THREE ESSAYS ON THE ECONOMICALLY DISADVANTAGED

This dissertation examines disadvantaged students through a unique and novel lens and investigates the effects of Universal Free Meals (UFM) – a program available to schools with sizable economically disadvantaged populations – on student well-being and district financial feasibility. UFM provides free meals to all students, regardless of household income, in an attempt to increase participation in school meals and ensure all students have access to nutritious meals. The Hunger Free Kids act of 2010 expanded the availability of UFM via the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP). CEP allows schools, clusters of schools, or entire districts to adopt UFM if 40 percent or more of students are directly certified eligible for free lunch. The rapid expansion of UFM across the U.S. over the last decade has led to growing empirical evidence of UFM’s positive effect on student outcomes such as participation in school food, attendance, test scores, and disciplinary measures. This recent surge in research often characterizes a reduction in stigma as the mechanism through which UFM improves student outcomes. However, this characterization has yet to be empirically examined. As of 2019, a majority of eligible schools across the U.S. have adopted UFM via CEP. The widespread adoption of UFM causes policymakers to speculate if UFM has any unintended consequences, including deleterious effects on student health and district finances. The first essay in this dissertation sheds light on the impact of UFM on student perceptions of school climate by exploiting the staggered adoption of UFM in New York City middle and high schools. Findings reveal that UFM improves perceptions of bullying, fighting, and safety at school. Moreover, students who would have received free meals in the absence of UFM begin to participate post UFM exposure. This suggests that UFM influences participation and likely perceptions for reasons other than reductions in prices. Another essay examines CEP adoption in districts across New York State. These findings offer new insights into how districts pay for UFM via CEP while investigating the possible deleterious effects of UFM on student obesity. While the reimbursement structure of CEP is more generous in comparison to other UFM provisions, some fear that CEP exacerbates school food deficits and forces districts to foot the bill. Furthermore, UFM critics worry that students may double up on meals, thereby increasing total caloric intake and contributing to childhood obesity. However, results indicate that UFM improves obesity rates – particularly in older grades and that, on average, federal reimbursements cover increases in expenditures due to meal fee revenue losses and the additional food expenditures that follow an increase in participation. Economic disadvantage (ECD) is only one of many hurdles students encounter. The last essay in this dissertation descriptively illustrates student disadvantage by examining the prevalence and achievement gaps of the doubly disadvantaged – a group largely ignored in the education landscape. In addition to ECD, disadvantage in this context describes students with disabilities (SWD) and English language learners (ELL). Results indicate that a nontrivial share of students are doubly disadvantaged and that achievement gaps are largest among students that are both ECD and SWD. Furthermore, the essay discusses the implications of ignoring these students for district funding and federal accountability requirements. While two of the three essays evaluate the effects of providing free school meals on student well-being and district finances among largely ECD populations, the third essay emphasizes the importance of recognizing the complexities of student disadvantage. Together, these essays offer insights into the identification of disadvantaged students and the effects of policies meant to improve circumstances among disadvantaged populations. This dissertation fills gap in the literature by providing profound reflection on the populations these programs serve, as well as the financial feasibility and effects of such programs on student well-being

\u3cem\u3eCity of Missoula v. Mountain Water\u3c/em\u3e: Is Municipal Ownership a More Necessary Public Use?

The saga of the City of Missoula’s (City) attempt to gain control of the privately held water system has concluded for now. In City of Missoula v. Mountain Water, the Montana Supreme Court found that the City’s ownership of the aging, privately held water system constituted a “more necessary public use.” The majority applied the correct standard of review and properly affirmed the lower court’s decision in accordance with precedent and relevant statutes. Mountain Water shed light on the “more necessary public use” analysis and the specificity of factual findings required to support the determination

\u3cem\u3eALPS Property & Casualty Ins. Co. v. McLean & McLean, PLLP\u3c/em\u3e: After Rescission, a Remedy for Third-Party Claimants and Innocent Insureds?

ALPS Property & Casualty Company (ALPS) rescinded McLean & McLean (M&M), David McLean, and Michael McLean’s insurance policy after receiving notification of David McLean’s theft of client money. ALPS rescinded the coverage based on the misrepresentations that David McClean made in the annual insurance renewal application. The rescission of the contract precluded coverage for third party claimants, including Joseph and Marilyn Micheletti (Michelettis), who allege David McLean negligently missed a filing deadline for their personal injury lawsuit resulting in professional malpractice. The district court granted summary judgment for ALPS, finding that the policy was void ab initio, resulting in a denial of coverage for M&M, Michael McLean, and the Michelettis

\u3cem\u3eALPS Property & Casualty Ins. Co. v. McLean & McLean, PLLP\u3c/em\u3e: After Rescission, a Remedy for Third-Party Claimants and Innocent Insureds?

