Current Works

Community Safety & Equity

In May 2025, the US DOJ withdrew its Consent Decree for policing reforms. Anticipating this result, CLOUT secured the following commitments from Mayor Greenberg at our Nehemiah Action in April 2025: 1) to implement the Consent Decree reforms, 2) to hire an independent monitor, and 3) to establish community oversight.

• So far, a plan for the city's self-imposed Consent Decree has been released, the hiring process for the monitor is underway, and a "Community Safety Commission" (including a representative from CLOUT) has been formed. The Commission will monitor both the Consent Decree reforms as well as the Safe Louisville plan to reduce violent crime. CLOUT will continue to track implementation of these reforms for years to come.

• News coverage featuring interviews with Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson:

• WAVE: Louisville mayor announces members of commission aimed at helping reduce crime

• WDRB: Louisville creates new 24-person commission to help curb violent crime

• Spectrum News: Louisville’s first Community Safety Commission members

Mental Health

In our research on this problem in 2024-25, we learned that suicide is the #2 cause of death for people ages 10-24 in Kentucky, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

• Louisville’s mental health crisis response system falls far behind national best practices. Without a designated place to go during a mental health crisis, people often end up in hospitals or jails, where their mental health challenges are exacerbated.

• At our 2025 Nehemiah Action, we won a commitment from Seven Counties to establish a 24/7 drop-in crisis center for adults and to prioritize expansion to youth and families. This program would allow people to receive an evaluation from a licensed mental health practitioner, who then connects them to the appropriate level of care.

• We are currently working to secure funding for this vital program through Louisville Metro Council.

Children & Youth Concerns

All kids reading

• Due to a lack of phonetic instruction in early grades within JCPS, in 2022 64% of students could not read proficiently. That rate jumps to 79% for our Black and low-income children. Over the past several years we have been working to ensure a quality phonics curriculum was implemented, which JCPS now has. The new curriculum is proving to be successful.

• At our 2024 Nehemiah Action, then Superintendent Marty Pollio committed to meet with us after each round of MAP testing to review the data.

• In our Sept. 9, 2025 meeting with JCPS Superintendent Dr. Brian Yearwood made that commitment for himself to keep that same practice of meeting with CLOUT to review the MAP data to understand and assess the effectiveness of the reading curriculum.

• Our focus now is to ensure there is a plan and action for students in upper grades who are still struggling to read, because they did not have this curriculum in the critical elementary school years. 

Whole school restorative practices

• Whole School Restorative Practices is a discipline model that teaches students accountability and emotional intelligence. It works to address and prevent behavioral issues and ultimately to prevent students from falling into the school to prison pipeline.

• Prior to the pandemic, we received a commitment from Superintendent Pollio to implement whole school Restorative Practices (RP) in all JCPS Schools. RP is a discipline model that teaches students accountability and emotional intelligence. Before the pandemic, schools that were implementing this program with fidelity were not only seeing a reduction in suspensions, but also a reduction in behavioral incidents! Unfortunately, since the pandemic the implementation has slowed and weakened. 

• At the Nehemiah Action we asked Board of Education member Gail Logan Strange to commit to advocating for the new Superintendent to stick with their new phonics-based reading curriculum, prioritize solutions for students who are still struggling in upper grades, and to work with the Board and new Superintendent to strengthen the district-wide implementation of Restorative Practices.