Civil suit: Richard Izquierdo Arroyo failed to protect student in alleged harassment by teacher

Civil suit: Richard Izquierdo Arroyo failed to protect student in alleged harassment by teacher

BY BRENDAN BROSH
DAILY NEWS WRITER

Originally Published:Friday, March 12th 2010, 1:53 AM
Updated: Friday, March 12th 2010, 1:53 AM

Smith for News

Richard Izquierdo Arroyo is slated to plead guilty in federal court to embezzling funds from a housing nonprofit.

As he prepared to plead guilty in a criminal case, a Bronx man with family ties to two pols faces a civil suit over alleged abuse at a charter school he ran.

Richard Izquierdo Arroyo, grandson of an assemblywoman and a councilwoman's nephew, is accused of failing to protect a student allegedly sexually harassed and assaulted by a teacher.

"The teacher's conduct was reprehensible and utterly inappropriate for a class of high school seniors, let alone second- and third-graders," said Patrick Mullaney, lawyer for angry mom Nereida Pastrana.

"But to make matters worse, the conduct was well-known and condoned by the school staff and administration."

Izquierdo was chairman of the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and the Arts when the alleged abuse took place. He has since resigned and is slated to plead guilty in federal court Friday to embezzling funds from a housing nonprofit.

Federal prosecutors accused him and a co-defendant of using some of the funds to finance the campaigns and district offices of Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo and Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo.

Izquierdo could be hit with a second civil suit as soon as Friday, charging another student was abused at the school.

The suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court earlier this week says teacher Jared Alessandroni repeatedly called Pastrana's son, now 10, "gay" and twisted his arm in March 2009.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2010/03/12/2010-03-12_add_civil_suit_to_pol_kins_woes.html#ixzz0hz8fA49h

Should the Mayor of Detroit Control the City’s Schools? - The Detroit Blog - TIME.com

Should the Mayor of Detroit Control the City’s Schools? - The Detroit Blog - TIME.com

Should the Mayor of Detroit Control the City's Schools?

Posted by DARRELL DAWSEY Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 2:25 pm

6 Comments • Related Topics: detroit, education, urban affairs, politics , carol goss, dave bing, detroit, detroit public schools, education, excellent schools detroit, kwame kilpatrick, michigan, skillman foundation, the gates foundation

A new plan presented by an array of non-profit heavy hitters is hoping to reinvent public education in Detroit.

The group, calling itself Excellent Schools Detroit, announced last week that it planned to replace failing Detroit schools with 70 new ones and make a $200-million initial investment -- a plan unprecedented in scope anywhere in the country. The group has commitments from the Gates Foundation and other national groups willing to come to Detroit, said Carol Goss, CEO and president of the Skillman Foundation, a key leader in the effort.

Along with the push to build new schools, key proposals in the plan include the elimination of the city school board and the transfer of control of the district to the mayor.

The idea of mayoral control of schools, which experts say has yielded concrete improvements in other big-city districts like New York and Washington, D.C., has been a hot-button issue in and around Detroit for years. As recently as 2004, Detroit voters shot down a proposal that would've given control of the district to then-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick.

And while Mayor Dave Bing says he's open to the idea, it's not like he's rushing to throw himself on that potential political landmine. (Which begs the question of why you'd give control to a guy who isn't exactly clamoring for the authority.)

Still, as is often the case when it comes to schools, I've got mixed feelings about the idea. I know that the concept of locally elected school boards has a long and generally progressive history, and I respect that to the fullest. But damn it, we've got people leading the school board who can't put together a grammatically correct sentence. That is not cool.

Further, the smart progressives in education in the city, the sort of people I'd like to see on any urban school board, aren't flocking to sit on the Detroit board of ed. Meanwhile, our children continue to lag educationally.

Still, bring up the issue of mayoral control and many Detroiters shudder, which makes

Read more: http://detroit.blogs.time.com/2010/03/11/should-the-mayor-of-detroit-control-the-citys-schools/#ixzz0hz6szkCe

Unconscious Racism at the University of California UC Regent Live(blog)

UC Regent Live(blog)

Unconscious Racism at the University of California

March 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Repost from Huffington Post

Bob Samuels

President, University Council – AFT

Posted: March 9, 2010 01:11 PM

Currently, the University of California appears to be facing several unrelated problems that bring into focus the central issue facing all public universities: how can schools maintain access, affordability, and quality during a time of decreased public support. For many people inside and outside of higher education, the solution to this problem is to push states to increase their funding for higher education; however, this necessary correction is only part of the problem: universities need to not only campaign for more money, but they also have to show that they are using their funds in an effective and efficient manner. Moreover, public universities need to actively fight ethnic and racial conflicts that threaten to arise during times of economic downsizing.

