It’s the first day of class for Child Development 123: Learning Disabilities, and instructor Sylvia Buford, PhD, is laying down some rules. “I do children’s disabilities. I don’t do adult meltdowns,” she says. “If there’s a problem” — she points at her desk — “I will have to use that radio” to summon help.

Her students, more than a dozen women dressed in the orange sweatshirts and sweatpants worn by inmates of San Francisco County Jail Number 2 near downtown San Francisco, listen quietly as Buford previews the class. Students can earn one unit toward a youth worker certificate that can help them find work in childcare programs, she explains, and they can earn high school credit at the same time.

[For more of this story, written by Rob Waters, go to https://medium.com/bright/the-...729748211#.90ramotgl]