Newsroom

This guest post was written by Matt Leighninger, Vice President of Public Engagement and was originally published on Nellie Mae’s Medium page. While incidents of bias and discrimination can occur anywhere, it’s especially troubling when they happen in our schools. To help educators, students, and other community members address these…

Apply for the Cities of Service Engaged Cities Award! Cities of Service, a nonprofit organization that helps mayors build stronger cities by changing the way local government and citizens work together, launched the application process for its second annual Engaged Cities Award. The international award program recognizes cities that have actively…

Balancing Priorities and Context in our Criminal Justice System Tune in to any news show and odds are you’ll hear about yet another intractable political issue. There may be a couple of angry quotes flashing across the screen, or perhaps, a conversation between politicians yelling for their side. The newscaster…

Making time for teachers to learn can lead to increased opportunities for kids My older son is a second-grade student at our neighborhood elementary school in Chicago. Next year, his younger brother will turn old enough to follow him through the doors of the same old, worn-out looking, brick building.…

Civil society is rooted in actions, not words. When one thinks about “community engagement” or “public participation” the image is often of a neighborhood meeting, or a public hearing. Implicitly, the background setting is a town or city. I’m glad to highlight analysis by Allen Smart and Betsey Russell about What…

A growing body of research shows that when teachers work more collaboratively, student outcomes can improve, teachers can be more satisfied in their jobs and teacher turnover can decrease. With the school year in full swing, teachers, administrators and education leaders are once again fully entrenched in the day- to-day…

Whether dealing with climate change, immigration or even trade, cities and metropolitan areas have for some time now taken initiatives and formed networks to address pressing social and economic issues. The New Role for Cities The late Benjamin Barber, a political theorist, wrote that the dysfunction of democracy that we…

Throughout my undergraduate studies as a political science major, I have come across the subjects of community engagement and public deliberation before. However, until this meeting in Canarsie, I had never had the privilege to witness them firsthand. Late on a Monday evening in July, roughly 30 people gathered at…

Both Santiago de Cali, in Colombia, and Bologna, Italy, demonstrate the power of putting citizens at the center of governance, giving them opportunities to engage that are meaningful, enjoyable, regular, and sustained. The main problem with American democracy is that we don’t realize it can be improved. We assume that…

Government officials are elected to represent the public, on good faith that they will listen to their constituents. Yet, if so many Americans believe more should be done, why hasn’t Congress done anything? Will the public take action? It’s the same plot we have sadly become familiar with as Americans.…