During the pandemic, a mother named Anna Butcher in Morgantown, West Virginia, lost both her job and her daycare provider. When she finally returned to work, she claimed that the prices were outrageous for the area and that the nearby centers were at least a year full. In order to provide coverage for their young son at home, she and her husband now work two jobs, one full-time and one part-time. Her tale is not unique. That’s the idea. It is one of tens of millions of stories that all point to the same structural failure—the childcare desert—according to researchers…
Author: Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers
Kelsey Myers is a Senior Editor at worldomep.org and a dedicated advocate for early childhood education whose work begins — and ends — with a simple belief: that the earliest years of a child's life matter more than almost anything else we can invest in. Based at a local school, Kelsey works daily alongside the children and families whose experiences inform everything she writes. She doesn't observe early education from a distance. She is inside it — in the classrooms, on the playgrounds, in the conversations between teachers and parents that shape how young children understand the world around them. That proximity gives her writing a warmth and specificity that purely policy-driven commentary rarely achieves. Through her writing at worldomep.org, Kelsey brings that same energy to readers — making the case, clearly and consistently, that early childhood education deserves far more attention than it typically receives. Kelsey shares her personal opinions on: https://x.com/Butterflyboule
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Families will be dispersed throughout the Jefferson Elementary School campus in Carlsbad Village, California, on a Saturday morning in mid-May. It will feel just like a school, with kids running between activity booths, a mariachi group warming up near the cafeteria, and a folk dance troupe rehearsing behind the gym. Since the school’s Annual Multicultural Festival began in the 1970s, it has attracted alumni who graduated decades ago and predates the majority of the families that currently attend. The event serves as both a fundraiser and a statement for a Title I school in a beach city that runs an…
More than a dozen states have school buildings bearing the name Liberty High School, and each one has its own unique personality, hallway posters, and senior class jokes. The fact that the name sounds more like a proclamation than an address may help to explain why so many communities selected it. Beneath the common branding, however, are truly distinct institutions with distinct histories, pressures, and moments that define them to those who actually enter. The oldest is located in Brentwood, California, a city in Contra Costa County east of the Bay Area that has experienced significant growth since Edith A.…
On a chilly April morning, Brenda Lewis, the superintendent of Fridley Public Schools, stood with reporters outside the Warren Burger Federal Court Building in St. Paul and attempted to explain what her district had been going through. Situated in a community with a significant immigrant population north of Minneapolis, Fridley is a small district with approximately 2,800 students. Attendance in her district fell by 33% during the weeks of Operation Metro Surge in February 2026, when federal immigration officers descended upon the Twin Cities in a concerted enforcement effort. The district completely canceled classes on two different days in January…
Somewhere in the Jenks Public Schools Math and Science Center, there’s a poster that says “Bell to Bell, No Cell.” It’s been there long enough to seem unremarkable; it’s just a piece of furniture, one of those details in a school hallway that you only notice if you look for it. However, that poster and the underlying policy have evolved beyond a local ordinance. Oklahoma’s previously temporary school cell phone ban became permanent on May 7, 2026, when Governor Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 1276 into law. All Oklahoma public school students will not be allowed to use their personal…
Millions of American college students opened their laptops during finals week, entered their Canvas passwords, and discovered something unexpected: a ransom message that was injected straight into the login page informing them that the platform had been compromised and that ShinyHunters now had their data. It was likely the first time the majority of them had heard that name. It won’t be the final one. The hack began covertly on April 25, 2026, when ShinyHunters took advantage of a flaw in Instructure’s Free-For-Teacher service, which was essentially a promotional account mechanism that allowed the attackers access to a system that…
A staff member was selling homemade cookies to students in the hallways of Owen Goodnight Middle School on State Highway 123 in San Marcos, Texas, early on May 5, 2026. That’s the easy part. A quiet Tuesday at a small-town middle school became national news because of everything that followed, including the four students who ended up in the nurse’s office, the police involvement, and the cookies that are currently sitting in a lab somewhere awaiting chemical analysis. Joe Mitchell, the principal, acted swiftly. That same day, parents received a letter verifying that four students had bought and eaten the…
When you stroll around Northeastern’s 73-acre campus on Huntington Avenue on any given Tuesday, you’ll notice something that isn’t included in the rankings: the students moving deliberately between buildings resemble young professionals taking a lunch break rather than undergraduates. A few of them are. Because of Northeastern’s co-op program, which places students in full-time paid jobs at businesses for six-month rotations, a sizable portion of the student body is actually employed somewhere in Boston, New York, or occasionally abroad. The most honest response to the question that people frequently ask about this school is that tangible career orientation. Depending on…
A parent is most likely currently sitting at the kitchen table in a terraced home in Leeds, Bristol, or the peaceful suburbs of Birmingham, reading the specifics of a law that was passed this spring and wondering exactly what it means for the way they have been raising their kids. After passing Parliament over the course of more than a year, the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 was given Royal Assent. Although it does not take away anyone’s right to homeschool, it does alter the environment surrounding that right in ways that the most impacted families are still adjusting…
On a school morning, you can still see students entering Paul Robeson High School through the front doors, carrying bulky backpacks, wearing headphones, and navigating hallways that have been traversed by generations of Philadelphia children. The structure has a past. The surrounding neighborhood also does. However, if the Philadelphia Board of Education has its way, those doors will be permanently closed by the 2027–2028 academic year. In late April, the board decided to close 17 public schools, including Robeson, which is not the only one with a significant name in this community. The vote itself was out of the ordinary.…