Emerging Peoria

Tangled Christmas lights

2011-12-01T05:05:00.001-08:00

Decreasing one's carbon foot print takes an on going and concerted effort.

For years now, I take down my Christmas lights (we do it up too), throw them in a box and put them away. The next year, I look at the box, laugh and run out to buy MORE.

I had this wonderful idea this year, that we could reuse the lights. Yeah, just one more way to reduce ye' ole foot print. Right?

For five days now 5, I have been switching out bulbs, untangling cords and changing fuses in the plugs (yes, fuses) and in the end only 20% of all these damn lights are working and I'm calling...

UNCLE!

Peoria's Facade - shattered by continued crime and gun violence

2011-11-29T04:20:00.000-08:00

Going to the Santa Claus Parade is a tradition that started when I was a child. My parents took me and now I take my children. We were in our usual spot, sipping hot chocolate, when one of the youngsters pointed down the street to a red brick building, that was sitting at a wierd angle and said "Auntie, what's that!". I looked to my right and there it was, a tall red structure, blocking the view to river. I told my niece, "It's the facade for the new Peoria Museum."

The facade of City Hall and the Civic Center was recently shattered by bullets. Another item that happened recently of note, is that the exterior panels of the Downtown Museum have been installed. In the meantime, the streets of the inner city continues to be controlled by those who have no regard for a life, let alone a building.

Teens face charges after weapon found at Limestone High School

November 29, 2011

The gun - a .25 caliber semiautomatic pistol - was recovered from a boys' bathroom about noon Nov. 22. The gun, along with cash, a video game console and games, was stolen between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sept. 30 from a residence in the 1100 block of North University Street in Peoria. One of the boys arrested for possessing the gun is suspected to have committed the burglary.

Peoria man shot during robbery dies weeks later

November 29, 2011

A man who was shot in the chest during a robbery earlier in the month has died from injuries sustained during the shooting.

Bullets Strike Several Peoria Homes
November 28, 2011
Several residents on Morton Street realized their homes had been shot at Sunday evening, according to a police report. Authorities were dispatched to the 600 block of Morton Street around 8:18 pm after receiving several calls about shots fired and houses possibly hit. Police found several .40 caliber handgun casings in the area, suggesting the shots were fired from a moving vehicle. One witness said he believed he saw a black car fleeing the scene. At least four houses were struck in the incident, with one home having a bullet pass through a couple walls. There is no suspect information at this time and no injuries were reported.

North Valley man says he was shot at
November 27, 2011
A 39-year-old North Valley man told police he was shot at by an acquaintance Friday night in the 500 block of Laveille Street.

Man says men tried to rob him on Miramar Drive
November 27, 2011
A man was checking a tire on his car in the 7100 block of North Miramar Drive in North Peoria about 8 p.m. Saturday when a car pulled up and three men attempted to rob him.

Peoria man struck with gun during break-in
Posted Nov 26, 2011 @ 11:20 PM
A 27-year-old Peoria man was struck with a handgun twice last week after two men broke into his home and demanded money.

20 Shots Fired at Taft Homes

November 26, 2011

Authorities are looking for two suspects after shots were fired near a Peoria housing complex Friday night. Police were called to Taft Homes just before 8 pm on a report of more than 20 shots being fired. They found a victim with a gunshot wound to his arm in an apartment at 250 Eaton. The victim was transported to OSF St. Francis Medical Center for treatment. A second victim showed up later at the hospital. Neither of the injuries is considered life-threatening. Authorities believe the incident was in retaliation for the murder of 21-year-old Monterrius Dillard earlier this week.

Window shattered in report of shots fired
Posted Nov 24, 2011 @ 10:47 PM
Police were called to 517 Vine St. about 4:30 a.m. Thursday after multiple shots were reported fired into a residence at that address.

Peoria man dies from gunshot wounds
Updated Nov 25, 2011 @ 12:42 AM
A Peoria man was pronounced dead at 11:38 p.m. Wednesday after he sustained multiple gunshot wounds less than an hour earlier in the vicinity of the 1400 block of West Martin Street.

Peoria teen indicted in shooting at City Hall parking lot
Posted Nov 23, 2011 @ 05:14 PM
A 17-year-old youth was indicted by a Peoria County grand jury recently in connection with an Oct. 9 shooting in the City Hall parking lot.

Robber takes Peoria man's cash and shoes
Posted Nov 21, 2011 @ 10:18 PM
A 22-year-old Peoria man was robbed Sunday night of his cash and shoes while walking in Central Peoria.

Police: Home invasion not likely related to others
Posted Nov 21, 2011 @ 08:37 PM
Police don't believe a home invasion in Central Peoria early Sunday is related to a recent string of similar crimes against elderly residents.

One person injured in home invasion
Posted Nov 20, 2011 @ 10:54 PM
A home invasion early Sunday in Central Peoria left one person injured. Two men entered a home in the 1000 block of West Crestwood Avenue shortly before 2 a.m. One of the intruders hit one of the residents with a gun and stole his cell phone, according to police.

Two men shot late Saturday in South Peoria
Updated Nov 20, 2011 @ 10:50 PM
Two men suffered gunshot wounds that were not life-threatening Saturday night, according to police.

Firefighters put out two South Peoria garage fires
Posted Nov 19, 2011 @ 09:17 PM
Firefighters were called to extinguish two separate garage fires early Saturday in South Peoria.

Peoria woman donates organs of her beaten teen son
Updated Nov 20, 2011 @ 12:00 AM
A Peoria mother's wish that her 16-year-old son's organs be donated to give others a second chance at life appears to have come true. Jaquille Tidwell Johns was pronounced dead at 4:30 a.m. Saturday at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center after remaining on life support a week while organ donation preparations were being made. The Manual Academy sophomore was beaten Nov. 11 after he and a friend were discovered inside a vacant house at 1710 W. Kettelle St.

Man says he was robbed on Jefferson Avenue
Posted Nov 17, 2011 @ 09:35 PM
A man was pushed to the ground by three males who kicked him and took his watch and pocket knife Wednesday night.

Peoria man hears gunshots, later finds bullet in bathtub
Updated Nov 15, 2011 @ 06:40 PM
A man who heard gunshots near his home Monday night later found a bullet in his bathtub.

Arson suspected in Millman Street fire
Posted Nov 14, 2011 @ 10:38 PM
Arson is suspected in a fire that caused $15,000 damage Monday at a vacant home in South Peoria, Peoria Fire Department Battalion Chief Tom Carr said.

Peorian arrested on attempted murder charge for Nov. 4 shooting
Posted Nov 14, 2011 @ 09:39 AM
A Peoria teen was arrested Sunday on an attempted murder charge for a shooting that occurred on Martin Luther King Drive on Nov. 4.

Four gunshots riddle side of South Peoria home
Posted Nov 12, 2011 @ 11:11 PM
A South Peoria man returned to his home in the 900 block of West Howett Street to find four bullet holes in the home's siding.

Report of shots fired at apartment Thursday
Updated Nov 12, 2011 @ 05:49 AM
Three shots were reportedly fired at 7:25 p.m. Thursday at Glenbrook Apartments on Knoxville Avenue.

Arson suspected in fire to vacant home
Updated Nov 12, 2011 @ 05:48 AM
A fire at a vacant home in South Peoria caused an estimated $25,000 in damage and is suspected of being arson, according to Peoria Fire Department Battalion Chief Tom Carr.

Majority of Texas Middle and High School Students Suspended or Expelled: Repeated Suspensions Predict Later Involvement in Juvenile Justice System

2011-07-23T06:36:00.000-07:00

In an unprecedented study of nearly 1 million Texas public secondary school students followed for more than six years, nearly 60 percent were suspended or expelled, according to a report released today by the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center in partnership with the Public Policy Research Institute of Texas A&M University.

Breaking Schools’ Rules: A Statewide Study of How School Discipline Relates to Students’ Success and Juvenile Justice Involvement features these other key findings:

Of the nearly 1 million public secondary school students studied, about 15 percent were suspended or expelled 11 times or more; nearly half of these students with 11 or more disciplinary actions were involved in the juvenile justice system.

Only three percent of the disciplinary actions were for conduct in which state law mandated suspensions and expulsions; the rest were made at the discretion of school officials primarily in response to violations of local schools’ conduct codes.

African-American students and those with particular educational disabilities were disproportionately disciplined for discretionary actions.

Repeated suspensions and expulsions predicted poor academic outcomes. Only 40 percent of students disciplined 11 times or more graduated from high school during the study period, and 31 percent of students disciplined one or more times repeated their grade at least once.

Schools that had similar characteristics, including the racial composition and economic status of the student body, varied greatly in how frequently they suspended or expelled students.

The analysis considered in-school suspensions, out-of-school suspensions, Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) placements, and Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP) placements. In-school suspensions ranged from a single class period to several consecutive days, and out-of-school suspensions averaged two days per incident. Students assigned to DAEP were there for 27 days on average; JJAEP students were off the school campus for an average of 73 days. Informal actions (e.g., detention, parent/teacher meetings) were not reported to the Texas Education Agency and were therefore excluded from study.

“One of the most important takeaways from the report is learning that the school a student attends largely influences how, when, or if a student is removed from the classroom for disciplinary reasons,” said Senator Florence Shapiro (R), chair of the Texas Senate Education Committee, and one of the lawmakers who supported the study. “The data suggests that individual school campuses often have a pronounced influence over how often students are suspended or expelled.”

“The report tells us that more than one in seven Texas middle and high school students have been involved with the juvenile justice system. We should ask whether teachers and principals, rather than police officers and judges, are best suited to discipline kids who commit minor infractions.” said Texas Chief Justice Wallace B. Jefferson, who is convening a meeting today in Austin to discuss the study’s findings.

This study is unprecedented in that it tracked not just a sample of students, but all seventh graders in the state for six years. Using multivariate analyses to control for more than 83 variables, the study was able to isolate the relationships between such factors as race and school disciplinary actions, suspensions/expulsions and juvenile justice contact, and discretionary actions and academic success measured by being held back a grade or dropping out.

Senator John Whitmire (D), chair of the Texas Criminal Justice Committee, said, “We need to maintain realistic expectations of what educators alone can accomplish in today’s challenging classrooms. At the same time, this report demonstrates that if we want our kids to do better in school and reduce their involvement in the juvenile justice system, we in the legislature need to continue looking into how teachers can be better supported and how the school discipline system can be improved.” Source

That guy can dance

2011-07-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

Thrilled to see Chris Brown making a comeback

Waiting For a Culturally Relevant Education

2011-02-15T13:28:00.001-08:00

Waiting For Culturally Relevant Education, Not Superman

As a recent documentary film suggests, many parents and educators have been “Waiting for Superman” to fix our broken public education system. He simply isn’t coming. Imhotep, however, has landed in Philly.

A public charter high school that graduated its first class in 2000, Imhotep is hard to miss if you live in Philadelphia. It’s based in a $10 million educational complex. It produces championship athletic teams. The student population of 558 is overwhelmingly black. No Imhotep student is left behind — they all go onto college. And every day, there’s an Imhotep wardrobe riot going on as many teachers and students don colorful African clothing.

For all its success in using “culturally relevant teaching,” the school hasn’t emitted so much as a dull bleep on the radar screens of education cognoscenti seeking replicable school reforms, leaving one to question whether the school is just “too African” for America.

However, culturally relevant teaching as practiced there might be worth another look as a method capable of reaching the nation’s students.

Named for the legendary ancient Egyptian genius from the third dynasty who is credited with inventing papyrus, designing pyramids and founding medicine, Imhotep is the kind of school where the principles of Kwanzaa are called upon every day, where self-determination is an article of faith, and where students learn to “take responsibility for yourself, your brothers and your sisters.”

“When I started Imhotep, I did a graphic that put the student in the middle and made sure everything was designed to meet the needs of the child, not the teachers’ or the administration’s or the institution’s,” said CEO and founder Christine Wiggins, who is called Mama Wiggins. “And I continually try to do that.”

This meant designing a curriculum that “centers” Imhotep students by valuing Africa as the birthplace of humanity and learning. Mama Higgins and her staff of 60 call the students “Nubians” and approach teaching as if academics originated in the motherland.

“Developmentally, children need to know they are descendants of great thinkers,” Wiggins said. “When you never show them anybody that looks like them and that hasn’t achieved anything, then they don’t believe that they can achieve anything.”

She added: “It’s not advantageous to put a child in the classroom and give him a textbook where the only pictures of people that look like him are people on their knees in chains and being whipped. We’re going to show them images of their great African fathers and mothers as leaders in math and science, so everything that I do is centered around that basic premise.”

Detractors see the African mash-up of academics as fraudulent, saying you don’t have to see yourself in a curriculum; you just have to learn, or you’ll suffer the consequences.

But the Imhotep formula appears to get results: for nine years straight, 100% of Imhotep students have gotten into college, Wiggins said, adding, “The average in the country is running about 30%.” Her students win entrance to between 5 and 20 colleges, giving them a wide choice of colleges to attend.

Incoming Imhotep students are not filtered. “The children who come to us are the ones who have not been ‘saved’ in traditional schools,” she said. “I do a dance if I get a child in grade nine who is reading on a sixth grade level. Usually they are reading on a fourth and fifth grade level.”

