Disenfranchised-Educators

Disenfranchised-Educators

Why the Millionaires Tax Was  Worth Fighting For; Another Reason for All Educators to Back the CFT

by Mark Brenner of Labor Notes | Tue, 03/27/2012

The tax compromise made by the California Federation of Teachers resulted in major improvements to the ballot initiative that could be in front of voters in November. But backers of the millionaires tax should have bucked the governor's deal and continued their struggle to reverse endless austerity. Photo: Steve Rhodes.

We’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback about the decision by leaders of the California Federation of Teachers and their community allies to withdraw the “millionaires tax” ballot initiative. The CFT did so after striking a compromise March 14 with Governor Jerry Brown.

There is no question that the deal made major improvements to Brown’s initial proposal and catapulted the CFT and its partners into a major role in California politics, a good thing for the labor movement and the rest of working class California. Within the labor movement, the fight over the millionaires tax undoubtedly tilted politics in a more progressive direction, too.

Despite all this, there are still compelling reasons why proponents of the millionaires tax should have rebuffed the governor and pushed the tax ahead to the November election. The decision to pull back is a setback in the struggle to reverse the endless austerity provoked by the 2008 financial meltdown.

As Good as It Gets?

Many observers of California politics argue that the CFT and its allies pulled off a major coup. They stuck to their guns when the governor pressed for a deal in November. And by plowing forward with their own ballot measure, they injected the wildly popular idea of a millionaires tax into the debate over how to plug California’s budget deficit, and they also extracted important concessions from Brown.

The compromise initiative will bring in more money for the state than either the original Brown proposal or the CFT’s millionaires tax. (See a side-by-side comparison of how the original proposals stacked up.)

The compromise boosts the tax rate even more for individuals earning over $250,000, and the new measure cuts the regressive feature—a half percent sales tax—down to a quarter percent. Under the compromise, 85 percent of new revenue will come from tax hikes on top earners, with only 15 percent from the sales tax.

The deal is even more striking given that the CFT was actively opposed, or left twisting in the wind, by labor’s much larger players in California state politics. The Service Employees state council and the California Teachers Association carried Brown’s water to battle the CFT and its allies. 

In November appointees from SEIU International pushed through a statewide binding endorsement of Brown’s original ballot initiative, tying the hands of public sector locals that wanted to back the millionaires tax. And in February they stepped up their attacks. SEIU state director Dave Kieffer called Brown the “adult in the room” when it came to finding revenue solutions, dismissing out of hand any attempt to address tax questions outside of the narrow confines of acceptable Sacramento politics.

Millionaires tax supporters hoped to at least get an endorsement from the California Teachers Association (the National Education Association state body), especially after CTA’s largest local affiliate, United Teachers Los Angeles, backed the tax. But in the weeks leading up to the compromise, the CTA began telling its members the millionaires tax was fatally flawed, taking a similarly hard line in the press.

The CFT, a smaller California Educators Union, was also getting pressure from above, with American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten reportedly pushing for a compromise in order to avoid a showdown with the state’s Democratic establishment. At the same time, Democratic legislators were threatening to punish the CFT when budgets are crafted later this year, targeting the CFT’s base in schools and universities for even more budgetary blood letting. 

Missing the Moment

Leaving the CFT and its allies scrambling to evaluate whether to forge ahead with their fight mostly alone. Besides the brass-knuckles opposition from Democratic lawmakers and their allies inside SEIU and CTA, other unions stood by with their fingers in the wind. While several endorsed the millionaires tax, most notably the Nurses (CNA) and the Longshore workers in Northern California (ILWU), none put real money behind it. Reports vary, but millionaires tax supporters appear to have collected a third of the required signatures to qualify for the ballot, and it’s unclear whether they had the financial or logistical resources to secure the required signature numbers by the end of April without additional commitments. 

Many supporters of the millionaires tax hoped the Occupy movement would boost their organizing, but Occupiers didn’t muster the interest or discipline necessary to mount the tightly coordinated, unglamorous work of signature gathering. Their real potential would have been truly effective during this campaign season, turning glitter bombs, mic checks, and all manner of creative disruption loose on the state’s millionaires, in the same way that California nurses hounded Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman during past election campaigns.

If there was no real possibility that the millionaires tax was going to make it onto the ballot, then by compromising the CFT made the most out of a bad situation.

But if CFT and its allies had secured sufficient resources to get the millionaires tax in front of voters in November, here are six reasons why they should have rebuffed the governor and stuck with it—even though they would have faced a fierce onslaught from corporate opponents (read millionares).

