Cities and counties from across the nation are pioneering new clean energy solutions that could help end our nation’s oil addiction and create good jobs, according to the most recent report from the Apollo Alliance. Four Ohio municipalities: Bowling Green, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, are highlighted in the national report. Policy Matters Ohio, Apollo’s Ohio partner, is thrilled that New Energy for Cities highlights dozens of representative municipal programs that promote renewable power, reduce oil consumption, make buildings more efficient and promote smart growth. The mission of Ohio Apollo is to work with Ohio’s cities to adopt these policies and create jobs through environmentally sound and energy efficient solutions.

By implementing a demand-driven model in mid-2010, Employment Connection, the workforce-training agency for Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, has greatly improved the services it provides to local firms and workers.

Mayor Julian Castro convened a blue ribbon taskforce of Chief Executive Officers, Superintendents, and education professionals to identify the most effective method for improving the quality of education in San Antonio. The Brainpower Taskforce recommended the development of a program focused on high-quality prekindergarten services for four-year-old children. Research shows high-quality prekindergarten has the most impact in improving overall education outcomes for a community and helps children to learn and read on grade-level, making them less likely to fall behind their classmates and more likely to graduate and attend college.

From a modest beginning with 25 city and school district leaders from 6 cities and 5 school districts brainstorming over breakfast, lessons from PLUS are now reaching across the state and the nation, informing policy making and practice at all levels of government. CC&S has developed a framework for understanding city-school collaboration that aims to merge systemic and localized measures of systems change. Originally conceived as the "Ten Mechanics of City-School Initiatives" in 2010, further research and refinement has led to the "Seven Steps to Align High-Quality Education with Innovations in City and Metropolitan Planning and Development." This seven-step framework draws heavily from the lessons of the Bay Area PLUS teams, and provides the skeleton for the indicators presented at the end of this report.

This City's 2020 Vision plan is to provide all Berkeley children with equitable education outcomes regardless of race, ethnicity, or income by 2020. This report summerizes highlights of the program for the 2011-2012 school year.

As part of the strategic planning process engaged in during 2008-2009, the Collaboration adopted benchmarks for the Oak Park Early Childhood System. The benchmarks were chosen because they are relevant, measurable and provide data that can be used and acted upon to further system development and better prepare children for success in school and in life. The benchmarks allow for targets and dates to be specified. The Collaboration will define these measures in increasing increments, based on funding levels.

Almost everyone believes that afterschool programs are one of those good things for youngsters. And yet many kids are left out: Only 15 percent - 8.4 million - of the country's school children participate, according to a report, "America After 3 PM," by the advocacy organization Afterschool Alliance. That leaves millions more students returning to empty houses, or worse. At a Feb. 21-22, 2013, conference in Baltimore, close to 400 people invited from 57 U.S. cities gathered to discuss what they could do to push for better afterschool programs - and make sure that programming is available to all the kids who need it.

Researchers and policymakers alike want to better understand the long-run effects of investments in children's well-being. Yet, only a few studies have examined how participants in early childhood interventions fare as adults. These studies suggest that early investments may have sizable payoffs for children's later success. Such studies are valuable, but also rare and costly. In the absence of long-run data on children's outcomes, how can we determine the long-run monetary value of improvements in young children's well-being? In this report we describe a way to estimate the connections between improvements in aspects of children's early health, achievement, and behavior, as well as early parenting, to improved labor market outcomes when they become adults. Our results suggest that investments in early childhood that improve these aspects of development will likely have important payoffs. However, the magnitude of these payoffs is strongly dependent on the extent to which early program effects are maintained over time.

School District Resolution adopting Berkeley's 2020 Vision plan to provide all Berkeley children with equitable education outcomes regardless of race, ethnicity, or income by 2020.

The District of Columbia has provided funding for prekindergarten programs since the 1960s. The D.C. Public Pre-Kindergarten program as it now exists serves students in schools run through D.C. Public Schools (DCPS), community-based organizations (CBOs), and charter schools authorized by the D.C. Public Charter School Board (PCSB). The Pre-Kindergarten Enhancement and Expansion Amendment Act, passed in 2008, aims to provide high-quality, universally available prekindergarten education services through a mixed delivery system across all education sectors. The distribution of program funds by the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) is based on a per-pupil funding formula with additional funds for serving children who receive special education services or are English Language Learners. Charter schools receive a separate facilities allowance per child. DCPS piloted blended classrooms that enroll pre-K students funded through various sources in the pre-K program during the 2010-2011 school year. Additional freedom was also granted to non-public providers to manage their own contracts for technical assistance and comprehensive health service consultations. The PCSB provides oversight to participating pre-K programs.