The Imhotep ethic, forged in hard work, is enough to give Geoffrey Canada, who was praised by President Obama and others for creating the successful 97-block education lab in central Harlem, goose bumps. Imhotep offers an advanced placement program, senior internships requiring students to work in a business, government or community based organization. It also organizes small student learning communities and puts students through cultural rites of passage.

In addition, Imhotep has college partnerships with Arcadia University, Community College, Cornell University, Drexel University, Florida A&M, Howard University, Cheyney University, Lincoln University and Temple University.

Mama Wiggins’s approach to education is rooted in research conducted by another Philadelphian: Gloria Ladson-Billings, author of “The Dreamkeepers” and a leader in educating African-American children.

In the late 1980s, Ladson-Billings grew frustrated with the paucity of information on black education. “The thing that was bugging me was everything I read said nobody could teach these kids,” she said. “When I was doing literature searches, I would put in the descriptors ‘African American education’ or ‘black education,’ and I would get back in a few clicks, ‘See culturally deprived,’ ‘See culturally deficient,’ ‘See disadvantaged,’ ‘See at risk.’ So what became clear to me is that there was no language of excellence regarding African American education at all. I knew that couldn’t make sense as an African American who had done okay.”

She set out to find “exceptional teachers.” She found eight in California and studied their teaching methods for three years, drawing conclusions as to why they were successful. Culturally relevant teaching was borne of this research.

“These are teachers who focused on the kids’ learning, focused on their developing their cultural competence, and the third piece that they helped kids develop is what I call socio-political consciousness. In other words, they’re able to answer what I call the ‘So what?’ question. And kids ask this all the time.

“Most teachers have terrible answers to that question. They say, ‘You’re going to need this [knowledge] next year. [Exceptional teachers] try to have kids understand that it’s not enough for you to be smart or culturally competent; you also have to be able to ask critical questions about the society – why it is that things are organized this way, what do we do with inequity.”

She added: “I think most people don’t really understand [culturally relevant teaching]. I think they don’t recognize that it is essentially not an attempt to have kids fit into an already unequal system. It’s really an attempt to help them develop the kind of critical skills that will allow them to challenge the system.”

In light of this, it’s not necessary to teach black-focused academics, she noted: “Putting Ben Banneker in the curriculum is kind of irrelevant,” referring to the black astronomer, mathematicians and surveyor who helped to survey Washington, D.C.

She also said white teachers are perfectly capable of conducting culturally relevant teaching. “What I saw one of the teachers do — and this was one of the white teachers — we were in the middle of the California textbook wars over what the race and ethnicity of the ancient Egyptians,” she said. “This woman said, ‘Let’s see if we can figure this out,” and these kids went to work on this project like nobody’s business, and their conclusion was that ancient Egypt was probably multiracial, but that race didn’t mean then what it means now. Probably what was more relevant was class identity — whether you were in the Pharaoh’s court or a peasant. And this was the sixth grade!”

Predominantly non-black schools must approach the subject of slavery carefully, she said. “We’re not immune to the denigration and the derogation of our culture. We know how it’s portrayed. The [black student] doesn’t want to be the focus and think, Oh God, here she is talking about slavery, so now everybody thinks it’s about me.”

Ladson-Billings firmly believes all students enter classrooms with their culture in tow, and that smart teachers will use culture as a learning tool, not dismiss it outright as one professor attempted to do with her: “I went to a class where the professor said if you didn’t appreciate Beethoven, Bach and Brahms, you were culturally deprived, to which I responded, if you didn’t appreciate James Brown, you were culturally deprived.”

Ladson-Billings notes that African-American students as a whole have lower student assessment scores, but she harbors skepticism of testing. “There was a huge disconnect between what the test constructors ask and what kids’ experiences are,” she said. Actual unused questions from a national assessment test asked whether a student would be willing to have a person of another race as a teacher or a barber. “When I interviewed the kids, they actually had had some experience [with non-black barbers], and their hair got all jacked up,” she said. These kids were bound to fail that question.

As for Afrocentric schools, there’s nothing wrong with them so long as they do right by students. “People get all upset when [someone says] they’re going to [build] something Afrocentric,” she said. “[People] say, ‘Well where are they going to live, in an Afrocentric world?’ Well every major city in this country has a French lyceum where the wealthiest kids go to school.”

Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Gregory Kane counts himself among the detractors of culturally relevant education. He doesn’t believe teachers need to paint pictures of black culture to make academics more digestible. “When I was a lad I did not have to ‘see’ myself in the curriculum,” he wrote in the San Francisco Examiner. “The only picture I needed to see was my mother’s foot being placed firmly up my derriere if I didn’t bring home good grades from school. You’d be amazed at how ‘relevant’ that made everything my teachers taught me.”

He added that culturally relevant teachers could end up teaching “absolute nonsense”: “I actually had someone try to convince me that such a thing as ‘Afrocentric math’ existed. ‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I assure you there is no ‘Afrocentric’ math, nor is there a ‘Eurocentric’ math or an ‘Asian-centric’ math. Math is simply math.”

Molefi Asante strongly disagrees. If there were a godfather of Afrocentricity, it would be Asante, founder of the first doctoral program in African American studies at Temple University.

“Yes, you can teach math [Afrocentrically] by centering the child in historical context,” Asante insists. “If I’m teaching a child about shapes and forms, I am at the very heart of the pyramid, which is African. I can center that child right there, and we can do a whole black thing about shapes and forms. I can talk about curves and lines by talking about how the Africans built the great Zimbabwe.”

“Children,” Asante said, “should not be renters of information; they should be owners of information. They should feel that the curriculum is theirs. This is us. We produced this. Mathematics? Oh yeah, the first mathematicians were Africans, and that’s a fact. They have to feel that sense that this is connected to me.”

A major problem in education today is the educators, Asante said. “When you come out of a school of education, you know how to do time sheets and lesson plans. But in terms of actually dealing with children and grounding them in their cultural experiences and exciting them to go further and deeper and longer in their tradition, it is rare.”

Meanwhile, African American children “sit in the classrooms on the margins,” he said. “They are never given the subject position, and never seen as actors or agents or creators of knowledge. They’re always going to get somebody else’s knowledge.”

He said Afrocentricity works because it engenders self-worth. “What’s working are those Afrocentric schools that have deliberately, consciously decided that the way to educate African American children is to ground them in their cultural experiences so that they like not only themselves, but that they like African culture. The problem with black children is they hate Africa, and if you hate Africa you won’t learn. That is the fundamental dictum that seems to be the problem. They have negative attitudes toward their history, their culture, and their people.”

Chicago police lieutenant disciplined for blogging about his superiors

2010-08-27T10:49:00.000-07:00

Sounds like it's past time for the President of the Illinois NAACP to head to Chicago and give them a pass to save their City...

Police Lieutenant Blasts Department Superiors

A Chicago police Lieutenant is under fire for an Internet post that blasts the department’s leadership and the mayor.

“We are tired of a leaderless department. We are angry at an unsupportive mayor,” Lt. John Andrews wrote in a fiery critique of the department.

The post is titled, A City at War with Itself: Chicago - Fast Tracking to Anarchy.

Andrews argues that staff shortages, corruption and a leader he says the rank and file doesn't respect have all made the job of policing the streets of Chicago almost impossible.

"This is the very worst that I’ve seen this department.” Andrews said Tuesday in an interview with NBC Chicago. “We don’t have the capability of maintaining the social order in some of the Chicago neighborhoods. It’s taken its toll. Our people are tired, beat up, they’re undermanned, outgunned. It’s dangerous.”

Department brass didn't take too kindly to the post and hit Andrews with disciplinary action, claiming he "brought discredit to the Chicago police department."

"I don’t think leaders should sit and throw rocks at their respective agencies or at those who are actually trying to address those challenges," said Supt. Jody Weis

The president of the Chicago Police Lieutenants Association, however, is standing by Andrews.

"This is a constitutional issue infringing on his freedom of speech," said Bob Weisskopf in a written statement. "Just about every lieutenant believes in the spirit of what he wrote.”

Andrews began writing about a month ago, when Officer Michael Bailey became the third officer to be killed this summer. He claims morale in the almost 13,000-member force has hit an all-time low.

An internal affairs hearing scheduled for Friday will determine whether Andrews, a 26-year member of the force, will be able to keep his job. Source

Read Lt. John Andrews' entire post here.

Peoria has logged 17 homicides this year

2010-07-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

As of Sunday, Peoria has logged 17 homicides this year, already tying last year's total. Here are the victims, in descending chronological order:

17. Anthony Johnson, 43, was shot multiple times Sunday outside the residence of his sister-in-law, Angela Johnson, 40, at 1215 N. Frink St. Angela and Johnson's stepson Justin Stanley, 28, also were shot and were transported to the hospital with what police called non-life-threatening wounds.

16. Orlando Davis, 30, was shot July 11 in the 2700 block of West Trewyn Avenue in the Harrison Homes. Another man also was shot during the incident. Davis' father had been shot hours earlier in the 2100 block of West Howett Street.

15. Adrian Ortega, 19, was shot June 24 behind his home at 912 N. Garfield Ave.

14. Walter Holmes Jr., 21, was shot June 17 in the 2700 block of West Trewyn Avenue in the Harrison Homes. A woman also was shot in the chest during the incident, which may be related to a separate shooting hours earlier in the 2800 block of West Wiswall Street.

13. Willie Martin, 36, died June 13 of injuries sustained in a fight at 1302 W. John H. Gwynn Jr. Ave. earlier that day. Six people have been charged with mob action or other offenses related to the death, though none face a charge of murder.

12. Orvette Davis, 41, was found dead of apparent strangulation May 13 in an alley between the 1400 blocks of Northeast Perry Avenue and Northeast Monroe Street. Edjuan Payne, 40, has been charged with murder and is in custody awaiting trial.

11. Taji Cross, 20, was found dead April 27 in her apartment at 1508 W. Tiffany Drive. An autopsy showed she died from strangulation.

10. Nick Renfro, 20, was shot May 16 outside his mother's Taft Homes apartment. Joyce Renfro also was shot in the leg during the incident but survived. Police continue to search for Dominick "Hammer" Sanders, 22, who is accused of the slaying.

6, 7, 8, 9. Sisters Youlandice Simmons, 24, and Brianna Simmons, 22, as well as Darresse Roddy, 19, died in a fire April 21 at 1212 N. University St. Darryl Miller Jr., 2, died from his injuries the next day. Aunterrio Barney, 33, of Chicago has been charged with murder and arson for the deaths and remains in custody pending trial.

5. Abdallah Kattoum, 31, was shot March 30 at Peoria Food Stop, 728 E. Frye Ave. Keith A. Little Jr. has been charged with first-degree murder, armed violence and armed robbery.

4. Jasmine Brittine, 19, was shot March 21 during an argument outside 2030 S. Oregon St. in the Harrison Homes. Preston D. Marizetts, 18, has been charged with murder and is in custody awaiting trial.

3, 2. Dorothy McDonald, 83, and her son, Stephen McDonald, 65, died in an arson fire discoveredMarch 16 at their home at 207 NE Rock Island Ave.

1. Martha Thomas, 38, was stabbed multiple times Jan. 19 in the 800 block of Northeast Adams Street. Clarence R. Thomas, her estranged husband, has been arrested for the slaying. He remains in custody awaiting trial.

Report: Percentage of high-poverty schools rises

2010-05-28T05:06:00.000-07:00

The percentage of public schools where more than three quarters of students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch--a key indicator of poverty--has increased in the past decade, and children at these schools are less likely to attend college or be taught by teachers with advanced degrees.

The findings come from a special report on high poverty schools included in the 2010 Condition of Education study, which reports on a broad range of academic indicators across K-12 and higher education.

The U.S. Department of Education report released Thursday found that the percent of high poverty schools rose from 12 to 17 percent between the 1999-2000 and 2007-2008 school years, even before the current recession was fully felt. By comparison, the overall poverty rate for children increased from 17 to 18 percent, leading researchers to believe that that a higher percentage of poor kids were signing up for the meal program.

In all, there were 16,122 schools considered high poverty.

Students at these schools face a number of disadvantages:

-- A smaller percentage of teachers at high poverty elementary and secondary schools have earned at least a master's degree and a regular professional certification than those in low poverty schools.

-- They are less likely to graduate from high school; on average, 68 percent of 12th grade students in high poverty-schools graduated with a diploma in 2007-2008, compared to 91 percent at low poverty schools. The numbers have actually gotten worse for students at high poverty schools, dropping from 86 to 68 percent since 1999-2000.

-- After graduating from a high poverty school, 28 percent enrolled in a four-year institution, compared to 52 percent of graduates from low poverty schools. And while college enrollment has increased by 8 percent since 1999-2000 for graduates from higher income schools, the numbers have remained stable for those in poor schools.

"It's a persistent challenge," said Val Plisko, associate commissioner for early childhood, international and crosscutting studies at the National Center for Education Statistics, which produced the report.

Daria Hall, director of K-12 policy development at the Education Trust, a nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said students at high poverty schools tend to start out behind their counterparts at low poverty schools and get less support at school.

"We take those students who have less outside of school, and we give them less of everything we know contributes to achievement inside of school, too," Hall said.

Cities were more likely to have a larger percentage of high poverty schools. About 40 percent of city elementary schools fell into that category in 2007-2008, compared to 15 percent in towns and 13 percent in suburbs, according to the study. The report found a similar trend at the secondary school level.

