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The School Search Is Changing: National Education Strategist Explains What Every Parent Needs to Know Before Choosing the Right School

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Independent Education Group helps families navigate every stage of the educational journey through personalized strategy, advocacy and year-round guidance

BOSTON, July 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — The back-to-school season is just around the corner, which means millions of parents are making school decisions. Gone are the days when children simply attend the school assigned by their address. Today, families have more educational choices than ever before, from public and charter schools to private schools, specialized programs and homeschooling. With so many options available, selecting the right educational path has become one of the most important decisions a family will make.

“Choosing a school is not just about where a child will spend the next year. It is about shaping their future,” says Michelle Smith, Founder and Chief Education Strategist of Independent Education Group. “Families do not just need help finding a school. They need a trusted education advisor who understands their child’s goals, advocates for their needs and helps them make thoughtful decisions throughout every stage of the educational journey.”

As a nationally recognized education strategist, Smith works with families across the country not only during the admissions process, but throughout a student’s educational journey. Independent Education Group provides personalized educational planning, helping families navigate transitions, identify opportunities, overcome challenges and build long term strategies that support each child’s academic, social and personal growth.

With so many options available beyond neighborhood public schools, families may choose charter schools, independent schools, specialized academic programs, faith based education or homeschooling. Others simply are not aware of the opportunities available to them or believe their choices are limited by geography or finances. Regardless of a family’s goals, there are often more educational options within reach than they realize.

According to the Pew Research Center, traditional public schools tend to be larger than any other type, charter school teachers are the most racially and ethnically diverse, and private school teachers tend to be slightly older and have more experience than teachers in charter schools. Understanding these differences, as well as each school’s culture, academic approach, support services and opportunities, is critical when determining the best educational fit for a child.

Rather than simply helping families choose a school, Smith’s work is built around five foundational pillars that provide year-round support:

The Five Pillars of Educational Success

Vision: Developing a personalized educational vision that reflects each student’s strengths, interests and long-term goals.

Strategy: Creating a customized road map that helps families confidently navigate every educational milestone.

Guidance: Providing ongoing support through regular touch points, educational workshops, planning sessions and trusted advice throughout the year.

Advocacy: Helping families navigate challenges, transitions and important educational decisions while ensuring every child’s needs remain the priority.

Opportunity: Identifying educational pathways, scholarships, specialized programs and opportunities many families may not know exist.

Here are additional things every parent should know when navigating the school selection process:

There are more options than many families realize. Parents are not limited to choosing between their neighborhood public school and homeschooling. Exploring all available educational opportunities can open doors that better fit a child’s needs.Learning styles matter. Understanding a child’s personality, strengths, interests and learning style is essential when selecting the right educational environment. Students are more likely to thrive when they are in a setting that complements how they learn best.The right fit makes a lasting difference. School culture, teaching philosophy, support systems, extracurricular opportunities and academic expectations all contribute to a child’s confidence, growth and long-term success. Thoughtful educational decisions today can influence opportunities for years to come.Affordability should not be a barrier. Many families assume private education is financially out of reach. However, scholarships, tuition assistance, tax benefits and other financial opportunities may make additional options more accessible than they expect.Families do not have to navigate it alone. Working with an experienced education strategist can help parents avoid costly mistakes, uncover opportunities and make informed decisions with greater confidence.

“Families deserve more than admissions assistance. They deserve a trusted partner who helps them make thoughtful educational decisions year after year,” said Smith. “Education is one of the most important investments a family will ever make, and having an experienced strategist by your side will make all the difference in helping a child reach their fullest potential.”

Smith has spent more than 20 years serving as a dean of students, principal, head of school and educational leader. Today, she serves families nationwide as a trusted education strategist, providing personalized guidance that extends well beyond school admissions. From early educational planning and school transitions to academic coaching, college preparation, parent advising and student advocacy, she helps families skillfully navigate every stage of a child’s educational journey. Her purpose is to empower families to make thoughtful, informed educational decisions that unlock each student’s fullest potential. For more information, visit https://www.independenteducationgroup.com/.