Bait and switch. One worrisome aspect of the deal with Brown is that he continues to gather signatures for his original ballot initiative, ostensibly as a fallback in case the compromise measure fails to qualify. With only six weeks to gather close to 1 million signatures, that’s a real risk. This raises the equally real possibility that the governor has induced millionaire tax supporters to withdraw their measure without enough time to get the compromise on the ballot, thereby clearing the field for Brown’s original proposal, which relies more on a regressive sales tax. 

99 to 1. With just two words, the “millionaires tax” captured what’s wrong with our upside-down economy, and who should foot the bill to set things right side up. The millionaires tax wasn’t a stop-gap aimed at plugging the current budget hole—a limitation of both Brown’s measure and the compromise, which sunsets after seven years. It was a permanent turn towards a more working class affordable type of tax structure. Victory could have closed the door on the knee-jerk anti-tax politics that have defined California for a generation. The new measure misses the mark at defining a new common sense for the state middle class.

Money isn’t everything. The resource question haunted the millionaires tax campaign from day one. How much money could the CFT and their allies get from the rest of the labor movement? How much would business interests and billionaires pour into a campaign to defeat it? Money has become the shorthand for evaluating success in politics, and it’s a trap.

With tight timelines and high ballot qualification thresholds, resources are necessary to hire signature gatherers and mount a field campaign. But unions will never be able to match corporate pocketbooks, and it’s time we stopped listening to the army of consultants, political strategists, and ad makers telling us that money is the only tool we have at our disposal. The millionaires tax could have been bulletproof at the ballot box if its supporters had been willing to get out there and fight for it.

John Kerry learned this lesson too late, after he declined to back a 2004 ballot initiative to raise the Florida minimum wage. The measure won big—unlike Kerry—sweeping every county in Florida despite being outspent more than 4 to 1.

Break the insiders’ grip. Outside consultants and in-house lobbyists are focused on the access that comes with playing the politicians’ game. When you break ranks and run your own program, there’s always blowback. Legislators threatened to punish CFT members during the budget process, and turned a cold shoulder on their lobbyists and policy specialists in the corridors of the statehouse.

But this payback for independence and initiative was a small price compared with the promise of winning, which could have broken the grip that insiders have on labor’s political strategy. As the complicated wrangling with Governor Brown demonstrates, too often unions are taking our cues about what to do, and what’s even possible, from Democratic Party operatives. Politicians may tell you this is the last straw, but they always come back. In fact, you can count the fact that they’ll always cut a deal. We can’t afford to be so predictable. 

Lay our cards on the table. One of the paradoxes of politics is that everyone praises transparency, but laying your cards on the table makes it impossible to bluff. That’s a problem for politicians, but it shouldn’t be for unions. The analogy with strike preparation is instructive. The union hand is strongest when everyone has debated the issues, knows the decision points, and has a clear picture of what are and aren’t strike-worthy issues.

Compare this scenario to the common practice in today’s labor movement, where only a handful of officers and insiders know how big decisions are made and most rank-and-file members are in the dark. This breeds confusion and cynicism, but more importantly, it reinforces the idea that members are just pieces on a chessboard. Who is willing to take risks in this kind of environment? If you’re going to ask members to make sacrifices, you can’t be surprised when those who’ve stepped up want a say over what to do when faced with hard choices. The millionaires tax campaign could have been a turning point for the state’s labor movement, offering a concrete opportunity to model a different, more democratic way of doing politics. Missing that chance cost us more than dollars and cents.

Be willing to lose. It’s a necessary risk, if we’re fighting for something worth winning. And it’s the only way to pull the Democratic Party in a different direction, a move most unions consider a pre-condition for reversing today’s austerity. The Tea Party learned that lesson almost instinctively, and it’s why the Republican presidential candidates trip over themselves to lay claim to the conservative mantle.

If we blink every time there’s a showdown, then politicians like Jerry Brown will always count on that reflex. This dynamic will consistently drag politics rightward. We also know from the civil rights movement and labor’s 1930s upsurge that most great successes were not achieved on the first outing. A string of losses usually preceded a big breakthrough. If we’re not willing to live with a loss, then we’re never going to have the breakthrough.

Paving the way for an uncluttered ballot in November, a California teachers union struck a deal Wednesday with Governor Jerry Brown that would combine a millionaires tax with a sales tax boost.

The state’s labor movement had divided over the best way to put the need for public investment before the voters. The California Federation of Teachers (CFT) and other unions had pressed for a stiff tax on millionaires and were gathering signatures to qualify it for the ballot. 