The South and West had a higher percentage of public elementary schools that were high poverty than the Northeast and Midwest, 24 percent compared to 16 and 12 percent, respectively. Mississippi had the highest percentage nationwide -- 52 percent of its public elementary schools are considered high poverty. Louisiana, New Mexico, the District of Columbia and California were also pointed out as having higher percentages of low income elementary schools.

Students at high poverty schools are more likely to be minorities.

Hispanic students, for example, made up 46 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools and 11 percent of students at low poverty schools in the 2007-2008 school year. White students, by comparison, made up 14 percent of students at high poverty elementary schools, and 75 percent at low poverty elementary schools.

High poverty schools also have a larger percentage of students with limited English proficiency.

Students at these schools had lower average scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in reading and math than those at low poverty schools, though their scores have steadily increased in both subjects, and in some areas, such as 4th-grade reading, the achievement gap has decreased.

The Condition of Education report also included a number of other academic indicators, including overall figures on enrollment, high school graduation rates, and college attainment.

Enrollment among children 3 to 4 has increased from 20 to 53 percent between 1970 and 2008. Plisko said the increase, which leveled off at about 2000, could be attributed to an increase in the number of women entering the labor force during those decades, and the start of research suggesting early education for disadvantaged students.

The percentage of 16 to 24-year-old students not enrolled in school, and who do not have a high school diploma or equivalent degree, has dropped from 14 to 8 percent between 1980 and 2008. The total number of college post-secondary degrees earned has also risen markedly, from 2.3 to 3.1 million from 1997-1998 and 2007-2008.

"We're holding our own given the difficult times we live in," Plisko said.

CHRISTINE ARMARIO, Associated Press

Peoria has officially entered backwater status

2010-05-19T05:45:00.000-07:00

This person who posted in the pjstar hit the nail on the head:

Busy Bee
1 day ago

If the state of architecture in a community is a benchmark of the condition of its culture, then Peoria has officially entered backwater status. EM Properties should be ashamed to present this to a downtown that needs all the help it can get help that is exponentially improved with the proven use of great design. The most shocking part is that EM Properties thought it was appropriate to entrust the design to an in-house corporate architect from Marriott for such a high profile project that is so important to downtown. Is it any surprise then that this edifice resembles a corporate highway motel of the most common kind? Even its fundamental urban elements are flimsy, dubious and irrationally executed. This design is tragically myopic. What a sad state of affairs.

EM Properties please, for the benefit of everyone, return to the drawing board. If your taste is lacking, hire someone who has it and knows what it looks like. May I suggest someone who understands how to use glass, modern materials and modern form that will complement the Pere through contrast, not pander to it especially in such a particularly unflattering and unconvincing manner. Peoria deserves better. You can do better. There's still time. Please don't let yourself be remembered for a handful of throwaway chain restaurants and a dreadfully ugly and offensively passe hotel mid-rise and parking garage where there should be a structure Peoria can be proud of and thankful to you for building.

Memo to the Media: Hate matters.

2010-03-29T08:16:00.000-07:00

I. Want. My. Country. Back.

And implicit in such a statement is the follow up . . .

I. Will. Take. My. Country. Back.

By force? Well, that’s been the threat for months now.

The rhetoric is as clear as day, yet the media continues to ignore the very real impact behind the very real death threats we’ve seen in the past week.

The media has been irresponsible in its coverage of this hate. It has been negligent in giving such hate a platform on the national cable news networks. And this constant search for some false moral equivalency between Left and Right ignores the very real threat at hand. The media’s foremost concern at a time like this shouldn’t be the politics of the matter. No, instead the media should be concerned with calling out the next domestic terrorist before he or she tries something stupid.

This is not a game. This is not a civics lesson or some poli sci 101 course in undergrad. This is real. And, if it continues to ignore the obvious signs, the media’s shameful ploy for evenhandedness might overlook the makings of another tragedy . . . a tragedy that perhaps might still be avoided if the media were to simply wake up and do its job.

I will say this ahead of time. . .

Memo to the Media: Please spare your audience the fake outrage and crocodile tears if these threats turn into action. Spare us the stupid questions of How did this happen? and Who could have seen this coming? if these threats turn into action.

Spare us the phony documentaries and town hall discussions. Spare us your self-aggrandizing coverage of memorial services . . . your half-hearted commentaries . . . your disingenuous interviews with grieving friends and family members.

Media, if these threats should turn into action, please spare us any efforts to make us believe that you actually care. Spare any efforts to fool us into believing that you’ll actually listen.

Because you have not listened thus far. You have subjected real concerns of hate to the same, tired, selfish, ratings-grabbing back and forth of political gamesmanship and infotainment that you try to pass off as news every single day. You have ignored the culpability of elected officials and their irresponsible use of hyperbolic rhetoric.

What is the answer? Well, the media can start by acknowledging its role as an enabler. Politicians who align themselves with this rhetoric are inciting violence. . . Politicians who ignore this danger are not credible. . . Sarah Palin’s rhetoric isn’t cute or “folksy”. . . and “concern” over the size of government is no excuse for blatant and unapologetic threats of violence.

Hate is hate. Stop giving it cover. Call them out for what they are.

Mitsubishi Motors Settles Racial Discrimination Suit

2009-12-19T06:11:00.001-08:00

Apr 9th, 2001-NORMAL, Illinois - Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America last week agreed to pay more than $3.2 million to settle allegations of racial discrimination by plant supervisors and workers at a manufacturing facility in Illinois.

Under a settlement approved last week by a federal judge, Mitsubishi will pay $1.8 million to attorneys and $1.4 million to the ten lead plaintiffs in a class-action suit filed in January 2000, reported the Associated Press.

The workers, representing Mitsubishi’s other black and Hispanic workers, accused the company of suppressing black workers’ pay and promotion opportunities, and of regularly ignoring racial harassment, including pranks, slurs, and threats.

Other workers covered by the class-action settlement will receive funds to be determined by appointed arbitrators on an individual basis, according to the AP.

Mitsubishi also agreed to allow independent auditors to monitor the company’s compliance with the settlement and nondiscrimination practices, according to a company press release.

Plaintiffs’ lawyer Patricia Benassi last week praised Mitsubishi’s progress in combating discrimination at its Illinois facility. “It is evident that things have changed for the better,” Benassi said. “The mechanisms put in place under this agreement will advance this progress even further.”

A group of Mitsubishi’s female workers filed a similar suit in 1996, charging the company with pervasive sexual harassment. Mitsubishi settled that suit for $34 million.

Source

Report finds wide disparities in gifted education

2009-11-21T11:51:00.000-08:00

ATLANTA — When Liz Fitzgerald realized her son and daughter were forced to read books in math class while the other children caught up, she had them moved into gifted classes at their suburban Atlanta elementary school.

Just 100 miles down the road in Taliaferro County, that wouldn't have been an option. All the gifted classes were canceled because of budget cuts.

"If they didn't have it, they would get bored and distracted easily," said Fitzgerald, whose children are 14 and 12. "It just wouldn't be challenging."

Such disparities exist in every state, according to a new report by the National Association for Gifted Children that blames low federal funding and a focus on low-performing students.

The report, "State of the States in Gifted Education," hits at a basic element of the federal government's focus on education: Most of its money and effort goes into helping low-performing, poor and minority kids achieve basic proficiency. It largely ignores the idea of helping gifted kids reach their highest potential, leaving those tasks to states and local school districts.

"In the age of Sputnik, we put money into math and science, and we ended up on the moon," said Del Siegle, a University of Connecticut researcher who wrote the report. "We really need to consider that again. We cannot afford as a country to ignore talent."

The federal government spent just $7.5 million last year on research and grants for the estimated 3 million gifted children in the U.S. Both the Bush and Obama administrations have tried to eliminate that money entirely, but Congress put it back into the budget each year.

Gifted programs are typically paid for by local districts or states and vary dramatically. In some states, it's as stark as one county with multiple gifted programs — magnet schools, honors courses and separate classrooms for advanced learners — next to a county with nothing.

"The quality of gifted services is dependent on geography, and it shouldn't be," said Laura Carriere, president of the Maryland Coalition for Gifted and Talented Education and the mother of two gifted children.

Just six states pick up the whole tab for gifted programs, and 13 don't put a single dollar toward such curriculum, according to the study. That means poor urban and rural school systems are often have no money left for their highest achievers, according to the Nov. 12 report.

"There is a markedly insufficient national commitment to gifted and talented children, which, if left unchecked, will ultimately leave our nation ill-prepared to field the next generation of innovators and to compete in the global economy."

For Bellevue, Wash., mother Julie Plaut Warwick, a gifted program was the only option for her now 16-year-old son, who is in a magnet high school in the Seattle suburb.

"He would be very bored and would have gotten in trouble," she said. "If you're in a regular classroom and you repeat things two or three times, he gets incredibly bored and frustrated."

The federal No Child Left Behind Law, which was passed in 2003, forced states to focus on bringing struggling children up to grade level — inadvertently exaggerating the problem even more, Siegle said. A Fordham Institute study released last month showed gifted students are still improving their standardized test scores, but not as quickly as low-performing children.

As the economy has tanked, some states are shifting money away from gifted programs to help balance their budgets. The report shows that 13 states — more than half of the 23 that actually fund gifted education — made such cuts in 2008-09.

In the Oxnard School District just north of Los Angeles, that means Martha Flournoy, who ran the district's gifted program for a decade, is back in the classroom.

She said the students who are suffering the most are bright children from poor families.

"If I'm middle class and my kids are identified gifted and talented, I'm going to find a charter school or go to a neighboring district or find a private school," Flournoy said. "That does not happen with all kids."

Some oppose having separate classes for gifted kids. Mara Sapon-Shevin of Syracuse University argues that gifted programs create "haves and the have nots." She prefers grouping students together and then tailoring the curriculum to each child. Sapon-Shevin kept her own daughter out of a second-grade gifted program in the 1980s.

"In the unit on birds, the gifted children would learn myths about birds, go bird watching, build bird houses, learn bird calls, do bird identification," she said. "The problem came when I raised my hand and asked what the other second-graders were doing. They said 'work sheets.'"

But for educators like Sally Walker, gifted programs help bright children reach their highest potential, putting future doctors, scientists and engineers in classrooms where they don't feel embarrassed for being smart.

Walker recalls the day she was testing a particularly bright 5-year-old boy in her gifted program in a Rockford, Ill., elementary school in the 1980s. She asked him what color coal is and gave him three options: black, purple and gray.

The boy marked all three answers and told Walker that coal was black indoors, purple in the sunshine and gray if it burns.

"These are students who are ignored because of the myth that they will make it on their own or succeed without help," said Walker, now executive director of the Illinois Association for Gifted Children. "They get frustrated because they feel they are not being understood."

Source: By DORIE TURNER (AP) – 2 hours ago

Why alternative schools matter

2009-11-13T13:27:00.000-08:00

Increasingly, most of the dropouts who enroll in Chicago’s alternative schools are close to, or even older than, the typical age for graduation, yet too far behind to make quick headway toward a diploma.

The city’s network of alternative schools provides an opportunity for young people who haven’t been successful in traditional public high schools. These schools are often the last chance for dropouts to get a diploma before turning 21, when public school eligibility runs out. And the ranks of students who need another chance are growing: The district is making only slow progress in curbing the dropout rate, which still hovers at around 40 percent. A recent study completed for the district by the Boston-based Parthenon Group estimates that about 50,000 young Chicagoans between the ages of 16 and 21 are dropouts; another 50,000 are still in school, but far behind academically.

Meanwhile, the number of alternative schools is set to balloon in Chicago, bringing in a fresh crop of school operators outside the Youth Connections network, which operates all but a few of the city’s alternative schools. But Chicago is still playing catch-up: Over the past decade, other cities, such as New York, have focused more energy and resources on creating higher-quality schools for these students.

For a variety of reasons—ranging from a student’s impatience or personal difficulties to a dearth of resources at the schools—alternative programs often are a revolving door for dropouts. A Catalyst Chicago analysis of data from the district, the state and Youth Connections Charter found that:

These small, intimate schools are most successful with students who are reading at grade level and need less than 10 credits to graduate. Yet roughly half of dropouts who enroll are below 8th-grade level in reading and math; a third are performing at 6th-grade level.

Half of enrollees in a given fall quit school again by the next year. Overall, the mobility rate is a stunning 166 percent.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chicago has some 50,000 dropouts between the ages of 16 and 21. Alternative schools are their last chance at a high school diploma, but often fall short.

■Most students who walk into alternative schools are 18 or older but have just a handful of credits and reading skills that are below 8th grade. It’s unlikely that these students can earn enough credits for a diploma before turning 21, when they are no longer entitled to a free public education.
■Fewer than one in four students leaves an alternative school with a diploma. Most of the students who do graduate are young women, although most dropouts are African-American and Latino males.
■In the age of high-stakes testing and No Child Left Behind, alternative schools are under increased scrutiny but don’t receive the additional resources necessary to meet the needs of the students who enroll.
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Of the 31,000 students who enrolled in an alternative school during the past 10 years, only 23 percent earned a diploma. Experts say such programs should graduate about half of their students.