While at first glance the question of racism seems to be unrelated to the issue of funding, it is evident from recent events at the University of California that increased racial tensions often occur during an economic downturn. In fact, one obvious connection between racism and economics concerns enrollment policies and decisions. As many people have reported, less than 2% of the undergraduates at several of the UC campuses are African American, and although this low level of enrollment might not be blamed directly on racism, the effects of this situation is to fan racial tensions. Not only do some African-American students feel that they are not welcomed on their campuses, but studies show that when an ethnic or racial group only represents a small minority, the people from the dominant group revert to unconscious prejudices to categorize and stigmatize the minority group.

Racism in the Hidden Brain

In his book, The Hidden Brain, Shankar Vedantam reviews the latest studies of how racism works, and he documents some surprising findings. One of the more upsetting discoveries is that children as young as three-years-old will associate positive traits with white people and negative traits with black people regardless of the race of the child or the attitudes of the children’s parents and teachers. As Vedantam stresses, these associations are learned through cultural experience and continue to exist in the unconscious of people even if these same individuals espouse tolerant and progressive stances on a conscious level. From this perspective, the only way to fight racism is to openly admit that we all harbor

News: Reforming Teacher Ed - Inside Higher Ed

News: Reforming Teacher Ed - Inside Higher Ed

Reforming Teacher Ed

March 12, 2010

WASHINGTON – A group representing colleges of teacher education on Thursday called for its member institutions to work with the rest of their universities, as well as schools, states and the federal government to emphasize and improve in-school preparation for teachers-to-be.

Leaders of the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education and other experts gathered for what was intended to be a high-profile opportunity – including a speech by a Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) – to inform state and national policy debates on K-12 school reform as states look to cut costs and raise standards, and Congress prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

In the first of several news conferences scheduled to be held throughout the spring at the National Press Club, panelists stressedthe importance of what's being called clinical training, a more robust in-school teaching and learning option than the student teaching of yore. “You can’t learn to swim on the sidewalk and you can’t learn to teach outside the classroom,” said Sharon Feiman-Nemser, a professor of Jewish education at Brandeis University who has for decades studied how teachers learn.

The world of teacher education, said Sharon Robinson, AACTE president and CEO, “is at a crucial and deciding moment where we can declare a real trend in the right direction” as consensus forms that clinical practice is the best way to teach future teachers.

In a policy brief released at the discussion, the association asks education colleges and states to require that new teachers spend at least 450 hours in clinical settings before earning their degrees or certifications. It also calls for increased attention and funding for successful residency partnerships between schools districts and universities.

Despite the shift toward increasing the time future teachers spend in the classroom and the disparaging words U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has had for some teacher preparation colleges, panelists

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arne-duncan/campus-protests-should-re_b_496486.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arne-duncan/campus-protests-should-re_b_496486.html

The passionate campus protests in California and elsewhere last week were a reminder for all of us who work in education that schools -- the people who work in them and the students who learn in them -- are a treasured investment. Decrying college fee increases and widespread budget cuts, the demonstrators especially highlighted the hardships that many families face in affording college, especially in this still-recovering economy.

Last week's demonstrations were also a reminder of why it is essential that Congress pass theStudent Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA), a landmark piece of legislation that addresses college affordability concerns through direct financial aid that cuts out middlemen bankers. Awaiting action by the Senate, SAFRA would expand aid for America's college-going students by billions of dollars, and would restructure our student aid programs to make them simpler, more efficient, and more reliable. The plan pays for these improvements by ending taxpayer subsidies to banks and moving our money to students. We cannot let this opportunity slip away.

But expanding financial aid is only half of the affordability equation; state leaders and college administrators must work to slow the growth of college costs. I am concerned that tuition and fees at public colleges and universities are set to spike even further as states continue to trim their budgets.

State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue, legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges, in turn, answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes. Ultimately, states are resolving short-term crises by undermining long-term investment in future generations.

States should not balance their budgets on the backs of students. Instead, colleges should

KC and the KIPPnotizer Bandwagon Schools Matter

Schools Matter

KC and the KIPPnotizer Bandwagon

The day after Broad Academy alum, Supt. John Covington, began his public crowing about shuttering half of Kansas City's schools,the local media is already writing glowing reviews for KIPP and the KIPP knock-off charters, which are seen as the final solution for children incarcerated by poverty in the inner cities:

"We have a longer school day," said KIPP school leader John Richard. "Our teachers are available until nine p.m. for homework. We have Saturday school and mandatory summer school." . . . . Richard says that ever since the district first announced its massive resizing plan, interest in his school is on the rise.

