COM_MUNITIES ----- ---- -------- -- Community Perspectives On The Role Of The School In the Community, by Mariam Clasby, IRE Report No. 3, 1981, $2.95 from: Institute for Responsive Education 704 Commonwealth Ave. Boston, MA 02215 Well, it's back to school time again! Your kids are going off to the funny-looking building with the brightly colored doors and you'll hardly see 'em again til next summer: You sort of know what goes on in the classroom-the three Rs plus a little Creationism or sex ed or whatever's popular in your town. In the last few years, though, declining enrollments, transitions in family life, fiscal constraints, and taxpayer unrest have all introduced a variety of new pressures on schools, educators, and policymakers. Based on a series of interviews nationwide with parent activists, school board members, academics and others, Clasby's report lays out key areas of progress and obstacles in school-community relations and makes several specific recommendations in regard to federal and local policy. Anyone professionally involved in public education should at least get familiar with the issues discussed in this report. People interviewed across the country expressed both practical and philosophical concerns about the future of public schooling. Happy Fernandez, Co-Chair of the Philadelphia Parents Union, perhaps got closest to the crux of the problem with this comment: "Anyone who presumes to know what kids today are really going to need to function in the year 2030 is a fool." Makes contemporary education quite a challenge, yes?-MR Community-Energy Co-operative: How to Organize, Manage, and Finance Energy Co-operatives, edited by Keith Oberg, 1981, 321 pp., $7.65 postpaid, from: Conference on Alternative State and Local Policies · 2000 Florida Ave., NW Washington, DC 20009 After months of delay, this long awaited handbook has finally made its way to Portland. A bootlegged copy of one of the chapters (a case study of a weatherization and materials buying co-op in Boston) had already made the rounds. Dog-eared and dinner-splattered, the chapter_offered sorely needed comfort and advice to the organizers of a newly-forming Portland weatherization ACCESS co-op. The manual fills a vacuum of practical information on energy co-ops, offering a balance between organizing tips and business suggestions. Topics include: how to organize the first meeting of potential members, methods of conducting a needs survey and steps for formulating a business plan. On first reading I turned immediately to the case studies (I've always liked the personal stories) and was not disappointed. There \Vas a wealth of good information-including visio_ns and obstacles. While inspirational, it was the financial chapters that were decidedly the most useful. The chapter on management covers the basics of running a business with special attention given to the needs of cooperative businesses. The section on funding includes details on the availability of private and federal grants, strategies for obtaining them and an entire chapter devoted to the National Consumer Cooperative Bank. (The Conference publishes up-todate information on the NCCB in the Co-op • Bank Monitor which can be obtained free from the same address.) Last, the appendix offers a comprehensive resource list of groups and publications in the fields of community economic development, business planning, energy and co-operatives. While this handbook is without doubt an invaluable resource to groups considering or already working on an energy co-op, I wish more had been said about the idea of building upon and working with existing co-operatives (food, housing, credit unions). Some innovative work is being done by several groups in this area, most notably New Alchemy in Massachusetts (237 Hatchville Rd., East Falmouth, MA 02536). Write to them for more information. -LS AGRICULTURE ---------------- ----- - Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Clipping Seroice, by the Food Agriculture and Rural Affairs Information Service, $160. introductory subscription (six months plus index), $40 individual sections (six months), 12 issues per year from: Food Agriculture,and Rural Affairs Information Service 341019th St. San Francisco, CA 94110 Information junkies rejoice! Here is another cache that will keep even the most voracious reader satisfied. The Food, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Clipping Service is designed to put information on over twenty-six topics relating to land, food and agriculture at your August/September 1981 RAIN Page 17 fingertips. " ... How Food Stamp Cuts Would Affect Farmers . . . Navajo Mined Cancer·... Use Food as Leverage Helm · Urges . .. U.S. Lost 88 Million Acres from '69-78; Iowa 1.5 Million . . ." The five major categories of information are: agricul- • ture, food production and rural affairs; agribusiness and the food industry; food, nutrition and consumer issues; natural re"- sources and the environment; and interna-. tional affairs. Clippings are drawn from 74 periodicals representing a broad range of political perspectives, amorg them: The New York Times, The Milling and Baking News, The Economist (England), and The Guardian. Approximately 300 pages of articles are categorized monthly according to content, prepunched on 8½ x 11" paper and indexed (with key words and cross indexes) by computer. The latter, a special feature, should be particularly useful to researchers, though I foqnd the table of contents (by general interest area) and title index faidy helpful for sifting through the morass. Subscribers may request all five subject categories of the index, or choos~ only the ones relevant to their needs. Sample copies of the index are available for review for $5. Although the decision to subscribe to the clipping service should be made carefully • (considering the price), the time saved should make this purchase well worth the investment for groups that depend upon this kind of information. -LS
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTc4NTAz