About Independent Education Group

Founded by veteran educator Michelle Smith, Independent Education Group is a national educational advisory firm dedicated to helping families navigate every stage of the educational journey with confidence. Serving as a family’s trusted educational advisory firm, Independent Education Group provides personalized educational strategy, advocacy, academic guidance, parent coaching and year-round support that extends far beyond school admissions. Built on five guiding pillars of Vision, Strategy, Guidance, Advocacy and Opportunity, the firm partners with families to help students thrive academically, socially and personally while making thoughtful educational decisions from childhood through college. Guided by the belief that every child deserves an educational journey designed with purpose, guided by expertise and supported with unwavering advocacy, Independent Education Group helps families build futures with confidence and lasting impact. To get more information about the services, visit the site at: https://www.independenteducationgroup.com/ 

Sources:

Pew Research Center. U.S. public, private and charter schools in 5 charts. June 2024. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/06/06/us-public-private-and-charter-schools-in-5-charts/

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SOURCE Independent Education Group

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San Jose City Employees Get Strike-Ready After Several Months of Stalled Contract Negotiations with City Administration

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SAN JOSE, Calif., July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On Wednesday, July 29, hundreds of San Jose city employees and members of IFPTE Local 21 and MEF-AFSCME Local 101 will attend Strike School to learn what it means to strike and the laws that protect their right to strike. Organization around Strike School comes after months of stalled negotiations between city workers and the City Administration. Workers have signed a strike pledge and held several informational pickets to shed light on San Jose being the most thinly staffed agency in the state, as well as the City’s implementation of AI without any guardrails, which further jeopardizes quality public services. Workers are forced to do more with less across all city departments. This Strike School session comes as the second of two- the first took place on Saturday, July 25, with hundreds of members in attendance.

Who: Hundreds of City of San Jose employees represented by IFPTE Local 21 and MEF-AFSCME Local 101. Spokespeople will be available for interviews before the members-only program.

What: San Jose Strike School Session #2

When/Where: Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at San Jose First United Methodist Church (24 N 5th St, San Jose, CA 95112). The program begins at 5:30 pm; registration begins at 5:00 pm

Visuals: Workers in blue, green, and teal union shirts, with banners and picket signs

BACKGROUND: In June, after receiving the City’s Last, Best, and Final Offer (LBFO) and working to reach a deal before contract expiration and City Council’s summer recess, San Jose workers called for mediation in order to reach a fair agreement.

Now, at the end of July, members of both unions have been without a contract for over a month. Instead of investing in our community, city officials have elected to spend taxpayer money on corporate giveaways through massive contracts with ineffective AI companies and an outrageous $325 million subsidy towards hockey arena renovations. The City could develop a strategy that ensures corporations pay their fair share from benefitting directly from city services. Instead, San Jose insists on cutting taxes for some of the largest corporations that occupy the city, while residents and working families pay more. Workers are preparing to go on strike if necessary.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/san-jose-city-employees-get-strike-ready-after-several-months-of-stalled-contract-negotiations-with-city-administration-302837042.html

SOURCE IFPTE Local 21

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Modine Publishes 2026 Sustainability Report

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RACINE, Wis., July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Modine (NYSE: MOD), a diversified global leader in thermal management technology and solutions, today announced the publication of its 2026 Sustainability Report. Titled Purpose-Driven Engineering, the report highlights the company’s significant progress in environmental stewardship, including the early achievement of its 2030 targets for both energy and water intensity, alongside major strides in product innovation and strategic transformation.

During fiscal year 2026, Modine accelerated its sustainability momentum. The company achieved reductions in energy and water intensity based on a 2018 baseline, surpassing its 2030 targets for both metrics. Additionally, Modine maintained strong, consistent progress on reducing absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions based on a 2018 baseline.