"We expect to have a waiting list next year, which will be the first time we've had a waiting list," said Richard. "Which is a great problem to have."

For oligarchs like Eli Broad, Bill Gates and the Waltons, KIPP offers several advantages to the public schools:

1. KIPP's total compliance pedagogy offers the advantage of segregated testing camps based on total behavioral containment and psychological sterilization of minorities (without public oversight),
2. KIPP's management offers a corporate structure that leaves employees without job security, due process, or the kind of health and retirement benefits that have been one of the drawing cards for underpaid teachers for generations,
3. and in terms of product accountability, KIPP generates the required bottom line for the survivors of its regimen, higher test scores.

High test scores, then, serve to assuage any potential guilt for the Arne Duncans of the world, those liberal closet racists who want to achieve a colorblind society by forcing impoverished segregated black children to act like white children out in the leafy suburbs--if those white children were being fed a diet of positive psychology and learned helplessness.

In short, KIPP is the solution to the scourge of multiculturalism and the browning of America, and KIPP's nano-cultural and anti-democratic ethos is the best hope, indeed, for making every color in American society recede into the background except white. Voila--colorblindness!

With the numerical browning of America predicted within the next generation, the mission to psychologically bleach urban America has turned into a crusade that is no less intense than the one that

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Philadelphia Public School Notebook

Notes from the news, Mar. 12

Submitted by Erika Owens on Fri, 03/12/2010 - 09:44 Posted in Notes from the news | Permalink

Are Some Races More Equal Than Others? The American
This piece, from the journal of the American Enterprise Institute, asked how Sec. Duncan's new civil rights push will deal with the situation surrounding South Philly High.

SRC outrage: Cartoons but not violence? Young Philly Politics
South Philly principal LaGreta Brown testified at the SRC for the first time in response to the Tony Auth political cartoon.

See also: In solidarity with Tony Auth Attytood

Phila. science fair winners anounced Philly.com
The best in fair winners of the George Washington Carver Science Fair include a student at Girls', Central, and Penn Alexander.

Please email us if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.

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Notes from the news

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Democrats for Education Reform

Democrats for Education Reform

Friends:
I was struck by the comment that appeared in the NY Times over the weekend from Zeph Capo, a union boss with the Houston Federation of Teachers.
The story, if you didn't see it, looked at growing frustrations with President Obama among teacher union bosses nationwide.
"I ripped the Obama sticker off my truck," a pissed-off Capo told America's newspaper of record.
Hmmm. What do you suppose was underneath this Obama sticker??? Could it have been a... Hillary sticker?
The Houston Federation of Teachers, like many teacher union locals around the country, did NOT support candidate Barack Obama in the primaries. It is important to remember, despite attempts to re-write history that are in full swing in teacher union HQ's all over the country, that teachers unions spent MILLIONS trying to make sure that Barack Obama did not become president. The prolonged presidential primary where the unions were decidedly trying to keep Hillary Clinton's presidential aspirations on life support, lawsuits to close down Obama-friendly polling places, etc.
By the time candidate Obama survived these prolonged AFT-NEA attacks, he had also built the most incredible INDEPENDENT fundraising machine we have ever seen in American politics.

If you think back to candidate Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention, the symbolism was rich: Obama chose to address the public, in a stadium that was a long hike from the Pepsi Center where the party convention had been held. There was a clear break between the party's convention, and the candidate's acceptance speech. Obama was Obama. At that moment, he didn't need the traditional party apparratus as much as it needed him.
How could someone running for office on a "change" agenda have done anything different - especially when a lot of the people running the party never wanted to see him as the nominee anyway?
The next time you hear a teacher union official whine about how hard they worked for Obama, make sure you give them an aggressive "crazy eyes" kind of look. Ask them what sticker is under the Obama sticker on their truck. (Remind them that Presidentr Obama basically gave them $100 million to save their asses/jobs in the stimulus package last year. And that if anything, it is the union leaders who owe Obama at this point.)
Seriously - practice your crazy eyes look right now in the mirror. It's fun and doesn't cost anything.
Have a great Friday. We'll be sending out our March "Education Reformer of the Month" in a few hours. Stay tuned.
Joe

It’s Obvious, but Only If You See It. � Chalkdust101

It’s Obvious, but Only If You See It. � Chalkdust101

It’s Obvious, but Only If You See It.