Supporters of alternative programs say that these numbers are not as troubling as they seem. Society reaps substantial benefits for every former dropout who earns a diploma, notes Jack Wuest, executive director of the Alternative Schools Network, a Chicago-based advocacy group and service provider for alternative schools.

The economic benefit is substantial—more than $208,000 in additional tax revenue for each former dropout, as well as lower social costs for prison and welfare, according to a report released last fall by the Illinois Taskforce on Re-Enrolling Dropouts.

Linda Boisseau-Goodwin, the manager of alternative schools for the Chicago Public Schools’ Graduation Pathways Department, says that when a student drops out of an alternative school, it is not necessarily the school’s fault.

“There are so many factors involved outside our control,” Boisseau-Goodwin says. “You have to look at all the circumstances. You listen to some of these stories [from students] and they will make your hair stand up.”

Students often have long histories at other schools, and whatever prevented them from succeeding back then stays with them, she adds.

Miguel del Valle, who ran an alternative school before he became a state senator and then city clerk for Chicago, says high mobility is par for the course when students have difficult personal lives.

“We need alternative schools to be flexible,” he says. “Coming in, leaving and coming back—I will take that, as long as we are not giving up on the student entirely.”

Counselors and principals say an underlying tension haunts many young people at alternative schools: They want to be successful, yet personal problems, poor academic skills and lack of tenacity hinders them.

Damara Ortiz, a new teenage mom, is one example. She shows up at her school, Howard Area Leadership Academy in Rogers Park, a few weeks before the first day of school.

Immediately, she is hit with a barrage of questions from the two counselors in the school’s office: Where’s the baby? Is he sleeping through the night? And how is she holding up? “It’s her twin,” says counselor Helen Collins of the baby boy that 17-year-old Damara gave birth to just a few weeks earlier.

Damara patiently answers the questions—the baby is at home, and she is okay but wishes he didn’t cry so much. Then Damara launches into the real reason she came: Her mother was supposed to baby-sit, but now she can’t, and Damara is worried that she’ll have no place for the baby to go so that she can come to school in September.

The counselors immediately rattle off the names of day-care providers that Damara should call to see if they have space for an infant. Damara nods her head.

There’s a sense of urgency in the counselors’ demeanor. Damara took almost a year off after 8th grade, and her attendance at Howard Leadership has been sporadic. Damara admits she wound up spending many days just hanging out with her cousin. Only since she became pregnant last fall did Damara begin attending school regularly, determined to get an education so she can provide a better life for her child.

But Damara has now moved to the South Side, and has a small, squirmy baby to feed, dress and get to day care before she can leave for school. When the year begins, Damara shows up. But by Week 2, she’s already taking days off.

Collins says situations like Damara’s are more the rule than the exception. She and the other counselors at Howard Leadership say they want to stick by their students. But they wonder how much support they can provide with limited resources, and what are the realistic outcomes?

Another factor complicates the discussion: the increasing pressure on alternative schools to offer challenging academic programs and to meet high standards under the No Child Left Behind Act.

This scrutiny is new for alternative schools. Before 1997, they operated independently, typically run by grassroots organizations with deep roots in the community. Many offered a GED instead of a regular diploma and had little structure, cobbling funds together from CPS, the state and various federal agencies, with few requirements for performance.

Pa Joof, the principal of Prologue, which runs three alternative schools, notes that it was founded in the 1970s with a social justice focus. Sitting in an office surrounded by old photos of blond, shaggy-haired people in bellbottoms, Joof recalls how the first school was started by nuns in Uptown to serve disenfranchised children from Appalachia. The idea was not only to provide these students with an education, but also to nurture a commitment to improving the community and “create a level of awareness and activism,” Joof says.

Students did not receive grades, and academic rigor was not even discussed.
But the charter school movement brought the idea that schools with a unique focus can get stable public funding. At the urging of Wuest, former CPS CEO Paul Vallas agreed in 1997 to let the alternative schools form a network and have a charter. They jumped at the chance.

Today, Youth Connections has 22 campuses. (Other alternative schools include Alternative Safe School Program, run by Boisseau-Goodwin; and two Prologue schools, one a CPS contract school and another that operates independently.) The schools got stable funding—about $7,900 per student—but with strings attached: Meet standards set by No Child Left Behind.

Youth Connections schools have never met NCLB standards—but neither have most of the district’s traditional neighborhood high schools. (In 2009, NCLB calls for 70 percent of high school students to meet or exceed standards on state tests, and for schools to have a 78 percent graduation rate.)

Some educators also worry about the consequences of high-stakes testing that NCLB requires. And some observers wonder whether schools will quietly direct misbehaving and poorly performing students out the door, so that performance indicators look better—a criticism that has been leveled against charters in general. “Charter schools are more restrictive in who they let in or hold on to,” says del Valle.

Indeed, some alternative schools have instituted admissions requirements. And Youth Connections has ejected six lower-performing schools from its network over the past 12 years. Some have closed; others now offer only a GED program.

Prologue’s independent campus, Winnie Mandela in South Shore, was cut by Youth Connections last year. But Joof says Prologue decided that the community still needed an alternative school. The four small schools on the South Shore High campus have high dropout rates, and the community has no other neighborhood high school.

Winnie Mandela’s principal, Jamillah Kareem, started the school and bristles at the suggestion that it is underperforming. Other schools, she notes, turn students away. Winnie Mandela only has enough funds to serve 40 students, and has a long waiting list. “I take them,” Kareem says. “They have got to have some place to go.”

In 2003, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided $31 million to start alternative schools for dropouts in several big cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Seattle. The question of quality has been front-and-center.

In Philadelphia, the school system and outside advocates were cognizant of the danger of creating a second-class school system, says Laura Shubilla, co-president and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network.

“We thought it would be a disservice to students if they graduated with a diploma that didn’t mean anything,” Shubilla says. “It would set them up for future failure.”

Yet they also worried about the consequences of setting performance standards so high that schools couldn’t meet them and might get shut down. “We want to protect the opportunity,” Shubilla adds. “We understand that it would be real easy to get rid of these schools.”

So Philadelphia wound up with a set of minimum standards that school must meet, and a second list of so-called “stretch” standards that serve as incentives. Schools earn additional money if they meet them.

In New York, the Gates funding sparked a complete overhaul of alternative schools, says Jo Ellen Lynch, who was the head of the New York Public Schools’ Office of Multiple Pathways to Graduation, before leaving early this year to become a consultant. No longer were they even called alternative schools.

New York has created about 50 new schools and programs, divided into three types to meet the differing needs of students: Transfer Schools serve students who have few credits and are far from earning a diploma; Young Adult Borough Centers serve older students who only need a few credits to graduate; and GED-only programs are for those who choose that route.

Lynch says these schools have strong community partners, but are not run by outside agencies. Instead, they fall under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education. New York also has a weighted funding formula that provides more money to these schools because of the extra support these students need.

New York also created new evaluation criteria that take into account the difficulties of educating dropouts. One example: School progress reports show how well transfer schools perform with students based on the number of credits they have when they arrive—a unique barometer that is tailored to alternative schools. Officials also looked at graduation rates for off-track students—those who are overage for their grade and have few credits—and found that transfer schools performed much better with this group than traditional schools, posting 56 percent graduation rates compared to 19 percent in regular schools.

CPS, however, has not yet taken a hard look to determine the best way to judge the performance of its alternative schools. And the district provides the same per-pupil funding for Youth Connections as for other charters.

New York had so many out-of-school youth (more than 100,000) that officials there decided to focus on dropout recovery. Chicago has been concentrating on dropout prevention, according to a spokesperson for the Department of Graduation Pathways. But in the coming year, the department plans to shift its focus to recovery.

Alternative schools face a constant battle to balance the need to meet standards with the skills of their students.

Few alternative school principals will openly criticize their counterparts at neighborhood schools. But they complain about the increasing number of older students who have left regular high schools with barely any credits.

“We are talking 17- and 18-year-olds reading at 5th and 6th-grade levels,” says Myra Sampson, principal and founder of CCA Academy. More special education students also are showing up.

Youth Connections offers professional development and support, but does not have a standard curriculum for its schools. And indeed, many of these school principals and teachers say they value being able to use creativity in teaching.

But such freedom can result in uneven quality. When Youth Connections was up for charter renewal in 2007, observers saw many good things happening, including high engagement on the part of students and instruction tailored to their needs. But they noted “ensuring instruction is appropriately rigorous can be difficult, especially when student skill levels are below-grade-level.”

At some of the schools, observers saw lessons that were far below high-school level.

Venson admits schools have a tricky balancing act. She wants principals to stop accepting credits for classes in which students received a “D.” A “D” usually means that a student didn’t master the subject—for instance, algebra—and that makes it impossible to teach them subsequent courses—like geometry and calculus.

Yet Venson adds that alternative schools need significantly more funding if they are to go back and re-teach lower-level skills. Given more money, she’d like to hire reading and math specialists to support teachers.

But principals scoff at the notion that students should retake classes, given that it’s already an uphill battle to keep these students engaged.

Brianna Gibson is teetering on that edge.

The young woman recalls how she ended up enrolling in CCA. One day, she sat on the couch in her living room, the hours ticking by, swallowed up by soap operas and talk shows. Then she realized that she had a choice. “I could be either a statistic, or somebody,” she says. “I want to be somebody.”

Sampson says that virtually all of the young people who come to CCA desperately want to get an education. “They want to do more and they want to do better,” she says. “They understand the (employment) ceiling.”

But Sampson openly wonders how much she can help her students, given the support they need. “I would have to pull miracles out of the air,” she says.

Without that support, students begin to repeat the cycle that forced them out of school the first time around: struggling in classes and taking days off. “They are willing to pay the price,” Sampson says, “until they get so beat down and defeated, they give up again.”

"Housing Patterns Are Segregated": The Part of the Champaign School Crisis That Requires Action Beyond the School Board

2009-10-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

An opinion from the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (2004).

In case you didn't hear it, National Public Radio's All Things Considered (heard locally on WILL AM580) had a report Sunday evening on the court case that one observor said may be "the last straw...in resegregating our society" in America.

The US Supreme Court heard arguments Monday on whether the use of race as a factor in assigning students to schools to fight segregation is legal. This is the sort of system that the Champaign schools have been using as a way to satisfy court-ordered remedies for the results of racially skewed educational outcomes for black students.

For some time, local opponents of these legal efforts to end the pernicious effects of remaining racism, such as the editorial board of the local daily, the Champaign News-Gazette, have argued that the court-ordered plan is too expensive and unfair.

While they have been vociferous critics of the plan, they have offered little to nothing in the way of alternatives. The deeper reality of what underlies the school district's legal trouble is that, as Beth Shepperd, Assistant Superintendent of the Champaign Public Schools in Illinois, put it, Champiagn's "housing patterns are segregated" ("High Court Will Hear School-Integration Arguments" by Debbie Elliott).

Now, hearing that Champaign has patterns of racially segregated housing might come as a shock for listerners who ordinarily rely on the News-Gazette for the bulk of thier local news. Unfortunately, this is largely due to the fact that the News-Gazette has stubbornly refused to address patterns of persistent segregation in local housing. And the school board is hardly the only one to blame for segregated housing, since schools are only a small, but important, part of the housing equation.

True, good schools attract higher property values, but new developments and the planning that should go into providing basic city services, as well as maintaining those services in older parts of the city, is largely the result of decisions made by the city council and city staff. Unfortunately, both have given short shrift to the idea of equal access to place priorities on city services.

Champaign has taken a largely "those that pays, gets to call the plays" when it comes to development, encouraging sprawl, while neglecting other parts of the city, as one of its results the maintenance of de facto school segregation some forty years after de jure school segregation was ended. The News-Gazette's editorial board would have you believe that the market will solve all the problems with our schools, if only the courts would give it the chance. But the market is largely responsible for the patterns of racially segregated housing that is a large part of the problems with Champaign's school system -- the market has had free rein and it has continued to reproduce racial segregation in housing, aggravating disparities in the educational system. And the harsh reality is that this problem extends beyond Champaign.

Urbana is far from perfect and the growth of such bedroom communities as Mahomet, Savoy, and St. Joseph is intimately tied to white flight from inadequate and underfunded schools in Champaign; Rantoul has had its own special housing segregation issues since it was an Air Force base town. I didn't have the time to participate in Big.Small.All, but I heard that one of its big goals is to improve educational opportunities in Champaign County.

Unfortunately, the News-Gazette and other local opinion leaders have swept the major cause of the Champaign school system's legal problems -- segregated housing patterns -- under the rug as they have gone about stubbornly attacking the consent decree. We will likely not be any closer to solving these issues in the future unless we as a county begin addressing these disturbingly persistent and shameful failures of the American dream in a more forthright manner.

So, how about it, John Foreman and Tom Kacich-- can we at least hear your opinions on what other units of government beyond the Champaign School Board can do to begin addressing patterns of persistent housing segregation? That would seem to be one way to help solve the issues raised by the consent decree. Or do you really not care?

Source

The truth about BET from a former BET Executive

2009-09-09T09:26:00.000-07:00

An e-mail to media types from BET's former executive editor of music, Andreas Hale:

As someone who has been critical of BET for many years, it surprised many that I would leave my post at HipHopDX last year to take a position at BET. But it was an opportunity I absolutely had to take. I could no longer be critical of this company without accepting the opportunity to change it when given.

