Brian Banks spent five years in prison after a woman falsely accused him of rape in 2002, and now accuser Wanetta Gibson has been ordered to pay $2.6 million in damages to the Long Beach Unified School District.
Once a star football prospect at Long Beach Poly High, Banks was convicted, lost his scholarship offer from USC and was sent to jail. Gibson sued the school district, citing an unsafe environment, and won $750,000 in the dispute.
It was only after Gibson admitted to lying that Banks was freed in 2012.
Gibson now owes the district $750,000, including court fees, and is on the line for more than $1 million in punitive damages.
After 29 years in the classroom, and with a pretty savvy political sense, if I may be so bold, I consider myself a keen observer of most things educational, but this story about Philadelphia’s schools made me shiver with anger from the first paragraph:
Andrew Jackson School too agitated to eat breakfast on Friday, an aide alerted the school counselor, who engaged him in an art project in her office. When he was still overwrought at 11, a secretary called the boy’s family, and soon a monitor at the front door buzzed in an older brother to take him home.
Under a draconian budget passed by the Philadelphia School District last month, none of these supporting players — aide, counselor, secretary, security monitor — will remain at the school by September, nor will there be money for books, paper, a nurse or the school’s locally celebrated rock band.
I know that this kind of mindless budget cutting has been going on for years and real reformers, as opposed to the self-styled ones on the right, have been warning us thatchildren are in real danger, but somehow this story caught me. Or maybe it just represents the last straw on my particular camel’s back. Whatever. I have now officially had enough. If that’s the way that Philadelphia’s families are going to be treated, then we need an educational Tahrir/Taksim/self-immolating fruit-seller moment in this country. It’s that bad now, and it’s going to get worse.
Across the river, here in New Jersey, next fall is shaping up to be one of the worst for education since, well, four years ago when Chris Christie promised to destroy collective bargaining, and then made good on it, among other things. All of the polls point to a reelection win for the governor with a slight possibility that his coattails could enable the GOP to take over the state legislature. With a majority, even if it’s just the Senate, they can reshape the State Supreme Court, and with both houses they can further erode worker’s rights, eliminate seniority, impose radical cuts to public schools and stop funding for programs, like those in Philadelphia, that save lives, literally and figuratively.
What might save the state is a current challenge to the October U.S. Senate primary, forcing it to be held on the same day as the gubernatorial election. That would bring out more pro-education voters. Opponents of the separate election say they’ve found a clause that specifically addresses the issue. Let’s see if the State Supreme Court agrees.
And then, of course, there’s the new teacher evaluation system that’s set to go into effect statewide come the fall. Imagine a program that uses bad data in a manner that it wasn’t meant to be used, then include horse-trading politicians who have little idea what the legislation says, and put a Commissioner of Education in charge of the system who has little regard for anything other than his political standing and whether the State Board of Education supports him. Oh, wait…no need to imagine. New Jersey’s got it!
I’m all for teacher accountability, but this system was created by non-educators as a means of punishing state workers and unions, and making it easier to fire effective teachers who cost too much. If it was about education, then private and charter school teachers would be included in it. But they’re not, and that’s all you need to know about the intentions of its authors.
So enjoy your summer everyone. Let’s hope the shore businesses make lots of money and rejuvenate the towns and people who lost the most. Let’s hope that students and teachers find exciting ways to add to their knowledge, or to just forget about formal learning for a while and smell some flowers. In the fall, a new storm will be brewing, but it won’t be anything like Sandy. It will just be a lot of hot air.
Zoraida Sambolin, the CNN host of Early Start, underwent a double mastectomy last month as a preventative measure. The host updated fans and well wishers via Skype, telling everyone that “things are going well.”
‘It’s been a pretty tough process,’ she toldCNN. ‘But my prognosis is good now. What they found in my left breast was breast cancer stage one, grade one invasive, but the good news is my lymph nodes are free and clear, so I’m good.
‘My right breast actually ended up having Lobular Carcinoma two, and was headed in the same direction as my left breast, so I made a good decision, and now everything has been taken care of.’
Last month, Ms Sambolin revealed she was undergoing the same procedure as Angelina Jolie while discussing the Hollywood star on her show.
The host was diagnosed with breast cancer in her left breast, and underwent the double mastectomy on June 4th.
Credit for the nose dive in the president’s approval ratings goes to the Republican propaganda machine. I know they must be proud.
President Obama’s approval rating has plummeted eight points over the past month, as the White House continues to deal with a slew of controversies, according to a new poll released Monday.
Obama’s approval rating fell to 45% from 53%, his lowest rating in more than a year, a new CNN/ ORC International survey showed.
“It is clear that revelations about NSA surveillance programs have damaged Obama’s standing with the public, although older controversies like the IRS matter may have begun to take their toll as well,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said in a statement.
The poll, conducted last Tuesday through Thursday, also suggests that more than half of the public no longer trusts the President.
Only 49% of the public believes Obama is honest, the poll showed. In addition, 54% of those polled disapprove of the job Obama is doing as President — an increase of nine points from May.
The new ratings come just weeks after it was revealed that the National Security Administration has been monitoring cell-phone and Internet usage data to help prevent terror attacks.
In a 7-2 decision announced Monday morning, the Supreme Court of the United States has rejected the state of Arizona’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to voter registration forms.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (a/k/a “The Motor Voter Law”) requires States to “accept and use” a uniform federal form to register voters for federal elections, and the Court now holds that states cannot graft additional requirements onto that form, which only requires that voters affirm that they are citizens.
Justice Scalia—yes, him—wrote the decision of the court, a majority consisting of everyone other than Justices Thomas and Alito. It relies on the Elections Clause of the Constitution (Art. I, §4, cl. 1), which provides that while states have preliminary control over federal elections, Congress can supersede the states’ choices:
The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the places of chusing Senators.
And, basically, the Court holds that when the NVRA says the states must “accept and use” the federal form, it must accept and use them as sufficient to register voters:
When Congress legislates with respect to the “Times, Places and Manner” of holding congressional elections, it necessarily displaces some element of a pre-existing legal regime erected by the States. Because the power the Elections Clause confers is none other than the power to preempt, the reasonable assumption is that the statutory text accurately communicates the scope of Congress’s preemptive intent. Moreover, the federalism concerns underlying the presumption in the Supremacy Clause context are somewhat weaker here. Unlike the States’ “historic police powers,” the States’ role in regulating congressional elections—while weighty and worthy of respect—has always existed subject to the express qualification that it “terminates according to federal law.” In sum, there is no compelling reason not to read Elections Clause legislation simply to mean what it says.
We conclude that the fairest reading of the statute is that a state-imposed requirement of evidence of citizenship not required by the Federal Form is “inconsistent with” the NVRA’s mandate that States “accept and use” the Federal Form. If this reading prevails, the Elections Clause requires that Arizona’s rule give way.
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