But with backing from the Service Employees (SEIU) and the California Teachers Association (CTA), Brown put forward a competing ballot initiative he touted as “shared sacrifice.” Crafted to minimize opposition from business, the Brown measure would have hiked the sales tax and raised income taxes by 1 to 2 percent on earners over $250,000.

The state sales tax in California, at 7.25 percent, is already the highest in the nation.

The compromise announced Wednesday would cut the proposed sales tax increase in half, to 0.25 percent, while lifting the rates for top earners higher than Brown had proposed.

The income tax boost would last seven years, not the five years Brown had first put forward.

“The petition drive to get the millionaires tax on the ballot did have a real impact,” said Mike Parker, a retired union activist who had pushed for the tax with the Richmond Progressive Alliance. “It forced Brown to make a significant shift towards taxing the wealthy.”

The original millionaires tax initiative would have permanently raised rates by 3 percent for income over $1 million and by 5 percent for income over $2 million, garnering close to $16 billion the first two years.

The version agreed to this week would raise about $7 to $9 billion annually at first, state Democrats said, before tailing off to about $5 to $7 billion a year.

The money will head to the state’s general fund, disappointing education activists who noted that the millionaires tax initiative had set aside money for schools. The state faces a $9 billion overall budget gap.

“The governor’s proposal will cut further from education,” said Caitlin Fox-Hodess, a head steward in UAW Local 2865 at the University of California Berkeley. “The purpose of the millionaires tax was to have a separate fund for education and essential services.”

Playing the Inside Game

Jim Miller, who teaches at San Diego City College and is political action vice president of the CFT local on campus, said the union’s leadership caved to the governor and the unions opposed to the millionaires tax.

“They folded like a cheap tent,” Miller said. “By including the sales tax, it leaves the door wide open to anti-tax types who will say the unions are coming to pick your pocket. It throws away the incredible rhetoric of the 99% versus the 1%, it blurs the issue of progressive taxation, and centrally, it’s still temporary.”

Both the CTA and SEIU campaigned against the millionaires tax.

Miller said CFT switched its position without consulting members, infuriating activists like him who have spent months working with members and allied community groups to gather thousands of signatures.

“The process was deeply undemocratic,” Miller said. “This was the worst sort of inside-game, top-down unionism.”

Sources in the CFT said the union had planned to take the issue before its executive council this weekend but found its hand forced.

CFT spokesman Fred Glass said the union always made clear that it needed another partner from labor to commit resources to effectively fight the resistance expected to the millionaires tax, but couldn't find one. The California Nurses and Northern California division of the Longshore union (ILWU) had endorsed the tax.

"We were able to push a sitting governor to make a regressive tax much more progressive, and put a lot more responsibility on the shoulders of those who should bear it," Glass said, adding sixth-sevenths of the revenue raised by the compromise initiative will come from higher taxes on high earners.

Fox-Hodess said other unions and community groups in the millionaires tax coalition have not given up on the idea and will decide this week whether to pursue the initiative. The task will be much harder without the teachers union, the biggest and best-resourced partner in the group.

Some backers of the millionaires tax say it wasn’t clear their coalition was going to have enough signatures, which could have influenced CFT’s decision.

But the millionaires tax had the advantage of grassroots momentum, said Michael-David Sasson, a steward in Teamsters Local 2010 who works at the University of California Berkeley. The signature-gathering activated many groups not typically involved in politics, he added.

Sasson said the millionaires tax upset Democratic leaders, however, who likely threatened to exact their revenge by opposing CFT’s legislative agenda.

Longtime observers believe that both CTA and SEIU expected their support for the governor’s tax initiative to translate into more favorable treatment for their members when the ax falls in future rounds of budget-cutting.

“One can imagine there were threats as well as enticements in the discussion,” Sasson said.

Fast-approaching deadlines fed the need to find a compromise. Backers of the consolidated measure will have only six weeks to find 800,000 signatures to qualify it for the November ballot.

California has been hit hard by the economic crisis, but anti-tax legislators have blocked most proposals to raise revenue, and shortfalls have disproportionately translated into cuts. The state budget has fallen from $102 billion to $87 billion in the last four years. Support for the elderly and disabled has been slashed, libraries and parks have been closed, and tuition at California’s public universities and colleges jumped 21 percent last year alone, the highest increase in the nation.

Popularity Contest

Late February polls by the CFT showed support for the millionaires tax at 69 percent and backing for the Brown proposal at 56 percent. A third tax initiative had 40 percent support.

Separate polling by the Public Policy Institute of California showed the Brown proposal at 52 percent, down from nearly two-thirds several weeks ago.

Taxes on millionaires are gaining in popularity nationwide. Oregon voters passed a tax on the state’s wealthiest 3 percent two years ago, and in the wake of the Occupy movement, New York's governor extended special levies on high earners, backing away from his earlier opposition to such taxes.