Although I was hired to bring about change, I was systematically shut down. I wasn't hired to make noise, I was hired to be silenced. The truth of the matter is that everything that you thought was wrong with BET is true.

Over the past year, I've seen a lot to reinforce my position that BET is too far gone in the negative to turn into a positive. We have all always thought the worst, but to actually see it in action is another thing in its entirety. The unprofessionalism, the tomfoolery, the favors, the misappropriation of resources, the bad ideas that reinforce negative stereotypes, the emasculation of men, the meetings that break down in full-fledged cursing battles, the unpaid overtime, the tears from employees scared for their underpaid and overworked positions and ultimately the unwillingness to change are all harsh realities that I've witnessed firsthand.

That is not to say that there aren't some good people who have sat in the offices of BET. Unfortunately, the good people are not in positions of power to instill any change. Instead, they work their fingers to the bone just to keep their jobs in this harsh economic climate. The other good people ran out of the door as soon as an another employment opportunity presented itself. To say BET was a revolving door would be an understatement. I came in with a plan to provide balance and to deliver good music to the masses and help make BET relevant again -- at least in the dot-com world. Those attempts were shut down by out-of-touch executives who run a dot-com but could barely turn on a computer. By those who judge their metrics by page views over absolute unique visitors (that's ad sales talk). By those who simply don't understand the Internet.

They brought me in because of my track record but never once took a look at my body of work. If they did, they would have known that I was the pen behind editorials such as "BET's Coon Picnic" or were aware of the many times I have been critical of their award shows and programming. All they knew is that I played a major role in making a once-unknown Web site into a online media outlet that surpassed theirs, and they wanted a piece of the action. Too bad they never researched who I really was.

During my tenure, I worked long hours and sometimes succeeded at bringing in decent content to try to reflect the change I wanted to achieve. But it wasn't without opposition. While some interviews and content initiatives were able to make it through, many others were either shut down or met with ridicule. I offered ideas to incorporate the blog world and to spotlight new talent before MTV did. Those ideas were met with comments such as, "This isn't HipHopDX" or "You don't know what you are talking about." BET is not about the quality of your work. Rather, BET is about the relationships you have with powerful people within the company. BET is not about challenging. Instead, BET is about accepting and saying "yes."

If you have known or followed me over the years, you would know that these are things that simply are not in my character and ultimately resulted in my removal. For the artists and labels that I have worked with for years, I tried. I did whatever I could to achieve that balance many of us wanted to see happen. To the writers who wanted to write for BET, I made an attempt but was never given a budget to work with.

Upon my arrival, I was told I would be given a staff. Not true. I had a staff of one to carry out daily operations on a Web site. I fought tooth and nail to accomplish the minimum (an embeddable player and a site people could navigate) and was constantly brushed off. It was a position that was set up for failure. But I endured as long as I could.

Alas, I have been removed from my position after infiltrating the system, and the timing was perfect. I wasn't let go because the site's numbers were down. Not because I didn't work hard. Simply because of a personality clash with an individual whose proverbial ass I didn't kiss enough. Again, not about the work you do but about the relationships you keep and the sides you take.

I'd like to thank BET for covering the cost of my relocation to bring me to the great city of New York/New Jersey. I'd also like to thank them for putting me in close quarters with people who think like me and will hopefully work with in the near future. I'd also like to thank them for providing me enough controversial content that I observed firsthand and will make for many tales to be told.

I said it and I meant in: One year to either make changes or move on. I left HipHopDX on Sept. 16, 2008. Today is Sept. 8, 2009. Eight days short of a year. Most thought I wouldn't even last that long. But in that year I've had, my greatest fears about Black Entertainment Television [were] affirmed.

There is so much wrong with BET that I'd rather not break it down in a single e-mail. It is pretty good fodder for a book, don't you think? As of today, Andreas Hale is a free agent.

Source

Advertisers continue to distance themselves from Beck

2009-08-27T14:40:00.000-07:00

Comments from advertisers recently distancing themselves from Beck:

“As mentioned before, Applebee’s regularly evaluates where our advertising appears,” said Miles McMillin, a spokesperson for Applebee’s Services, Inc., in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “We strive to reach our diverse group of consumers in many different advertising venues. We do advertise in programming where various opinions are debated as we believe discussion about issues important to our country is very valuable. We expect this discussion to be respectful. As also pointed out earlier, we have not purchased advertising time on the Glenn Beck show specifically. However, at this time, we have asked that our advertising that appears on FOX News not be included on the Glenn Beck program.”

In an email conversation with ColorOfChange.org, Joseph L. Goode, Senior Vice-President of Global Media Relations for Bank of America, confirmed that a statement posted on was authentic and that any advertisement placed on the Glenn Beck Program was an error and they would take steps to correct it.

“We don’t advertise on Glenn Beck’s show anymore,” said Charlie Sahner, a spokesperson for Vonage, in an email to ColorOfChange.org.

“I can confirm the authenticity of the statement published, said Valérie Moens, Senior Manager of Corporate Affairs for Kraft Foods Inc., in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “Kraft Foods has made the decision to stop advertising on the more politically extreme programs on all networks. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of shows with extreme content, including on the political front. These shows often are controversial and do not align with our company or brand values. That’s why we have made the decision to stop advertising on the more politically extreme programs on all networks.”

“We’re not an advertiser, that I can’t tell you [sic],” said Tom Forsythe, Vice-President of Corporate Communications for General Mills, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “It’s not necessarily in response to your campaign. The action has much more to do with the content of the program...Upon hearing your request, I made sure that that was true. But it should have already been true because of the nature of the show.”

In a phone conversation with ColorOfChange.org, Jon Gieselman, Senior Vice-President of Advertising and Public Relations for DirecTV, Inc., confirmed that their ads should not be running on Glenn Beck’s program. “We have actually not purchased national advertising from Fox News during his show since August 3rd, and right now we don’t have plans to purchase media in the future,” Gieselman said. “We have already clarified our position with Fox News.”

“To be clear, the Glenn Beck program has never been part of our advertising effort,” said Frank Colangelo, Director of Advertising Research for Travelers Insurance, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “Any Travelers advertisements that ran during that program in the past were due to commercial placement mistakes by Fox News. In fact we have a standing “no buy” policy with regard to the program and we have confirmed that fact with Fox News.”

“We’ve discontinued our advertising on this program and don’t plan to resume,” said Scott M. Peters, Chief Marketing Officer for Regions Financial Corporation, in an email to ColorOfChange.org.

“Our company, SAM (Store and Move) has complied with your request and “The Glenn beck” show has been put on the “do not air” list for SAM,” said Nicole Henkel, a spokesperson for SAM (Store and Move), in an email to ColorOfChange.org.

“While our distributor controls advertising, we have no plans for ads on this [Glenn Beck’s] program,” said Hank D’Ambrosio, Vice-President of Administration for Bell & Howell, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “As I said to you in our conversation and reiterated in my conversation with our distributor, in our 102 year history, Bell and Howell has never been involved in politics or in anything that could be construed as discriminatory in any way and never will.”

Gentrification and the Paradox of Affordable Housing

2009-08-24T08:03:00.000-07:00

By Andres Duany

Such thinking raises obstacles to the revival of American cities. At the very least a distinction must be drawn between areas that require support for affordable housing and those that need quite the opposite. Real estate in some cities, such as San Francisco and Manhattan, has become too uniformly expensive, and they are clearly in need of affordable housing. But cities such as Detroit, Trenton, and Syracuse could use all the gentrification they can get. The last thing that they need is more affordable housing.

Gentrification, on the whole, should be the best of news, for there is nothing more dysfunctional than a monoculture of poverty. As Reuben Greenberg, the Police Chief of Charleston –who happens to be a black American - has said: “Urban problems are caused not by poverty, but by the concentration of poverty.” Gentrification, which is the trend to re-balance the concentration of poverty with the tax base, rub-off work ethic, and political effectiveness of the middle-class, is the very thing indicated for the improvement in the quality of life of all residents. It is the rising tide that lifts all ships.

Implied in the activists’ opposition is that gentrification is artificially induced and that it is controllable. Both of these notions are, with few exceptions, fallacies. Americans have attempted a few induced gentrifications--using the power and resources of government to revitalize decrepit parts of cities. Two famous examples are the harbor area of Baltimore and of the West Side of Manhattan. The catalyst in both cases was a major civic investment. One was the building of Lincoln Center in the early 60’s, and the multitude of entertainment, sports and cultural venues that were supplied to Baltimore Harbor. But in both, as well as in other cities, it was an expensive proposition and the results were slow to take hold. So there haven’t been many induced gentrifications. Examples of spontaneous ones however, are legion.

Spontaneous gentrification takes off without municipal intervention. New York has undergone a continuous sequence--beginning with Greenwich Village and proceeding to SoHo and all the subsequent Hos. Elsewhere, it is today hard to believe that the real estate of Georgetown, Beacon Hill, Charleston, Santa Fe or Nob Hill was ever down; but so it was, before spontaneous gentrification. South Florida, in just twenty years, has witnessed the gentrification of Coconut Grove, Miami Beach, and the scrappy old town of Key West. As it happens, all of these transformations were driven by individuals discovering the excellent urban qualities of each place. The government caught up later to take credit, and to interfere with the natural cycle, for better or worse.

The process of spontaneous gentrification begins surreptitiously, when a first wave of the poor but savvy discover the urban quality of a hitherto decrepit area. These are usually students, artists, perhaps gays, and other self-marginalized social groups. Such folks have been characterized by sociologists as the “risk oblivious.” They demonstrate with their creativity and sweat that old lofts and townhouses are habitable, indeed charming. They transform ratty bad-food joints into ratty good-food joints. The first wave constitutes a social rather than an economic or physical gentrification.

By the time the corner stores are stocking olive oil, the area is noticed by a second wave, which is characterized as the “risk-aware.” These are people with the ability to invest financially in renovation, not just with sweat equity. They expect to secure loans, and therefore must satisfy the building codes and permits that the first wave probably ignored. This includes a group that is pervasive among baby boomers, those who crave the bohemian lifestyle while actually being as securely employed as the conventional old bourgeoisie. This cohort is now an economic, but not necessarily a physical, gentrifying force. They like the place to look rough and edgy, even as it becomes more expensive.
The third wave which follows is “risk adverse.” This group is led by conventional developers who thoroughly smarten up the buildings through conventional real estate operations—physical renovation, improved maintenance, and organized security. Their clientele has been characterized by Manhattanites as “dentists from New Jersey” with all that that implies.

In all cases, induced or spontaneous, once gentrification begins, it is a chain reaction that tends to continue. The difficulty with any attempt to intervene, supposedly on behalf of low-income residents, is that, at its source, urban gentrification is organic. Its motive force is the great urbanism itself: the well-proportioned streets; the good mix of activities in useful building types, a certain architectural quality. And these days the allure is intensified as the promise of the suburb is undermined by traffic congestion and the banality of sprawl. Good urban areas are rare and, in contrast to sprawl, more appealing than ever. This is naturally reflected in their market value.

To control this through policy undermines the intelligence of urbanism when many have a say. What spokesmen for the poor insist on calling gentrification is actually the timeless urban cycle of a free society organically adjusting its habitat. And among the participants in gentrification are the owners who receive better prices for their homes, allowing them to afford other ones that they prefer elsewhere. And for those who remain, there is a general improvement in quality of life. In fact, the only clear losers may be the poverty advocates who have their constituency diluted. The evidence of this is that it is the leaders who complain of gentrification; rarely the residents themselves, who may have much to gain.

This is not a question of whether affordable housing should be available. To that, the answer is a clear affirmative. Society has its poor but it is necessary to make the distinction between the provision of affordable housing and its retention. These effects, while related, can be separated for discussion. It is a paradox that the retention of affordable housing may be more difficult to achieve than its provision which is well in hand through subsidy of the private sector, or entirely supplied by government as an extension of public works. The market also provides affordable housing in the form of older, out-of-date, building stock. The urban decay that supplies it is no less integral to the organic urban cycle as gentrification. Cities with such housing stock typically are portals for immigrants. These "Chinatowns" or "Little Havanas" are economic incubators. They represent affordable housing in its ideal form: the "old neighborhood" that is fondly recalled by the foes of gentrification. These inner city neighborhoods however, are not permanent as they were usually built originally for the middle-class and it is their quality that eventually attracts subsequent gentrification. They are, in fact, only recovering their intrinsic value; they are reverting to their origins, not just being “taken away” from the poor.

Can anything be done to keep the existing housing stock from becoming expensive? This is very difficult to accomplish. In fact, it’s not easy even to agree to make affordability a political objective. Because spontaneous gentrification is not to be confused with the clearly horrific practice of neighborhoods being razed for redevelopment, as happened in the H.U.D. era of the sixties and seventies. People sell their property willingly in the open market and those who sell do so at higher value than they had been able to achieve before gentrification began. If one were to remove the owners’ right to market value, they would react violently. To artificially restrain resale value in order to keep housing affordable is unfair to the poor. Why should others who own buildings profit handsomely for their perspicacity, while the poor are prevented from doing so? Life is unfair enough for low-income people without their well-intentioned overseers denying them their just profits.