In change on March 12, 2010 at 9:42 am

Not so anymore, and I am hopefully optimistic about this.

Yesterday, I met with the district professional development committee, a committee that meets annually to discuss the plan that has to be submitted to our county and state for approval. That statement, in and of itself, is inherently backwards, but I’ll get to that. This year, the design of professional development is much more formalized in that each school must have its own individual plan, the ideas of which must find their way into the overall district plan. Previously, the district plan was all most districts had, and all that was counted in the end.

See, I am a big believer in having a stake in the direction of your place of employment. If you work somewhere, your voice should matter in the governance of that place, and your actions should be allowed to contribute to the betterment of that organization. I don’t see that much in the schools I either work in, or visit, but I’d like to. What I see and hear is a lot of the mentality whereby there is little control of the direction of schools and school philosophy by teachers and administrators–things being “done” to them, rather than them “doing” things to contribute to the greater cause of student achievement.

I plan on changing that.

Committees are funny things; they have life for the short time they are together, and high ideas are exchanged if the right people are in the room. For example, we were critiquing our professional development programs from the previous years, and we came up with this list:

• lack of follow through or follow-up from the initial class or by the presenter
• not tied directly to student achievement
• notification and publication of classes and sessions to staff

But what next? We sketched out our direction for next year after synthesizing the

Sacramento Press / Sacramento’s Jewish Heritage Festival— Celebrating kibbutzim, schwarmas, and Jewish American Heritage Month

Sacramento Press / Sacramento’s Jewish Heritage Festival— Celebrating kibbutzim, schwarmas, and Jewish American Heritage Month

Looking for Israeli dancing? A piece of Judaica? A falafel, perhaps?

You can find all that and more on May 2, 2010 when the West Steps of the state’s Capitol are transformed into an Israeli shuk during the Jewish Federation of the Sacramento Region’s Jewish Heritage Festival.

Coinciding with Lag B’Omer and in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, this annual event kicks off with an Israel Unity Walk and the release of dozens of doves, the universal symbol of peace.

“As American Jews we get the best of both worlds,” said Festival Project Manager Caren Zorman. “We get to openly celebrate and embrace our Judaism, while also participating in a public celebration of Israel’s independence and statehood.”

In honor of this year’s theme, “The Centennial of the Kibbutz Movement,” Sacramento-area religious schools are creating displays that highlight different kibbutz industries, such as drip irrigation, flower production, and spas/retreats, and educating the public about what each industry does while offering hands-on activities.

“We want to show everything about kibbutzim,” Zorman said. “How they started, how they have grown, what they are today, and their value to the Israeli economy.”

Master of Ceremony Sen. Darrell Steinberg will address the crowd as will Congressman Dan Lungren. Invited guests include Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Congresswoman Doris Matsui, Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinberg, Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, and Councilman

Group sues Tulare County Board of Supervisors over lunch meetings | visaliatimesdelta.com | Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

Group sues Tulare County Board of Supervisors over lunch meetings | visaliatimesdelta.com | Visalia Times-Delta and Tulare Advance-Register

Group sues Tulare County Board of Supervisors over lunch meetings

BY VALERIE GIBBONS • VGIBBONS@VISALIA.GANNETT.COM • MARCH 12, 2010

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An open-meeting watchdog has filed a lawsuit against the Tulare County Board of Supervisors in an effort to end supervisors' practice of sharing meals when a voting majority is present.

Richard McKee, from the Southern California city of La Verne, is asking a Tulare County judge to order the board to conform to the Brown Act whenever a majority of the members congregates to "hear, discuss, deliberate, or take action on any item that is within its subject matter jurisdiction."

The lawsuit was sent for filing in Tulare County court Wednesday afternoon, according to McKee's attorney, Kelly Aviles.

Jean Rousseau, the county's administrative officer, said he could not comment on the matter because he had not seen the lawsuit. Kathleen Bales-Lange, Tulare County counsel, did not return a call seeking comment.

McKee sent supervisors a "Demand for Correction" in late February, asking the board to end its practice of meeting for meals.

A January investigation by the Times-Delta found 30 instances where a majority of supervisors — known as a quorum — met for a meal during the first seven months of 2009.

All five board members met for a meal at least 11 times during the first half of 2009. A series of state laws, known as the Brown Act, makes it illegal for the board to discuss business outside a publicly announced meeting when a quorum is present.

The county suspended the practice Tuesday until a new meal reimbursement policy could be developed.

But board chairman Steve Worthley blasted the watchdog group in a letter March 5, saying that the board never violated the Brown Act and that allegations to the contrary are "offensive."