ALPS Property & Casualty Company (ALPS) rescinded McLean & McLean (M&M), David McLean, and Michael McLean’s insurance policy after receiving notification of David McLean’s theft of client money. ALPS rescinded the coverage based on the misrepresentations that David McClean made in the annual insurance renewal application. The rescission of the contract precluded coverage for third party claimants, including Joseph and Marilyn Micheletti (Michelettis), who allege David McLean negligently missed a filing deadline for their personal injury lawsuit resulting in professional malpractice. The district court granted summary judgment for ALPS, finding that the policy was void ab initio, resulting in a denial of coverage for M&M, Michael McLean, and the Michelettis

Immunostaining for Homer reveals the majority of excitatory synapses in laminae I-III of the mouse spinal dorsal horn

The spinal dorsal horn processes somatosensory information before conveying it to the brain. The neuronal organization of the dorsal horn is still poorly understood, although recent studies have defined several distinct populations among the interneurons, which account for most of its constituent neurons. All primary afferents, and the great majority of neurons in laminae I–III are glutamatergic, and a major factor limiting our understanding of the synaptic circuitry has been the difficulty in identifying glutamatergic synapses with light microscopy. Although there are numerous potential targets for antibodies, these are difficult to visualize with immunocytochemistry, because of protein cross-linking following tissue fixation. Although this can be overcome by antigen retrieval methods, these lead to difficulty in detecting other antigens. The aim of this study was to test whether the postsynaptic protein Homer can be used to reveal glutamatergic synapses in the dorsal horn. Immunostaining for Homer gave punctate labeling when viewed by confocal microscopy, and this was restricted to synapses at the ultrastructural level. We found that Homer puncta were colocalized with the AMPA receptor GluR2 subunit, but not with the inhibitory synapse-associated protein gephyrin. We also examined several populations of glutamatergic axons and found that the great majority of boutons were in contact with at least one Homer punctum. These results suggest that Homer antibodies can be used to reveal the great majority of glutamatergic synapses without antigen retrieval. This will be of considerable value in tracing synaptic circuits, and also in investigating plasticity of glutamatergic synapses in pain states

Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools

Most researchers and policymakers rely on the share of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals when describing student socioeconomic background in schools. But shares of students receiving free and reduced-price meals, and other measures related to the distribution of school meals, vary by state and across time because of changes in school meal eligibility criteria.In this report, we describe the development of a new measure: Model Estimates of Poverty in Schools (MEPS). This measure estimates the school-level share of students from households with incomes at or below the federal poverty level between fall 2013 and fall 2018. The MEPS measure aims to be comparable across states and over time and to broadly align with the school's enrolled population (as opposed to a neighborhood measure).We find that MEPS broadly aligns with aggregate state measures of student poverty and are strongly correlated with geographic district poverty as measured by the Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE) program. We also find that MEPS can under- or overestimate poverty shares for certain districts. In particular, we find that our model underestimates school-level poverty for districts enrolling high shares of Black students. To correct for this, we produce modified MEPS, a second measure that mechanically adjusts our estimate to align with geographic district poverty rates. Because of wider margins of error for districts with small populations in the SAIPE data, we recommend using modified MEPS only for analysis of geographic districts with more than 65,000 residents.These statistical estimates should be used primarily by researchers. MEPS could be useful for those conducting research across states or years or for policymakers who want to understand how a school's socioeconomic characteristics may have changed over time. But these estimates are not appropriate for allocating resources within a state or district or for other uses when having a true count, rather than a model estimate, is required

Searching for Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea

The Colorado River Basin runs through multiple states in the West of the United States and is a prime water source for about 30 million people in our nation and is used for much of the farmland and agricultural needs in this area. Using cultures derived from the Colorado River Basin a multitude of tests were run in order to determine more about the microbes that are thriving within the river, specifically from archeal phylum Thaumarchaeota. These are ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) who perform nitrification by converting ammonia into nitrite, a process that was previously thought to only be achieved by ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB). Currently there is limited information about Thaumarchaeota, during this research further exploration of the microbe was hoping to reveal more information. While the research did not reveal any new information about the archaea, it did reveal that there were bacteria surviving in the extreme conditions within the lab kept cultures. As a result, further research is still needed but the progress that is being made allows scientists a way to continue providing the nation with more information about their natural resources

A quantitative study of neurochemically-defined populations of inhibitory interneurons in the superficial dorsal horn of the mouse spinal cord

Around a quarter of neurons in laminae I-II of the dorsal horn are inhibitory interneurons. These play an important role in modulating somatosensory information, including that perceived as pain or itch. Previous studies in rat identified four largely non-overlapping neurochemical populations among these cells, defined by expression of galanin, neuropeptide Y (NPY), neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) or parvalbumin. The galanin cells were subsequently shown to coexpress dynorphin. Several recent studies have used genetically-modified mice to investigate the function of different interneuron populations, and it is therefore important to determine whether the same pattern applies in mouse, and to estimate the relative sizes of these populations. We show that the neurochemical organisation of inhibitory interneurons in mouse superficial dorsal horn is similar to that in the rat, although a larger proportion of these neurons (33%) express NPY. Between them, these four populations account for ∼75% of inhibitory cells in laminae I-II. Since ∼25% of inhibitory interneurons in this region belong to a novel calretinin-expressing type, our results suggest that virtually all inhibitory interneurons in superficial dorsal horn can be assigned to one of these five neurochemical populations. Although our main focus was inhibitory neurons, we also identified a population of excitatory dynorphin-expressing cells in laminae I-II that are largely restricted to the medial part of the mid-lumbar dorsal horn, corresponding to glabrous skin territory. These findings are important for interpretation of studies using molecular-genetic techniques to manipulate the functions of interneuron populations to investigate their roles in somatosensory processing

How Fair Is the New York State Education Aid System?

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars

Updated Pupil Weights for New York\u27s Foundation Aid Formula

It’s Elementary is a series of essays on topics in education and education policy. The main focus is on education finance in New York State, but general research findings in education and education policy issues in several other states are also discussed. John Yinger, Professor of Economics and Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University is the author of most of these essays, although a few are written by or co-authored with other scholars