The people know this. In one neighborhood of small houses that was supposedly fighting gentrification, we were asked to avert a sharp rise in housing price. We dutifully proposed limiting building size, based on lot size. In planning terminology, this technique is called controlling the floor-area ratio. The measure we recommended would have prevented the existing houses from becoming large enough to accommodate yup expectations: additional family rooms, mega bathrooms and superclosets would not have been possible. When the depressing effect of this technique became clear, the public posturing disappeared soon enough; the participants in the planning process would have none of it. These may have been poor people but they were, after all, Americans. When the proposal was rejected by acclamation, only those unaffected, the activists from outside the neighborhood, were surprised by the outcome.

We then proposed more subtle techniques that could be used to maintain some of the existing residents in place: To allow the creation, legally, of one or two ancillary units behind the existing small houses that could be available for rental. We wrote new codes that would allow small-scale services, such as the care of a few elderly persons, child-care, laundry out of a house, for example. These strategies involve supporting the sort of income generating businesses that already occur throughout poor neighborhoods, illegally. They are the mutual support system that was dismantled with the H.U.D. demolitions of the 60s and 70s and subsequently eliminated by the application of suburban-style codes inappropriately to the traditional city.

But the question remains: Can anything be done to prevent gentrification? Yes, there is one proven, if craven, technique that’s effective in holding down prices. It is to give people bad design. As gentrification is essentially the value of real estate seeking its proper level, most places that gentrify are good enough for the gentry. Places that resist gentrification are those where the housing is of poor design, or the quality of the urban space mediocre. So the most certain technique for permanently preventing gentrification is to provide dismal architectural and urban design. This is not facetious. The Federal Government inadvertently tested this effect in the process of providing affordable housing at two distinct periods. One was during the First World War when the U.S. Housing Corporation built fifty-five projects in cities where the expanded defense industry required it. This housing, while inexpensive, consisted of traditional houses and rowhouses skillfully designed by first-rate architects. Today, most of it is still in good shape, much of it having gentrified over the years. This is in stark contrast to the second model, the housing that the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (H.U.D.) produced in the 1960s. This time it was designed along the then-fashionable socialist models that our modernist architects so admired in Europe. Most of it soon decayed and persists in remaining so, despite multiple renovations over the years. (For the record, it has fared just as badly in Europe. It was clearly not the fault of H.U.D. but of the architects who advised them.)

A side-by-side comparison of this phenomenon is provided by the pair of housing projects called Seaview in Bridgeport Connecticut. One, today, is a delightful little village about 80 years old and in perfect condition. The other, barrack-like, is less than 30 years old and, despite being less than a decade away from its last renovation, is again trashed. Experimental, modernist design is indeed a proven technique for keeping housing in the hands of the poor. Fortunately, the new highly successful H.U.D. program, called Hope VI, provides only traditional housing, the very opposite of the experimental 1960 “projects” that socially self-destructed and are now being demolished by HUD itself.

There is an additional difficulty. The provision of affordable housing today is vehemently opposed by the middle-class. Is this simple prejudice? Is it fear or crime? In fact, there is a statistical basis for the relationship between crime and poverty, so it is difficult to deny that those who fear affordable housing are just categorically prejudiced. In fact, it is a necessary first step to acknowledge that the manner in which affordable housing is provided causes problems. If it is done, as has usually been the case, in very large groupings, then the opposition is not wrong in their fears. Affordable housing to be socially sustainable must be provided in small increments. Ten percent is a good rule--imagine only two townhouses amongst twenty others and you can deduce that this is imperceptible – particularly if the buildings are indistinguishable in architectural syntax from middle class housing.

There are currently such policies to promote the intermixing of subsidized with market-rate housing. In Montgomery County, Maryland, builders of new subdivisions are given strong incentives to sprinkle affordable units among middle-class ones. Such housing is maintained in small ratios, and it looks like the market-rate housing nearby. This program seems to work very well indeed; we have designed one such project, called Wyndcrest, in Sandy Spring, Maryland and can attest to its success.

And one may ask: if there is such a strong need, why is affordable housing not provided by a market-driven economy? One answer is that our housing industry is not operating in a free market. It is trammeled by building and planning bureaucracies that prevent its smooth operation. In the past, people could build for themselves. A self-help system used to provide housing through sweat equity; and so it was that this continent was colonized. But there are now a myriad of regulations that, in the pursuit of eliminating bad housing, inadvertently has eliminated the supply of affordable housing. Today, only licensed professionals can design, permit, and build housing. The resulting beurocratic friction makes housing for the poor available only with artificial supports. Thus the possibility of housing oneself has been taken away from the individual to become the responsibility of government or alimonisary organizations. It is another instance government solving a problem that it created.

We should note that certain “code-free” zones do exist, whenever the government looks aside while regular people make underutilized places habitable for themselves. That is how the “risk-oblivious” broke into the housing market in SoHo in the 60's. This method can be replicated in many older American cities where the upper stories of commercial buildings are typically underused or abandoned. They are empty because to renovate them, the building codes require a thorough upgrading to current code standards. Much would-be affordable housing is illegal because it lacks a few inches of stair width, or fails to conform to some other ideal. A more sensible application of building codes would allow that, if a building satisfies the code valid at the time that the building was originally constructed, then it is not forced to meet the new code requirements when renovated. This simple rule change would allow the renovation of old housing stock at reasonable prices, by eliminating unnecessary and expensive "upgrading to code". New Jersey has one such law and it has contributed to spectacular comebacks of Jersey City and Hoboken.

So what is the fuss over gentrification about? Perhaps it is that community leaders cannot bear the self-reliance of the incoming middle-class, nor can they accept the dilution of their political base. But theirs is a swan song. Middle-class Americans are choosing to live in many inner-city neighborhoods because they have urbane attributes that are not available in conventional suburbia. And as it becomes increasingly obvious to the American middle-class that it is badly served by the suburban habitat, they are discovering the older, more functional and pleasant urban model.

The only permanent solution to overgentrification is to assure that new development in greenfields are authentic urban places so that the older ones don’t become overvalued through scarcity. A national housing policy should include the creation of traditional neighborhoods instead of sprawl, it should eschew a narrow focus on affordability and it should avoid limiting the ability of people of modest means to build for themselves, it certainly should not prevent them to profit from the natural appreciation of their neighborhoods.

Author ID: Andres Duany is a partner in the Town Planning firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. He was co-founder of the Congress for the New Urbanism and co-author of the recently published Suburban Nation. The ideas presented in this paper do not necessarily represent the ideals of the Congress for the New Urbanism.
Unpublished paper, Nov. 2000, http://www.cherrywood.org/docs/UBC/Duany.htm

Environmental threats contaminate our health and prosperity

2009-08-19T11:07:00.000-07:00

Heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness are three of the top four deadliest health threats in America. They account for more than half of the deaths in the nation and all three have an overwhelming impact on black communities.

Blacks visit the emergency room for asthma at three and a half times the average rate that whites do, and die from it twice as often. Mortality rates for cancer are higher for us than for any other group and heart disease is the most fatal illness in the black community. Many of us have friends or family members battling these diseases, and far too many of us know loved ones who have lost those battles.

There is another common trend here: all of these illnesses have been linked to environmental causes. Pollution in our air, land, and water are connected to our greatest health challenges. African Americans - who are almost twice as likely as other Americans to live in cities - breathe in more air pollution related to asthma and heart disease. High-traffic urban areas are blanketed by smog, doubling the risk of premature birth and raising the threat of developmental disabilities in children. Poor and minority communities often live in the shadow of polluters and face exposure to disease causing chemicals in their land and water.

These health threats don't travel alone. Building schools in polluted areas means our kids fall behind by missing days of class with asthma or other problems. The poor who get sick because of toxins in their neighborhoods are the same people who typically seek treatment in emergency rooms. That drives up health care costs for everyone and hurts the entire economy.

And environmental challenges hold back economic growth. At a recent meeting of national black business leaders, I heard understandable concerns about the costs of environmental regulations. But what about the costs in lost productivity from employees calling in sick, or staying home with a sick child? What about the costs for small businesses that pay higher health insurance premiums because their workers are at greater risk of chronic diseases? When environmental degradation keeps businesses from investing, economic possibilities are limited. As a result, crime and violence are higher, often drug use is rampant, and the vicious cycle continues. What have we taught our young people to value, aspire to, or take pride in when they see that their communities are unclean, unhealthy and unsafe - and that the people around them seem unconcerned?

Our country is vigorously debating the future of health care, clean energy and climate change. We can bring affordable coverage, clean energy jobs, and healthy environments to black communities, but only if we act with the fierce urgency of this moment. We should fight for these new opportunities the same way previous generations fought for the opportunities we have today. The health and prosperity of African Americans, now and in the years ahead, depend on our work to create clean, safe environments in the places where we live, work, play and learn.

Source

4 main ways the proposed reform will provide more stability and security to Americans

2009-08-16T06:35:00.000-07:00

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.

Third, by making Medicare more efficient, we’ll be able to ensure that more tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies. This will not only help provide today’s seniors with the benefits they’ve been promised; it will also ensure the long-term health of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. And our reforms will also reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs.

Lastly, reform will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable. A 2007 national survey actually shows that insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million Americans in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition. The companies either refused to cover the person, refused to cover a specific illness or condition or charged a higher premium.

We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

Tavis Smiley on Wells Fargo

2009-08-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

In this economic climate we continue to be reminded every day that there is no perfect company. Part of the process of accountability is making sure that companies are taking steps to do the right thing, and that includes appropriate outreach to communities of color.

Our relationship with Wells Fargo began in 2005 as part of its commitment to increase financial literacy among African Americans. Those efforts included free wealth-building strategy seminars designed to help prepare attendees for their families’ futures through credit management, home ownership, investing and entrepreneurship.

[…] The partnership with Wells Fargo focused on building personal wealth, which for most Americans begins with buying a house. We partnered with Microsoft to provide information on access to technology and closing the digital divide. Our partnership with Kaiser Permanente provided consumers with information on living a healthy life.

[…] All of these programs have been free and open to the public. And, at no time has The Smiley Group, Inc. nor yours truly served as a spokesperson or representative for any company.

Regarding our 10-year history of organizing the State of the Black Union (SOBU); Wells Fargo has been one of a number of companies to serve as a sponsor. Given the fact that Wells Fargo has been an industry leader, they have partnered with many African American and Latino national civil rights organizations on various community initiatives. In addition, countless numbers of community-based and grassroots organizations across the country have been supported by Wells Fargo as well. Wells Fargo currently is not a sponsor of TSG or Tavis Smiley Foundation programs or events and will not be a sponsor for SOBU for 2010.

Finally, our mission at TSG is to empower and speak for the underserved. As such, TSG always will support any official and credible investigation of allegations of any company accused of disrespecting communities of color with discriminatory practices. It is our hope that in the most multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic America ever, communities of color will get the respect they deserve.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Joins With Tavis Smiley

2009-08-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

From a 2005 press release:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, the nation's leading originator of home loans to ethnic minority customers, has joined forces with talk show host and author, Tavis Smiley; and several financial affairs experts to provide free Wealth Building Strategies Seminars in eight cities across the country, including Washington, D.C. Additional seminars featuring other popular panelists also will be offered in 12 more cities, nationwide.

"African-American households had $656 billion in earned income in 2003, an increase of 3.9 percent over the previous year*," said Jackson Cosey, senior vice president of emerging markets, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. "The Wells Fargo Wealth Building Seminars will teach attendees the best route to make their income work for them over time through homeownership, investments and credit improvement while simultaneously helping them plan for their financial futures."

The free day-long events will feature interactive sessions and one-on-one meetings with financial experts, real estate professionals and Wells Fargo home mortgage consultants who will share information on building generational wealth and family financial security. In addition, the Wealth Building Strategies Seminars will include a keynote address by Tavis Smiley, the first person to ever simultaneously host signature talk shows on both the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) and Public Radio International(PRI).

Other cities on the Wells Fargo Wealth Building Strategies Tour include Los Angeles, Richmond,Va., Dallas, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore.

"All families dream about home ownership,college education, world travel and more but may not know the best steps to becoming financially independent,” said Smiley. "I am thrilled to be a part of the Wells Fargo Wealth Building Strategies Seminars tour because I truly believe this event offers attendees the fundamental tools they need to make their dreams a reality."

The Wells Fargo Wealth Building Strategies tour is just one of many initiatives that showcase Wells Fargo's commitment to its customers and the African-American community. Other programs include the African-American Business Services program which supports economic development in the African-American community and their Afro-centric branch designs which reflect the local African-American community and celebrate its heritage.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is the nation's No.1 retail mortgage lender, the No 1, lender to low-to moderate-income and ethnic minority customers, and one of the country's leading servicers of home mortgages. It operates the country's largest mortgage network from more than 2,300 mortgage and Wells Fargo banking stores and on the Internet. Based in Des Moines, Iowa, it services loans for over 5 million customers nationwide.

The future of the NAACP

2009-07-14T10:33:00.000-07:00

At 36 years-old Benjamin Todd Jealous is the youngest person to ever lead the NAACP. As he presented his opening speech at the 100th Anniversary Celebration yesterday, the dichotomy of his age against that of the organization's was indicative of its current state. The NAACP is an organization deeply rooted in history, desperately trying to redefine itself in a culture ever shaped by the young.

