Exploring the Social, Emotional, and Educational Foundations and Merits of Elementary Afterschool Programs in Burlington Vermont

With the rise in family employment due to growing economic demands, afterschool programs have evolved over the last few decades to become an essential care solution for school-age children. As afterschool becomes an ever-growing need in communities, its presence as a fundamental component of a school district becomes increasingly more apparent. The Burlington School District (BSD), of Burlington Vermont, uses a system known as the Expanded Learning Opportunities, which houses an umbrella of programs designed to provide engaging and enriching extracurricular activities for the community’s students. This study uses an exploratory qualitative design. To answer the following research question: What are the ways in which Burlington School District afterschool achieves/expands on traditional programs and achieves equitable, safe, and intuitive environments? Findings from this study suggest that BSD’s priorities for its afterschool program can be categorized into four themes; (1) Quality assurance of program maintained through licensing and professional development; (2) Educational programming that provides academic support, as well as collaboration with school day faculty; (3) Prioritization of social-emotional learning models of behavior management; and (4) Implementation of a social justice-focused lens to provide equity and services to students and families. Additional findings that surfaced in this study relate to the impacts and ways covid-19 pandemic have affected BSD afterschool, and what implications can be derived from BSD’s experience reformatting afterschool in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic

Szemer\'edi's theorem in the primes

Green and Tao famously proved in 2005 that any subset of the primes of fixed positive density contains arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions. Green had previously shown that in fact any subset of the primes of relative density tending to zero sufficiently slowly contains a 3-term term progression. This was followed by work of Helfgott and de Roton, and Naslund, who improved the bounds on the relative density in the case of 3-term progressions. The aim of this note is to present an analogous result for longer progressions by combining a quantified version of the relative Szemer\'edi theorem given by Conlon, Fox and Zhao with Henriot's estimates of the enveloping sieve weights.Comment: 11 page

Contracting for Coordination of Behavioral Health Services in Privatized Child Welfare and Medicaid Managed Care

This study examined coordination between privatized child welfare initiatives and Medicaid managed care systems for the delivery of behavioral health care services for children and families in the child welfare system. Specific objectives: 1) to assess how states expectations as embodied in their contract documents are actually happening during program implementation; and 2) to identify promising approaches for delivery of coordinated behavioral health care services and contracting that can be shared with other stakeholders. The goal was to highlight the real world experiences and lessons learned that others may draw upon when designing and implementing similar contracts for systems of care

Perceptions of a Gay-Straight Alliance ban: School counselors and advocacy for students with minority sexual orientations

The purpose of this study was to examine how school counselors who are working or have worked in a school that banned a Gay-Straight Alliance club perceive the ban and how their perceptions influenced their advocacy for students with minority sexual orientations. Recommendations from participants for other school counselors who have experienced this phenomenon were also examined. Five school counselors participated in this qualitative research study. Participants were interviewed about their thoughts, feelings, and actions and completed a demographic questionnaire. A modified phenomenological data analysis procedure using descriptive and axial coding was conducted to analyze the data. The analysis indicated that the participants perceived the ban as a way for administrators to avoid controversy or collude with the religiously and politically conservative status quo beliefs about minority sexual orientations in their larger communities. The participants engaged in a variety of strategies to resist status quo beliefs, and while they perceive positive changes since the bans, discrimination against students with minority sexual orientations continues and the pace of positive change remains slow. The participants recommended proactive advocacy as a way for other school counselors working in religiously and politically conservative areas to resist reproducing status quo beliefs about minority sexual orientations in the school environment.The findings suggest that school counselors working in conservative settings who identify as advocates and have affirming attitudes about minority sexual orientations are willing to take risks to advocate for this student population. In addition, proactive advocacy for students with minority sexual orientations is necessary prior to attempting supportive services such as a Gay-Straight Alliance in schools in conservative areas. Finally, continued research concentrating on expanding the empirical literature base regarding advocacy for students with minority sexual orientations is needed in order to better prepare school counselors and their administrators to meet their needs

Failure of interpolation in the intuitionistic logic of constant domains

This paper shows that the interpolation theorem fails in the intuitionistic logic of constant domains. This result refutes two previously published claims that the interpolation property holds.Comment: 13 pages, 0 figures. Overlaps with arXiv 1202.1195 removed, the text thouroughly reworked in terms of notation and style, historical notes as well as some other minor details adde

Myogenic Progenitor Cells Control Extracellular Matrix Production by Fibroblasts during Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy

Satellite cells, the predominant stem cell population in adult skeletal muscle, are activated in response to hypertrophic stimuli and give rise to myogenic progenitor cells (MPCs) within the extracellular matrix (ECM) that surrounds myofibers. This ECM is composed largely of collagens secreted by interstitial fibrogenic cells, which influence satellite cell activity and muscle repair during hypertrophy and aging. Here we show that MPCs interact with interstitial fibrogenic cells to ensure proper ECM deposition and optimal muscle remodeling in response to hypertrophic stimuli. MPC-dependent ECM remodeling during the first week of a growth stimulus is sufficient to ensure long-term myofiber hypertrophy. MPCs secrete exosomes containing miR-206, which represses Rrbp1, a master regulator of collagen biosynthesis, in fibrogenic cells to prevent excessive ECM deposition. These findings provide insights into how skeletal stem and progenitor cells interact with other cell types to actively regulate their extracellular environments for tissue maintenance and adaptation