Despite the public enthusiasm for the millionaires tax, several of California’s biggest unions had lined up behind the governor.

In January the 295,000-member CTA announced its support. Despite the poll numbers, CTA argued that Brown’s measure had the best chance at the ballot box. The California Business Roundtable and the Chamber of Commerce, among other large corporate interests, opposed the millionaires tax.

A similar tension existed inside SEIU, which has 700,000 members in California. The SEIU state council voted to back the Brown proposal in November, over the objections of several large public employee locals that wanted to throw the union’s considerable resources behind the millionaires tax.

But after a call for per-capita-weighted voting, the endorsement tilted in favor of Brown. The council voted to bind locals to the state council’s endorsement, barring dissenting locals from endorsing or funding the millionaires tax.

Sources familiar with the endorsement confirm it was driven by officials originally appointed by the SEIU International to run its giant statewide health care union, UHW, after the local was trusteed in 2009.

Us Vs. Them

Rank-and-file activists expressed frustration with the insider approach, especially after the openings created by Occupy and related movements to challenge politics as usual.

“A lot of other unions think about electoral politics as the whole game,” Fox-Hodess said. “It’s just one component of a larger struggle.”

Amanda Armstrong, a head steward in UAW Local 2865, said focusing on millionaires could have reversed the anti-tax mood that for three decades has provoked a steady decline in funding for everything except prisons.

Inspired by the Occupy movement, she and 50 Bay Area students and faculty marched 99 miles to converge on the Capitol in Sacramento March 5.

Joining thousands of teachers and students—from kindergarten to college—their demonstration was fueled by nearly $5 billion in state education cuts that will be triggered if voters don’t approve a tax increase in November.

Hundreds attempted to occupy the Capitol, provoking a standoff with state police that led to 68 arrests. “We’re not going to win this fight by going up to Sacramento to lobby,” Armstrong said.

At his daughter’s school, Sasson had secured the Parent Teacher Association’s endorsement of the millionaires tax. He had planned to table for signatures Friday night and wonders what he should tell the parents now.

“We had the crazy idea that people who are millionaires should be taxed at a higher rate indefinitely, and that moving to Mississippi levels of education funding is not a good thing,” he said. “It was a hyper-reasonable way to engage people who think bake sales will solve the school’s funding problems.”

Moreno Valley Educators Are You In or Out?

This is the FIGHT of our Professional Lives! This is The Begining of the End to Our Right to Have Union Representation!   Henry Voros is mimicking a tactic used in Northern and Central California and CTA seems powerless to stop it. Stand Up Damn it. Make your feelings known!

Express your opinion annonymously at the link below:

Moreno Valley Educators Are 
You In or Out?

"Hell has a special level for those who sit by idly during times of great crisis."

Robert Kennedy

2011 marred by test cheating scandals across US

DORIE TURNER, AP Education Writer 

Dec. 27, 2011 9:16 PM ET

ATLANTA (AP) — It was the year of the test cheating scandal.

From Atlanta to Philadelphia and Washington to Los Angeles, officials have accused hundreds of educators of changing answers on tests or giving answers to students. Just last week, state investigators revealed that dozens of educators in 11 schools in Georgia's Dougherty County either cheated or failed to prevent cheating on 2009 standardized tests.

In July, those same investigators accused nearly 180 educators in almost half of Atlanta's 100 schools of cheating dating back to 2001 — which experts have called the largest cheating scandal in U.S. history. At least 20 students have been charged on Long Island with cheating on SAT and ACT college-entrance exams by paying someone to take the test for them.

"It's a year in which cheating became a national scandal, a scandal of national proportions," said Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which advocates against high-stakes testing. "The Atlanta case forced policymakers and journalists in other jurisdictions to look to see if there's anything similar going on in their backyards."

Experts say some educators have bowed to the mounting pressure under the federal No Child Left Behind law as schools' benchmarks increase each year toward the ultimate goal of having all children reading and doing math at their grade level by 2014. Teachers in Atlanta reported that administrators created a culture of "fear, intimidation and retaliation" where testing goals had to be met no matter what, according to investigators.

"This problem existed before No Child Left Behind, but NCLB has exacerbated the problem, clearly," said Walter Haney, a retired Boston College education professor and expert on cheating. "I think testing is really important, but the problem has been the misuse of test results without looking behind the test scores to see who and who is not tested."

Federal officials have been saying for more than a year that the law, which is four years overdue for a rewrite, doesn't accurately depict what's happening in schools. While federal lawmakers agree the law needs to be fixed, an overhaul has become mired in the partisan atmosphere in Congress.