“FY26 represents a pivotal moment for Modine as global trends continue to accelerate demand for advanced thermal management solutions,” said Neil D. Brinker, Modine President and Chief Executive Officer. “As we move into this next phase of our company, our direction is both ambitious and intentional. We will continue expanding our portfolio of advanced data center and commercial HVAC&R technologies and partnering closely with customers to build infrastructure that is more resilient and more efficient.”

To support the sustainability of these growing markets, Modine introduced new solutions, expanded the use of AI across products and operations, and advanced efforts to further embed sustainability throughout its value chain. As part of these continuous improvement efforts, the company received independent limited assurance on its GHG emissions data for the first time.

Looking ahead, the company plans to develop new forward-looking targets to account for the transformational change in its business and the opportunity to continue serving customers in high-growth markets.

“Our progress this year, particularly in surpassing our 2030 energy and water intensity goals years ahead of schedule, is a testament to the dedication of our global workforce,” said Erin J. Roth, Modine Vice President, General Counsel, Corporate Secretary and Chief Compliance Officer, who leads the company’s sustainability program. “Sustainability is embedded in how we operate and innovate, and we are proud of our collaborative efforts to engineer a cleaner, healthier world.”

Learn more about Modine’s efforts by reading our 2026 Sustainability Report, available at Modine.com.

About Modine
For more than 100 years, Modine has solved the toughest thermal management challenges for mission-critical applications. Our purpose of Engineering a Cleaner, Healthier World™ means we are always evolving our portfolio of technologies to provide the latest heating, cooling, and ventilation solutions. Through the hard work of more than 13,000 employees worldwide, our businesses advance our purpose with systems that improve air quality, reduce energy and water consumption, lower harmful emissions, enable cleaner running vehicles, and use environmentally friendly refrigerants. Modine is a global company headquartered in Racine, Wisconsin (U.S.), with operations in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. For more information about Modine, visit modine.com.

Contact: sustainability@modine.com 

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SOURCE Modine

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Firmable launches MCP, giving sales teams a direct line from any AI tool to verified company and contact data

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New Firmable MCP brings GTM data, CRM context, and buyer intent into Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, and more.

SAN FRANCISCO and MELBOURNE, Australia, July 28, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Firmable, the AI-native B2B sales platform, launched its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, giving revenue teams the ability to run go-to-market activity directly from the AI tools they already use. The Firmable MCP is available now through Firmable Connect, a new hub at https://connect.firmable.ai that brings together MCP, webhooks, native CRM integrations, and API access in one place.

Sales teams have spent the past two years bolting AI onto old workflows and legacy data platforms. Reps switch between five tabs to build a single account list. Agents hallucinate company details because they’re working from stale, unverified data. CRMs fill up with duplicate records nobody trusts. The AI tools got smarter. The connection to the data underneath them didn’t keep up.

That gap is exactly what Firmable was built to close. “Every competitor in this space talks AI now,” said Karthik Venkatasubramanian, co-founder and Chief Product & Technology Officer at Firmable. “Most of them mean an AI layer sitting on top of a legacy database. Firmable is AI-native from the ground up, continuously sourcing, assembling, and refreshing accurate data and buying signals, not retrofitting an old system to sound like a new one.”

Firmable’s Lead GTM Engineer Asher Chua will introduce the MCP connector and illustrate its use in a live and recorded webinar on August 12. Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/4817852096930/WN_asz65zH-RXeB85Crg1mlqg

Kieran Krohn is Head of Growth at ScaleStation, a Firmable and HubSpot partner specializing in GTM strategy and processes. “We’re big fans of Firmable and have been impressed with the quality of their data, which is why we recommend them to our customers,” he said. “As we move deeper into a world of AI, we find it more and more useful to be able to leverage Claude as the operating layer that connects into our different systems. Having access to Firmable’s data via MCP makes a huge difference in being able to pull that data and manipulate it with intelligence.”