Some 5,000 plus members gathered in New York City for the beginning of the centennial celebration of the NAACP. Opening remarks were careful to outline the rich and triumphant history of the organization; a history that is responsible for tearing down racial barriers and tirelessly fighting for civil rights.

"We've come along way," said Benjamin Jealous. But where is the NAACP going?

Jealous went on to highlight the pervasive amount of racial profiling that still exists in America today as the NAACP's next cause. He made it clear that judicial disparities and the prison industrial complex were at the forefront of the issues that the NAACP is looking to tackle next. As Jealous outlined the history of racially motivated arrest and sentencing practices back to President Nixon's "tough on crime" campaign, he said, "the only thing that beats tough and stupid is smart and safe."

Later, with critically acclaimed actor Jeffrey Wright by his side (who was himself the victim of police injustice last year in Shreveport, LA while wrapping up his role in the film "W"); Jealous unveiled the NAACP's "Smart and Safe" campaign to assist in reporting, recording and fighting against police brutality throughout the nation.

Still, the tone of the centennial conference was unclear. Despite Jealous' demands that "the system of injustice must be turned in to a system of justice," the sole issue of police misconduct seemed unlikely to revitalize the aging NAACP.

In a speech later that day, the nation's first Black Attorney General, Eric Holder declared, "The next century will be less about changing our laws than it will be about changing ourselves." He declared to right the judicial wrongs that disproportionately affect Blacks but went on to heavily stress personal accountability and aggressive parenting as ways to affect change within the Black community. As his speech went on, the direction of the NAACP became increasingly uncertain.

Holder said that the legacy of the NAACP's founders lives on in the "opportunity to seek and now to win the highest office in the land." And yet in this President Obama era, questions about the organization's relevance are stronger than ever.

Holder concluded by saying "let us promise our children and our grandchildren another century of remarkable progress." The crowd stood their feet in applause, but likely very few had a strong idea of what that truly meant.

Source
Peoria Branch NAACP

Not "unemployed" but not working

2009-07-01T10:32:00.000-07:00

EPI’s latest jobs analysis shows that millions of people not counted as officially unemployed are either “involuntary part-time” workers who want to work full-time but can’t find the hours, or they are “marginally attached,” meaning that even though they want to work, they did not actively seek work in the past month.

There were 1.3 million marginally attached workers at the start of the recession in December 2007, but that number has since swelled by close to 1 million, underscoring how prolonged economic downturns can make it progressively harder to find work.

“When we see such a dramatic increase in such a short period of time, we know that it’s not caused by a major shift in attitudes toward working, but instead by the fact that many jobless workers have simply realized they have little chance of finding meaningful work in such a weak labor market,” says EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.

At the start of the recession there were 1.7 unemployed workers for every job opening; the most recent data show 5.4 unemployed workers competing for each available job.

Source: Economic Policy Institute

Who are the Jena 6?

2009-06-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

The Jena Six are a group of six black teenagers convicted in the beating of Justin Barker, a white student at Jena High School in Jena, Louisiana, United States, on December 4, 2006. Barker was injured in the assault by the members of the Jena Six, and received treatment for his injuries at an emergency room. While the case was pending, it was often cited as an example of racial injustice in the United States, due to a belief that the defendants had initially been charged with too-serious offenses and had been treated unfairly.

A number of events took place in and around Jena in the months preceding the Barker assault, which have been linked to an alleged escalation of racial tensions. These events included the hanging of nooses from a tree in the high school courtyard, two violent confrontations between white and black youths, and the destruction by fire of the main building of Jena High School. The incidents were often linked in the extensive news coverage regarding the Jena Six.

Six individuals (Robert Bailey, then aged 17; Mychal Bell, then 16; Carwin Jones, then 18; Bryant Purvis, then 17; Jesse Ray Beard, then 14; and Theo Shaw, then 17) were arrested in the assault on Barker. One, Mychal Bell, was initially convicted as an adult of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. His convictions were overturned on the ground that he should have been tried as a juvenile. Prior to a retrial in juvenile court, he pled guilty to a reduced charge of simple battery. The other five defendants later pled no contest, and were convicted of the same offense.

The Jena Six case sparked protests by those viewing the arrests and subsequent charges, initially attempted second-degree murder (though later reduced), as excessive and racially discriminatory. The protesters asserted that white Jena youths involved in other incidents were treated leniently. On September 20, 2007, between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters marched on Jena in what was described as the "largest civil rights demonstration in years".[2][3] Related protests were held in other US cities on the same day.[4] Subsequent reactions included songs alluding to the Jena Six, a considerable number of editorials and opinion columns, and Congressional hearings.

Background to the assault - Noose hanging

Jena High SchoolAt Jena High School, about 10% of students are black and more than 80% are white, reflecting the population of the town of Jena, which has about 3,000 people. Some early reporting indicated that students of different races seldom sat together, although this has been disputed. According to early reports, black students typically sat on bleachers near the auditorium, while white students sat under a large tree in the center of the school courtyard, referred to as the "white tree" or "prep tree". According to some of the school's teachers and administrators, the tree in question was not a "white tree" and students of all races had sat under it at one time or another.

A school assembly was held on August 31, 2006. A black male freshman asked the principal whether he could sit under the tree. According to Donald Washington, United States Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, the principal stated that the question was posed in a "jocular fashion". The principal told the students they could "sit wherever they wanted". According to some reports, the freshman and his friends then sat under the tree.

The following morning, nooses were discovered hanging from the tree. Reports differ as to whether there were two or three nooses. A black teacher described seeing both white and black students "playing with [the nooses], pulling on them, jump-swinging from them, and putting their heads through them" that same day. Craig Franklin, assistant editor of The Jena Times, stated that the nooses were actually a prank by three students aimed at white members of the school rodeo team, and that the school's investigating committee had concluded that "the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history." The names of those who hung the nooses have not been publicly disclosed.

From Wikipedia.

Can the Obamas desegregate the Vinyard?

2009-06-22T07:22:00.000-07:00

The rumors that the Obamas will be vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard this summer have been spreading since April. Locals are famously ho-hum about these kinds of things, but even they admit that this could be an unusually crowded August on the island, with three sets of Democratic Party royalty descending at once.

The Clintons are expected to return to Edgartown, where they have often stayed at the home of Richard Friedman, a Boston real-estate developer. Caroline Kennedy will be at her mother’s former estate in Aquinnah. And while the Obamas’ plans are still unannounced, most people expect the First Family to settle on Oak Bluffs, at the northeast end of Martha’s Vineyard.

A few Vineyarders say they know whose home it’ll be. “The rumor is that it’s Wayne Budd,” says one, referring to the prominent Boston lawyer who was associate U.S. attorney general under the first President Bush. “He has a very large house with guesthouses that would be perfect for the Secret Service and his staff.” Budd has denied this, and a wealthy friend of the Obamas who claims to have been provided a photo of the chosen house says that the Oak Bluffs rumor is wrong. “The picture I received looks like it could be West Chop,” this friend says, referring to a neighborhood across the harbor. “But West Chop is totally white—so totally white that it would be a surprise.”

Even if the Obamas do choose West Chop, they’ll surely spend considerable time in Oak Bluffs, a town known for attracting most of the upper-class black professionals who stay on the island. As liberal as it is, the Vineyard is about as racially integrated as a college dining hall—blacks and whites get along fine, but they generally don’t socialize. “There’s not a lot of overlap between black and white,” says radio executive Skip Finley, who started vacationing in Oak Bluffs in 1954 and has been living there full-time for the past decade. “I don’t think anybody’s insulted by it. I’m certainly not.” It’s an arrangement that springs largely from the self-segregating impulse among black Vineyarders, who have come to the island to connect with each other. “We have people here who are black and upscale and racist,” Finley continues. “They don’t want to be around white folks, and they don’t have to.” By choosing to vacation in and around Oak Bluffs, the Obamas would be throwing a spotlight on one of the most demographically unusual towns in America.

... here.

In 1912, a former slave named Charles Shearer opened the first summer inn in Oak Bluffs that catered specifically to black patrons. Only a few dozen blacks visited the island at the time, but over the years Oak Bluffs has become the summer meeting place for scores of what could be called the Only Ones—black professional and social elites who travel in worlds where they’re often the only black person in the room. The Only Ones typically break into fields or companies that admit few blacks, move into neighborhoods where few blacks live, and send their kids to mostly white schools. They are not running from their own—they’re chasing after the best they can get. They aren’t assimilationist; they’re ascensionist.

Senator Edward Brooke, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. all made visits to Oak Bluffs. The novelist Dorothy West moved to the island in the forties, working for the Vineyard Gazette first as a file clerk and then, for decades, as a columnist who wrote about the prominent blacks visiting the island. Today’s summer vacationers come from the worlds of academia (like Harvard professors Skip Gates, Charles Ogletree, and Lani Guinier), media (NPR correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault, former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson), film (directors Spike Lee and Reggie Hudlin), and politics (Valerie Jarrett, who hosted the Obamas in 2007). “If you’re upper-middle class and black, this is your spot,” Finley says. “You’re going to find a way to spend a little bit of quality time here on this island.” In Oak Bluffs, the Only Ones become one of many. “I went to a garden party last weekend,” Simpson says, “and you would not believe the occupations of the people I met there. It’s like all the African-American East Coast professionals have chosen this place to socialize with each other.”

Not all blacks stay in Oak Bluffs; Vernon Jordan lives about fifteen miles away, in Chilmark. And the social scene in Oak Bluffs doesn’t exclude white islanders. Craig Hockmeyer, who owns a bicycle shop in nearby Vineyard Haven, says he spent many nights at Lola’s, which was, until its recent closing, a central part of the Vineyard black universe. “A bald white honky like me could go in there and feel totally comfortable and dance the night away with all the rich black folks, not a problem at all.” Still, Vineyard whites understand that blacks in Oak Bluffs take their socializing seriously. “I think the African-American summer community is more active in terms of the social network,” says Ron Mechur, a local real-estate appraiser. “They do more things, host more affairs, and support one another as friends. The white community doesn’t do as much, and they’re not as connected.”

Read the entire article here...

US cities may have to be bulldozed in order to survive

2009-06-18T10:48:00.000-07:00

Could this be in Peoria's future? If so, there are a few buildings in my neighborhood I would love to see razed:

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

"The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we're all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way," said Mr Kildee. "Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity."

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America.

"Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.

Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000. Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

here...

In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM's founder – is a symbol of the city's decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint's decline began.

Regarded as a model city in the motor industry's boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."

But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.If the city didn't downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.

Flint's recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.

They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.

The local authority has restored the city's attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.

Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same. Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there. Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.

The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee. "Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.

Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".

Building in photo: Western Avenue at West Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.; Peoria, Illinois

Family Feud Leads To Shootout Leaving 5 People Shot

2009-05-30T08:52:00.000-07:00

Family Feud Leads To Shootout Leaving 5 People Shot And 1 Dead.

Nothing to see here folks, California is a concealed carry state and everybody appears to have their papers in order... Could violence like this be coming to Peoria? Family fueds are popping off in neighborhoods all over town. Everyday PPD are answering calls for people fighting in their yards.

Long term effects of the Accelerated Reader Program

2009-05-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

From a report entitled "Does Accelerated Reader Work?"

None of the studies included long term follow-up data telling us if children continue to read after the incentive system is no longer in place. This is crucial in light of McLoyd's finding (McLoyd, 1979) that the use of rewards inhibits subsequent reading.

McLoyd (1979) asked second and third graders to read from "high interest" books under three conditions: a "high reward," "low reward" and "no reward" condition. In the high reward condition, children were promised a reward that they rated the most highly out of six presented.

In the low reward condition, children were promised a reward that they rated the least highly out of six presented (Accelerated Reader can be considered a high reward system, because children can exchange points for a wide variety of prizes).

It was explained to the children that the reward would be granted if they read up to a marker in the text (indicating 250 words), and that the experimenter was interested in their opinion of the book. Rewards were not mentioned to the children in the no-reward condition; rather, they were simply asked to read up to the indicated place in the text and to then give their opinion of the book. The reading sessions lasted for ten minutes. (McLoyd also included a group reading from "low interest" books; I consider here, however, only the high interest group, children reading a book that they rated the most interesting out of six books presented to them. This group is of the most interest to us, because it reflects what is or should be the case in sustained silent reading and in most reading management programs.)

Both rewarded groups read only what they had to in order to get the reward, barely going beyond the 250 word maker. The no-reward readers went well beyond this point; they were engaged in reading about twice as much than the two rewarded groups, and read more than twice as much.

Robbins and Thompson (1991) did a separate study of seven low-achieving readers who participated in their incentive program. For at least four of the seven low-achievers, the incentive program had no lasting effect. One low-achiever, Walter, continued reading after the program ended (p. 67), but Timmy, "didn't do much reading ... once the summer reading program ended" (p. 65). Octavious earned all his points in the first few weeks, then his reading "slowed considerably" (p. 71). Sann "found little time for reading and library visits ... as the summer ended" (p. 73)." The incentive program clearly had no impact on Jason, who remained a reluctant reader (p. 69). Robbins and Thompson's analysis thus suggests that rewards do not "jump start" reading interest.