At President Obama's invitation, states have begun filing waivers to get relief from the law. Under the 11 waivers already filed, states are asking to use a variety of factors to determine whether they pass muster and to choose how schools will be punished if they don't improve. Among the factors that could be used are college-entrance exam scores or the performance of students on Advanced Placement tests.

At least 39 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have said they will file waivers, though it is unclear how many will get approved.

In Pennsylvania, an investigation continues into irregularities found in 2009 state standardized tests in reading and math. The probe began last summer after a routine forensics report flagged "highly improbable" results in 90 schools across the state.

The state education secretary ordered the 50 districts representing the named schools to conduct internal investigations and submit reports to him by Aug. 15., But nearly four months later, the reports are still being analyzed and have not been made public.

Twenty-eight of the flagged schools were in Philadelphia, the state's largest district. District representative Fernando Gallard said the system is talking with the state Department of Education over how to move forward with the cheating investigation.

In Washington, D.C., federal and city officials are investigating possible cheating in more than 100 schools from 2008 to 2010. The unusually high rate of erasures in those schools became known after a USA Today investigation into improbable test gains in more than 300 schools in six states and D.C.

City officials tossed out test results for three classrooms in May because of proven cases of cheating.

A Waterbury, Conn., principal resigned earlier this month over an alleged cheating scheme on the Connecticut Mastery Test. A dozen teachers who were also caught up in the scandal lost 20 days of pay and have to perform 25 hours of free tutoring.

In Los Angeles, teachers at three schools have resigned after being accused of coaching students or changing answers on tests. The test scores at two of those schools have been thrown out.

Schaeffer, who follows cheating scandals closely for years, said he's seen as many cheating stories this year as in the last half-dozen years combined. He said there have been confirmed cases of cheating in 30 states and D.C. in the last three years.

___

Reporters Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and Brett Zongker in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

___

Study Warns of Limited Savings from Closing Schools

Edited by I, Praetorian

·         Printer-Friendly

Closing schools doesn’t save air academic progress. And it says school districts can help generate some acceptance for a downsizing plan by involving the community early and establishing clear reasons for why certain schools must close.

The report, released Oct. 19, was written by the Philadelphia Research Initiative to foreshadow what the 154,000-student Philadelphia district can expect over the next few years as it plans to close a number of schools because of declining enrollments. The district currently has 70,000 empty seats, according to the report. School administrators have not decided which schools to close and how many, but internal school documents published in June by the website Philadelphia Public School Notebook listed 26 schools that could be shut down.

The report looks at school closings in Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Mo., Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and the District of Columbia. Each of those districts has closed at least 20 schools in the past decade, and most of the buildings have been shuttered in the recent past.

For example, Pittsburgh, with around 25,300 students, went through a “right-sizing” effort that closed 22 schools in 2006. The district is now discussing closing seven more schools. The 17,400-student Kansas City district closed 29 schools—nearly half of its school buildings—in 2010.

A Matter of Context

Closing schools does save money, but in districts whose budgets add up to hundreds of millions of dollars or more, the final savings are relatively small, said Larry Eichel, the program director for the Philadelphia Research Initiative, which is a project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Philadelphia’s current annual budget, for example, is $2.8 billion.

Six Cities Shuttering Buildings

To inform deliberations over plans to close schools in Philadelphia, researchers conducted case studies of recent school closings in six other urban districts.

Chicago
Closure Period: 2001-2009
Number Closed: 44
Buildings in Use: 602

Detroit
Closure Period: 2009-2010
Number Closed: 59
Buildings in Use: 130

Kansas City, Mo.
Closure Period: 2009-2010
Number Closed: 29
Buildings in Use: 29

Milwaukee
Closure Period: 2005-2010
Number Closed: 20
Buildings in Use: 137

Pittsburgh
Closure Period: 2006
Number Closed: 22
Buildings in Use: 64

District of Columbia
Closure Period: 2008
Number Closed: 23
Buildings in Use: 11

*As of 2011.

Source: The Philadelphia Research Initiative

“The savings are under a million dollars per school,” Mr. Eichel said. “That’s real money, but not money that changes anything fundamentally.”

The biggest chunk of district money is spent on teachers, and those staff members typically are still needed, just at different locations.

A district also has to pay for some maintenance on shuttered buildings so they don’t become neighborhood eye sores.

And districts should not expect a windfall from selling their old buildings. Those facilities are undesirable to businesses for some of the same reasons that districts decided to close them: The buildings are often located in areas that are losing population. Also, they tend to be in poor condition, and it may be hard to convert them to other purposes, Mr. Eichel said.