One connection, five unique processes beneath

The Firmable MCP gives almost any AI tool – Claude, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Codex, or Cursor – direct access to the Firmable B2B data stack. What makes it different comes down to five layers working together, continuously, before a rep ever types a prompt:

AI-native sourcing. Firmable’s proprietary AI pulls from hundreds of datasets to build its own map of the market, rather than reselling the same licensed feeds most other vendors use. That means more company profiles, deeper decision-maker detail, and stronger mobile and email coverage. Teams switching from Apollo or ZoomInfo consistently uncover meaningful net-new contacts on day one, and in head-to-head testing, Firmable delivers significantly higher verified mobile coverage than these legacy vendors in the same market.Structure at scale. AI agents map, resolve, and clean every record automatically, stripping out bots, inactive accounts, and stale profiles before anything reaches a user. Inefficient manual list curation is not required.Refreshed and verified. Database segments refresh continuously, and every record is cross-checked against live signals, so sellers aren’t calling a number that was disconnected two months ago or emailing someone who changed jobs in the spring.Insights at speed. AI agents scan constantly for what matters: role changes, hiring surges, funding rounds, and surface it as an assigned CRM action, not as a chart buried in a dashboard.Delivered for action. All of this reaches reps wherever they already work, in the Firmable app, through the new MCP connector in Claude and ChatGPT, via two-way CRM sync, or through webhooks and API access for custom workflows.

A rep can now ask their AI assistant to build a list of mid-market SaaS companies in San Francisco and map the buying committee at each one, and get verified, ready-to-action results in one step instead of ten.

Built-in guardrails, not just built-in AI

Firmable’s MCP marketplace, part of Firmable Connect, already contains an industry-leading set of 540 pre-built skills and prompts.

Some, like CRM Push Prep, add a layer that most AI tools skip. Before any list is written to Salesforce, HubSpot, or Microsoft Dynamics 365, CRM Push Prep previews exactly what will be created and what will be updated; flags duplicates; shows the cost and waits for the rep to confirm the list by name. No AI tool gets to write to a CRM unsupervised.

Other popular skills include Account Brief, which pulls firmographics, tech footprint, and ICP fit into one structured answer, and Buying Committee Mapper, which grounds its recommendations in real, verified Firmable contacts weighted by what the rep is selling.

Firmable Connect: one platform, four ways in

Firmable Connect is the new home for this capability. Alongside the MCP, the platform offers webhooks that push job and role changes, funding rounds, and intent spikes straight into Slack or any workflow tool; native two-way sync for HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Microsoft Dynamics 365; and direct API access for teams building on Firmable data. Setup takes seconds: install the MCP, authenticate with OAuth, and run a first GTM skill in under two minutes.

“We didn’t want to be another data vendor with an API bolted on,” said Leigh Jasper, co-founder and co-CEO of Firmable. “Other tools hand you a database and wish you luck, but Firmable is your AI sales teammate. We wanted to meet revenue teams inside the tools they’ve already adopted for AI, and to make sure what shows up there is data they trust enough to act on immediately, with the context they need. Smarter data, sharper timing, that’s the whole bet behind Firmable Connect.”

The launch lands as Firmable accelerates its expansion into the US and Canada, building on its established base across Australia, New Zealand, and wider APAC. The MCP is available today, with a free trial for new users.

Firmable MCP is available now at https://connect.firmable.ai/mcp, where the full skill and prompt marketplace can be browsed, and downloaded into your AI tool. Teams can start a free trial at https://app.firmable.com/sign-up.

About Firmable

Firmable is an AI-native B2B sales platform, your AI sales teammate, that helps revenue teams find, understand, and connect with the right buyers at the right time. Combining verified company and contact data with CRM context, buyer intent, and agentic AI, Firmable powers go-to-market teams across the US and Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. www.firmable.ai

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SOURCE Firmable

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