also work to find a way to lower the cost of higher education to make it more affordable and encourage high school graduates to consider stable, good-paying jobs that do not require expensive college degrees.

We Must Close The Grade Level Gap

by Buzz Brockway | Aug 31, 2022

We Must Close The Grade Level Gap

Key Points

Voters are not saying other issues, such as race and gender, are not important, just that learning loss is more important.
We can’t be thinking of this as a one-year catch-up.
There are other interventions that have been shown to have effects, it’s just that no single intervention gets you all the way.

It has been well documented that school closing due to the pandemic caused students to lose ground (see here and here). Recent polling suggests that parents are very concerned about this learning loss and want political leaders to focus on this issue.

Consider this from The74Million.com:

Matt Hogan, a partner at Impact Research, said that it was striking to see Republicans seize an edge on an issue that “has historically been one of the Democrats’ strengths.”

“There’s just a perception that Democrats’ focus on education is not where voters want it to be, which is helping kids make up the ground they lost,” Hogan said. “They think both parties are too focused on race and gender issues in schools, rather than focusing on catching kids up — but notably, they think that is true of Democrats even more so than Republicans.”

Notice that voters are not saying other issues, such as race and gender, are not important, just that learning loss is more important. Yet as we survey the political landscape, very few politicians or candidates are talking about what parents are most concerned about.

Perhaps this is because there is no magic wand that can be waived to fix the problem. There is no list of “five easy steps to catch your kids up, and number four will blow your mind.” There are, however, things that can and should be done immediately.

Recently, Harvard economist Tom Kane produced a study of the impact of learning loss and proposed solutions. Kane’s research found that one-on-one tutoring was effective, but not effective enough to eliminate the learning loss for students in schools that were closed most of the 2020-2021 school year. Schools, he said, should plan on implementing learning recovery strategies for multiple years. Kane said:

So what can schools and districts realistically be expected to do in this situation?

We can’t be thinking of this as a one-year catch-up. If we really are committed to making students whole and eliminating these losses, it’s going to be multiple years. There are other interventions that have been shown to have effects, it’s just that no single intervention gets you all the way.

In March, Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 which included substantial funding for education. However, only 20% of those funds are required to be spent on recovering learning loss. Kane suggests districts spend more than 20% or perhaps all of their ARPA funds on learning loss recovery:

We try to put the scale of the [learning] losses and the amount of aid that districts have received in the same scale. We report both as a share of an annual school district budget, which I think is a useful starting point for thinking about what it’s going to cost a district to recover. If a district has lost the equivalent of, say, 22 weeks of instruction as a result of being remote, and you’re asking what it’s going to cost to make up for that, the lower bound of the estimated cost would have to start with [the question], “What does it cost to provide 22 weeks of instruction in a typical school year?”

We think that’s a useful starting point for people, and what they’d see is that in the high-poverty districts that were remote for more than half of 2021, the amount of aid they received is basically equivalent to — maybe a little more, but not much more than — the magnitude of their losses in terms of instructional weeks. That just means that, rather than spending the 20 percent minimum that was required in the American Rescue Plan, some districts should be thinking that they’ll need all of that aid for academic catch-up.

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?

Additionally, empowering parents to choose a school that best fits their child, be it traditional public school, tuition-free charter school, private school, or homeschool, should also be a tool we deploy to help get kids caught up.

Polling has made it clear that parents want learning loss recovery to be a high priority for their child’s school. In this election year, candidates and elected officials would be wise to make this an issue in their campaigns. Parents should demand this of their candidates, and then hold them accountable to eliminating learning loss for every student.

Imagine how much better off our society would be if politicians and school leaders truly committed to not only eliminating the pandemic learning loss, but using those interventions to insure every student is on grade level. How wonderful would that be?

Gwinnett government departments will begin presenting 2023 budget requests on Monday

by Georgia Center for Opportunity | Aug 26, 2022

Gwinnett government departments will begin presenting 2023 budget requests on Monday

Although Brockway is a newbie on the team, he is no stranger to dealing with budget requests. As a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, Brockway served on the House Appropriations committee among other committees.

Videos of each department’s business plan presentation will be made available on TVGwinnett, which is the county’s government access channel. On-demand videos of each presentation will also be available on the county’s website, www.gwinnettcounty.com

The proposed 2023 county budget that the review team will help craft will be presented to the public in November. County officials are planning to hold a hearing on Dec. 5 and the Board of Commissioners will vote on the budget at the first board meeting in January 2023.

Read the full article here