The study found examples of repurposing, however. In Milwaukee, a former middle school was bought last year for $600,000 to be converted into senior housing. In Chicago, several closed schools have been converted to charter schools.

Impact on Learning

In examining the academic performance of students in schools slated to be closed, the report focused on a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research that looked at students whose schools were closed between 2001 and 2006. That study found that student performance fell at schools that were slated to be shut down and remained low for the rest of the school year. A year later, though, the academic performance of those displaced students had rebounded to preclosure levels.

The Pew report also cites a study led by researchers from the RAND Corp. that examined achievement from students from closed schools in a “midsized urban district in the Northeast.” Though the district was not named, the paper noted that the district closed 22 schools in the 2005-06 school year, which corresponds with Pittsburgh’s experience.

That paper said students in the district whose schools were closed did see a drop in their reading and math scores, but researchers found the effect could be mitigated or eliminated if the students were moved to schools that were higher-performing than the ones they left behind.

The Pew report offers several tools that districts can use to reduce the pain of closing schools. For example, it suggests that outside experts can bring a level of objectivity to the proceedings. Seeking community support early is also essential, the report notes.

It says that the 45,000-student District of Columbia school system committed a misstep by moving too quickly to close schools in the face of a 30 percent decline in enrollment. Under the leadership of then-Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee, the school system announced that closures were coming in September 2007, and the final vote to close 23 schools came, after much controversy, four months later.

Mary Filardo, the executive director of the Washington-based 21st Century School Fund, studies school facilities issues and agrees that the system in Washington moved too quickly to shut down schools. Too many school districts distrust the public when it comes to closure decisions, she said.

Taking It to the Public

“The reason you involve the community is not to make [closings] palatable,” she said. “The reason you involve the community is because you want to make better decisions.”

She added that people whose children attend school in such urban areas often “are working-class or low-income. They know about making tough decisions and struggling” and can understand the necessity for some closings.

As District of Columbia school officials learned, making a misstep in school closings can cause political fallout. The community uproar over the closings in Washington was one of the ingredients that led last year to the primary-election defeat of then-Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who had selected Ms. Rhee, and to the chancellor’s departure.

And after community members in Chicago protested that school- closure decisions were being made in secret, the Illinois legislature passed a law in August that governs how that 409,000-student system can make facilities decisions.

“The political fallout is from not having a trusting relationship with your public,” Ms. Filardo said.

Being Transparent

But involving the public can be a delicate balancing act, said Nancy R. Kodman, the executive director for academic and operations integration for Pittsburgh schools. Just introducing the problem to the community, she said, leads to people saying, “You don’t have any solutions? You don’t have any ideas?” But a full plan is criticized for being drawn up in secret.

“You lessen that by being as transparent as you can,” Ms. Kodman said.

When Pittsburgh closed more than 20 schools, she said, the district talked with the public about what it was hoping to achieve. Academic improvement was put forward as the top goal, and to eliminate some political horse-trading, the closures were considered as a group, in a single up-or-down vote by the school board.

While many urban districts are struggling with how to handle excess space, Ms. Filardo noted that Seattle is dealing with overcrowded classrooms, thanks to unexpected population growth. The Seattle Times reported in October that in one school, a 4th grade class is meeting in a hallway, and many classes are meeting in portables. An infusion of about 1,500 more students than expected is prompting the district to reopen some schools that it had closed, over community objection, in the past few years.

Part 1 of Deconstructing Hate Sites

This Information is Provided by the Victim of Such A Hate Site: A Man Still Fighting One Year Later to Clear His Name From the False Accusations of Belonging to Such Hate Based Internet Sewage... I am that Victim along with another outstanding person and Journalist MVgordie (mvgordie.com). I, Praetorian Responding to Online Hate When people see hate on the Net, they just say: "Well, what can I do about it?" And they move on. But the only way people can start to get rid of the hate is by taking some interest in the ways in which we, as human beings, can prevent hate from spreading. A Vancouver Island high-school student MNet’s 2001 survey "Young Canadians in a Wired World" showed that when young people came across a "hateful" Web site, more than a third (36 per cent) simply ignored it. If they received hateful e-mail messages, again more than three in ten did nothing—though a similar percentage told a friend, an adult, or the police. There is no reason to believe that adults’ rate of response is any higher. Granted, it’s not always easy to tell whether hateful online content is actually illegal, rather than just offensive and annoying. Sometimes material can only properly be defined as illegal by the courts. Still, the courts can’t prosecute what they don’t know about—so public response is crucial. If people want to do something about hate material they see on the Internet, there are several options: Contact the Internet Service Provider All over the world, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are being forced to become more proactive about hate material on their servers. Most ISPs now have Acceptable Use Policies that clearly define the guidelines for using their services, as well as the penalties for violating those guidelines. In Canada, most ISPs belong to the Canadian Association of Internet Providers (CAIP). CAIP’s Code of Conduct states that its members will not host illegal content, and will make a reasonable effort to investigate legitimate complaints about illegal content or network abuse—taking appropriate action, if needed. However, ISPs do not have the legal power to decide what material is illegal; and so most are reluctant to remove suspect content from their servers without official direction from a law enforcement agency. Report online hate to the police Some urban police departments now have a High-Tech Crime Unit to investigate online offences. If none exists, a complaint can be made to the local police. It’s advisable to attach a copy of the offending material to the letter of complaint. File a complaint with the F.B.I. Good for the records otherwise pretty useless unless threats of violence are made. Check out "hate watch" Web sites A number of sites exist to monitor and document illegal material on the Internet. Some notable examples are B’nai Brith League for Human Rights, which hosts a hate hotline; and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which has identified thousands of offensive Web sites. Its CD entitledDigital Hate 2002 lists sites that promote antisocial and illegal activities ranging from hate music to suicide bombing. The Southern Poverty Law Center is another good resource. Any hate found on a California Web site is now subject to new legislation—though hate encountered on other states sites must be dealt with differently. However, the U.S.-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League both recommend that surfers alert them to any online hate, so that they can try to get the offending material removed. And since the active promotion of tolerance is one of the best responses to hate, check out the online pamphlet 101 Tools for Tolerance: Simple Ideas for Promoting Equity and Diversity, developed by the Web-based group Tolerance.org. For more detailed information about the organizations mentioned here, as well as information on how to report online hate, see the links in the sidebar.

The Self Harm Cycle

Latest Evidence Suggests

Self-harm is most common in children over the age of 11 and increases in frequency with age. It is uncommon in very young children although there is evidence of children as young as five trying to harm themselves.


Self-harm is more common amongst girls and young women than amongst boys and young men. Studies indicate that, amongst young people over 13 years of age, approximately three times as many females as males harm themselves.


A study in Oxford found that approximately 300 per 100,000 males aged between 15 and 24 years, and 700 per 100,000 females of the same age, were admitted to hospital following an episode of self-harm during the year 2000. Community based studies report higher rates of self-harm than hospital based studies.


A national survey of children and adolescents carried out in the community found that 5 per cent of boys and 8 per cent of girls aged 13-15 said that they had, at some time, tried to harm, hurt or kill themselves.
In the same national survey, rates of self-harm reported by parents were much lower than the rates of self-harm reported by children. This suggests that many parents are unaware that their children are self-harming.


A study carried out in schools in 2002 found that 11 per cent of girls and 3 per cent of boys aged 15 and 16 said they had harmed themselves in the previous year.
Greater incidence of self-injury amongst gay and lesbian young adults; five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts. A greater number of occurrences of self-injury exist among those with physical disabilities and epilepsy.


The UK has one of the highest rates of self-harm in Europe, at 400 per 100,000 population. It is estimated that there are at least 170,000 cases of self-harm which come to hospital attention each year. Many more incidents of self-harming behaviour probably take place but are not included in any statistics because people may choose not to seek medical help.


New estimates have been made about the most common form of Self Harm
Cutting: 72 percent
Burning: 35 percent
Self-hitting: 30 percent
Interference w/wound healing: 22 percent
Hair pulling: 10 percent
Bone breaking: 8 percent
Multiple methods: 78 percent (included in above)

If you would like to email Stop Self Harm, to ask for help or advice email us at stopselfharm@hotmail.co.uk or leave a message in our guestbook and we'll get back to you.

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Amber Alert

THE DEFINITION OF COURAGE. YOU NEED TO KNOW.

Please understand this is a 70 year-old former U.S. Prosecutor! This man, Dr. Richard I Fine, PHd is my hero (see video series below, courtesy of Full Disclosure) and model for my fights to come  with Moreno Valley USD  also one of the most litigated school districts in the inland empire. For over 20 years of corruption spearheaded by the personalities of the COWARDS and BULLY BOYS RUNNING MVUSD'S HUMAN RESOURCES.  One of the former participated in felony misuse and theft of public funds, one a convicted felon who used an unregistered pistol firing at a car fleeing his house with his own daughter inside the car. He is still employed and partially running a MVUSD middle school. This school was formerly the flagship of the entire district. The current coward is helping to cover up directly or indirectly the theft of  or miss use of  student funds that totals in the multiple $100,000s in cash  EVERY YEAR.


The man most responsible for this system wide cover-up, a man who lied more than once to me when I was looking for help with the criminal activity I stumbled upon, was fired early this year then allowed to stay on with a double demotion to assistant principal. The Board was afraid that out and out firing would tempt him to tell all. For years covered up by some of the Superintendents and their assistants, including Bob Crank who was one of the key players Most area taxpayers are paying twice over for there child's education without knowing and some of that money is stolen in cash! Watch for the documentation and names to come.  BUT lets not forget the School Board who hires these people, among which contains a documented CHILD MOLESTER and a yet to be charged criminal who used the power of the office for... well, come back and see. Another is on the payroll of local Developer and member of the shadowy Jewish "Gold Trust" and its silent members. An organization who's home is somewhere in Beverly Bills, CA. I have fired off a letter to the Jewish Defense League* asking point blank if they are associated... 

Did I mention the possible cover-up of an alleged murder of a 17 year-old student at the hands of a former school district employee? One of whom was working here until two years ago. I am still working on this. Time and the efficiency of the alleged cover-up has made it hard to follow.
Sincerely, I, Praetorian.

*The Jewish Defense League or JDL is a Jewish nationalist and far-right organization whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary".^[1] While the group asserts that it "unequivocally condemns terrorism", and claims to have a "strict no-tolerance policy against terrorism and other felonious acts,"^[2] it was described as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation^[3] in 2001, and as a hate group involved in "anti-Arab terrorism" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[4] According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting terrorist attacks within the United States.^{[3] Outside the FBI, the}  Anti-Defamation League (ADL)^[2] and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).^[3 are the largest watch dog organizations in the US monitoring hate groups. 

TESTSCORES

September 28, 2011|By Brad Lendon, CNN; editedby Praetorian
7 arrested in allegedSAT cheating scam in New York

Authorities have arrested seven people in an, high schooland are investigating whether the cheating extends to other schools. SamuelEshaghoff, 19, of Great Neck, New York, was arrested Tuesday on felony fraudcharges that could result in four years in prison if he's convicted, the NassauCounty District Attorney's Office said.

Six students face misdemeanor charges. Their names are notbeing released because they are minors.

Prosecutors allege Eshaghoff impersonated sixGreat Neck North High students between 2010 and 2011, charging between $1,500and $2,500 to take the SAT test for them.

Eshaghoffwould take the test at schools other than Great Neck, where proctors would notbe familiar with the students' identity, and present fake, unofficialidentification, prosecutors say.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Ricesaid authorities uncovered the scam after hearing rumors of cheating, comparingthe test scores of suspects to their school grade-point averages, and finding a"wide gulf" in the cases of the six suspects.

The district attorney's office said it isinvestigating possible cheating scams at two other Nassau County high schoolsas well as possible further instances involving Eshaghoff.

Eshaghoff's attorney, Matin Emouna, said hisclient pleaded not guilty in the case.

And he said cheating on tests is something thatshould be handled in schools, not in criminal courts.

"At what point are you going to draw theline?" Emouna asked during a phone interview with CNN Wednesday. "Noone has had a case like this in the U.S., and I think attorneys are going tohave a field day with it."

The victims in the case are other students whoare denied admission at the colleges of their choice by the students whocheated, Rice said Wednesday on CNN's "American Morning."

"Honest kids should not be bumped out ofcollege slots by kids who cheated," she said.

Rice called on the Educational Testing Service,the nonprofit entity that administers the SAT nationwide, to establishprocedures to combat cheating, including photographing students as they takethe test and attaching the picture to the answer sheet.

"We need ETS to tighten security they haveat these test centers," Rice said.

She also called on ETS to inform colleges ifcheating is suspected. ETS currently deals with suspected cheating by cancelingtest scores and offering refunds, retests or arbitration, according to thedistrict attorneys office.

Rice said authorities have no evidenceimplicating parents in the cheating scandal.

Great Neck North identifies itself as ahigh-performing high school, with a 97% graduation rate and almost 97% ofstudents planning to pursue higher education.

The mean scores achieved by Great Neck Northstudents on SAT tests in 2010 were well above the national average, accordingto the profile.

Eshaghoff, a 2010 Great Neck North graduate,tested in the 97th percentile, Rice said. He is now enrolled at EmoryUniversity in Atlanta after attending the University of Michigan for hisfreshman year, the prosecutor's office said.

The next SAT test dates are this weekend, andRice said authorities will be vigilant.

"These arrests should serve as a warningto those taking the SAT this Saturday that if you cheat, you can face seriouscriminal consequences," Rice said.