There is, thus, suggestive evidence that the use of incentives does not have positive long-term effects on reading frequency and enthusiasm. The studies reviewed here were short-term and the focus was on the impact of AR on reading achievement. If the amount of actual reading children do is the cause of their reading achievement, one could argue that long-term reading frequency is the crucial issue. Studies must ask whether AR contributes to a reluctant reader becoming an enthusiastic reader long after the program ends.

Conclusion
The results presented here strongly suggest that of the four aspects of AR, access to books, time devoted to reading, tests, and rewards, only the first two are supported by research. There is considerable evidence that providing access to books results in more reading and better reading and considerable evidence that providing time to read results in better reading. There is suggestive evidence that incentives do not promote additional reading in the long term. The AR research literature does nothing to change these conclusions.

Read the full report here...

Does it mean we are safe if it's not in the news?

2009-05-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

As has been determined, by those of us who watch local main stream media, crimes in certain parts of Peoria some times go unreported. Along those lines, although I did not get it from any news report, if I heard correctly, Nick N Willey's in the Metro Center was robbed the other day...

62 days ago:

It was Tuesday, March 23, 2009, a much ballyhooed press conference; Peoria Police have announced that they have arrested four people suspected in the string of armed robberies that have plagued Peoria; the now infamous "... we are safer" comment as shown in the graphic above was made.

Here are the crime related items that were reported on by local mainstream media from March 24 , 2009 through today, Memorial Day, May 25, 2009. Are we safer?

Police Looking For Burglars
Monday, May 25, 2009 @04:07am CST
WMBD/WYZZ – Peoria police are looking into several overnight burglaries that happened on Monday. The first happened in the 7300 block of Knoxville Avenue.Police found the door of Specialty Healthcare propped open just before 1:00 a.m. It isn't clear what, if anything, was stolen.Officers are also looking for suspects after a house was burglarized in the 1000 block of State Street in Peoria county.
Man in Critical Condition After Being Shot by Officer

Monday, May 25, 2009 @04:02am CST
WMBD/WYZZ – Police responded around on 1:00 a.m. to the 900 block of Greenlawn Street where they found a man struggling with a woman. The man fled on foot when police arrived, he was pursued by an officer. During the chase, the man pointed a handgun at the police officer, who fired a single shot into the man's stomach.
Pair accused of punching man, shoving women
Posted May 24, 2009 @ 11:24 PM
Two Peorians were arrested Sunday morning after allegedly punching a man in the face and shoving two women as they were walking to their car in the Commerce Bank parking deck.
South Peoria man runs from men with guns
Posted May 23, 2009 @ 10:24 PM
A South Peoria man escaped an armed-robbery attempt Friday night. The man had just arrived at his home in the 1500 block of South Livingston Street about 10:55 p.m. when he saw two men walking toward him.
Man robbed at gunpoint while walking in East Bluff
Posted May 23, 2009 @ 10:22 PM
A man was robbed at gunpoint Saturday morning while walking in the East Bluff.
Two men held up at gunpoint in South Peoria
Posted May 23, 2009 @ 10:21 PM
A Peoria man and his friend were held up at gunpoint early Saturday in South Peoria.
Theft of compact discs, pork loins thwarted
Posted May 20, 2009 @ 08:32 PM
After stealing a bag filled with compact discs and four pork loins Saturday during separate burglaries, a thief abandoned his booty and fled when confronted.
Police: Woman strikes officer escorting her from burning home
Posted May 20, 2009 @ 03:26 PM
A house fire Tuesday night on Prospect Road left one resident jailed for allegedly striking police officers, and the State Fire Marshal's Office investigating a possible arson.
Woman shot in head expected to survive
Posted May 20, 2009 @ 03:13 PM
The Peoria woman who was shot in the head during an apparent domestic dispute early Tuesday morning was in considerably better condition by Wednesday, according to Peoria police.

... here...
13-year-old indicted in South Side Bank robbery
Posted May 19, 2009 @ 10:10 PM
A 13-year-old boy was indicted Tuesday by a Peoria County grand jury for allegedly robbing a South Side Bank branch last month at gunpoint.
Teen robbery suspect has another case moved to adult court
Posted May 19, 2009 @ 01:37 PM
A teen already charged as an adult for armed robbery now has more legal woes, as a juvenile court judge Tuesday ordered he be tried as an adult for allegedly attacking a counselor at the county’s juvenile detention center.
Police: Peoria woman shot in head in domestic fight
Posted May 19, 2009 @ 12:15 PM
A South Peoria woman was shot in the head during an apparent domestic fight early Tuesday in which a man was shot in the arm.
Property damaged by South Peoria gunfire
Posted May 18, 2009 @ 11:06 PM
Shots fired Sunday morning in South Peoria damaged two people's property.
Gunplay near Shop Rite leaves cars full of bullets
Posted May 18, 2009 @ 06:08 PM
Gunplay involving five men left the shoppers' cars with bullet holes shortly after 3 p.m. in the Shop Rite parking lot, 1823 W. Lincoln Ave.
Teen parents plead guilty to abusing infant son
Posted May 18, 2009 @ 01:14 PM
Two teenage parents pleaded guilty Monday to abusing their 5-month-old son, causing several rib fractures, fractures to the infant's leg and bruising.
Peorian indicted in double shooting
Posted May 17, 2009 @ 10:48 PM
A South Peoria man faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly shooting two people in late March.
JS columnist arrested after alleged bar altercation
Posted May 17, 2009 @ 09:38 PM
Phil Luciano, Journal Star columnist and WMBD-AM radio personality, was arrested Saturday morning for allegedly striking two people at a West Peoria tavern.
Gunmen steal electronics, shoes from Peoria house
Posted May 16, 2009 @ 10:49 PM
Gunmen wearing white shirts over their faces broke into a South Peoria home early Saturday and demanded money from the resident's girlfriend. But apparently, they only made off with electronics and shoes.
Peoria police recover handgun after street fight
Posted May 16, 2009 @ 10:48 PM
Police recovered a handgun from a large street fight Thursday night but made no arrests.
Shipment of cigarettes stolen from gas station
Posted May 16, 2009 @ 10:48 PM
A burglar made off with more than $1,300 worth of cigarettes early Saturday from a North Peoria gasoline station.
Teen could get 21 years in robbery
Posted May 15, 2009 @ 09:58 PM
A 14-year-old North Valley boy faces at least 21 years in prison for his part in the armed robbery of the Downtown 66 gas station last fall.
Four people arrested in alcohol-sale stings
Posted May 14, 2009 @ 08:29 PM
Four employees were arrested Wednesday night for allegedly selling alcohol to minors during alcohol countermeasure enforcement by Illinois State Police throughout the area.
$25,900 in equipment stolen from repair shop
Posted May 14, 2009 @ 12:03 AM
Tens of thousands of dollars worth of tools and equipment were stolen from a car repair garage late Tuesday or early Wednesday.
Fast Break store on Galena Road robbed
Posted May 13, 2009 @ 09:33 PM
The Fast Break convenience store at 9327 N. Galena Road was robbed late Tuesday night.
Online tool maps city crime
Posted May 13, 2009 @ 04:03 PM
One of the latest innovations in law enforcement will enable Web users to check out crime trends in Peoria County.
Easily deterred gunman takes no for an answer
Posted May 13, 2009 @ 01:56 PM
A not-so-persistent robber was turned away from an attempted holdup Tuesday night. According to Peoria police, a male believed to be in his teens entered JJ's Fish and Chicken, 841 W. Main St., about 9:15 p.m.
Two Peorians face charges in shooting and carjacking
Posted May 12, 2009 @ 08:26 PM
Two people implicated in a shooting and carjacking last month were indicted Tuesday by a Peoria County grand jury.
Teen pleads guilty to firing shots during altercation
Posted May 12, 2009 @ 07:32 PM
A 15-year-old boy pleaded guilty Monday to charges he fired several shots at another boy during an apparent gang fight earlier this month.
No one injured in North Peoria apartment fire
Posted May 11, 2009 @ 06:39 PM
Fire did an estimated $550,000 in damage to a North Peoria apartment building Sunday night.
West Peoria man hit in head with gun outside bar
Posted May 11, 2009 @ 06:37 PM
A 23-year-old West Peoria man told a Peoria County sheriff's deputy he was struck in the head with a gun during an attempted armed robbery Friday night at Cams, 2510 W. Farmington Road.
Arson, robbery cases occupy grand jury
Posted May 10, 2009 @ 11:27 PM
A South Peoria man faces up to 30 years in prison after being indicted recently by a Peoria County grand jury for allegedly setting fire to his girlfriend's house.
12 apartments evacuated after North Peoria blaze
Posted May 10, 2009 @ 10:36 PM
Residents of 12 apartment units were evacuated late Sunday after a fire at a North Peoria apartment complex. No one was hurt.
Woman robbed in parking lot of Peoria apartment building
Posted May 09, 2009 @ 11:43 PM
A woman was robbed in the parking lot of her apartment building Friday. The victim told police she was getting out of her car to enter the building in the 4700 block of Knoxville Avenue at about 11:50 p.m. when a man approached her.
Peoria woman hit in head, robbed at residence
Posted May 09, 2009 @ 11:41 PM
A woman was robbed early Saturday at her residence in the 1600 block of Indiana Avenue.
Teen admits to planning to rob pizza delivery driver
Posted May 09, 2009 @ 12:20 AM
A Peoria teenager admitted Friday to conspiring with another teen to rob a pizza delivery driver but will avoid prison time as part of a plea agreement.
Pair rob Katie McButts bar and patrons Friday
Posted May 08, 2009 @ 08:02 PM
One shot was fired at the ceiling of a bar during a robbery early Friday morning.
Peoria already fully familiar with arson
Posted May 08, 2009 @ 07:51 PM
… Peoria firefighters are concerned about a rash of intentionally set fires.
Printing machine among damage at local business
Posted May 06, 2009 @ 08:03 AM
A fabric-printing machine belonging to a North Valley business sustained about $25,000 in damages between 6 p.m. Monday and 7:40 a.m. Tuesday.
South Peorian indicted in robbery-shooting
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:51 PM
A Peoria County grand jury on Tuesday indicted a South Peoria man on charges he shot a relative while trying to rob him last month.
Prosecutor drops shooting charges as 'charade'
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:48 PM
Saying she wanted to "end the charade," a Peoria County prosecutor dismissed charges against a man accused of shooting at his girlfriend after the victim refused to testify Tuesday.
Two indicted for alleged 'gas money' holdup
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:26 PM
Two area men were indicted Tuesday for allegedly holding up a man in Peoria's North Valley last month for "gas money."
Bond set at $300,000 for alleged teen bank robber
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:25 PM
Bond was set at $300,000 Tuesday for a 13-year-old boy to be tried as an adult for allegedly robbing a South Side Bank branch last month at gunpoint.
Robbery case could be transferred to adult court
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:14 PM
Prosecutors have filed a motion to transfer to adult court the case of a 15-year-old boy accused of robbing a hardware store last month.
Robbers get $1,500 from man hit with rifle butt
Posted May 05, 2009 @ 08:21 AM
Two men armed with rifles broke into a residence in the 900 block of West Howett Street at about 1:30 a.m. Sunday and took a reported $1,500 in cash from one of the occupants.
Sheriff's deputies agree to new contract
Posted May 04, 2009 @ 10:02 PM
Peoria County sheriff's deputies have a tentative four-year agreement that will give them pay increases each year.
Judge rules 13-year-old is an adult
Posted May 04, 2009 @ 08:18 PM
Calling the actions of a 13-year-old boy accused of robbing a South Side bank branch last month "very aggressive" and "menacing," a Peoria County judge ruled Monday the teen should be tried as an adult.
Candles left burning may have started trailer fire
Posted May 04, 2009 @ 07:00 PM
Candles left burning overnight may have been the cause of a fire early Monday at Kingspark Estates in Peoria County.
South Peoria man hit with rifle in home invasion
Posted May 04, 2009 @ 09:08 AM
A South Peoria man received a cut to his forehead from the butt of a rifle after two men stormed his home, police said.
Nobody injured in birthday-party gunfire
Posted May 03, 2009 @ 10:47 PM
No one was injured when at least two gunshots were fired at a group of people that had gathered for a birthday party.
Drug task force arrest leads to indictment
Posted May 03, 2009 @ 07:31 PM
A Peoria County grand jury indicted a North Peoria man on drug dealing charges that could send him to prison for up to 15 years.
Hit-and-run victim in critical condition
Posted May 02, 2009 @ 03:00 PM
The victim of an apparent hit-and-run was reported in critical condition Friday night at OSF Saint Francis Medical Center.
Peoria man, girlfriend face child porn charge
Posted May 01, 2009 @ 10:10 PM
A South Peoria man appeared in Peoria's federal court on Friday accused of making sexually explicit videos with an 8-year-old child.
Inside: (1)
Peoria man pleads guilty to sending illicit photos
Posted May 01, 2009 @ 09:46 PM
A Peoria man faces up to 10 years in federal prison after pleading guilty Friday to sending obscene material to a Washington police officer who was posing as a 13-year-old girl.
District 150 bus monitor arrested
Posted May 01, 2009 @ 09:15 AM
District 150 campus police arrested a bus monitor Thursday morning for allegedly placing masking tape over the mouth of one student and on the neck of another last week.

23-year-old robbed of $500 in South Peoria
Posted Apr 30, 2009 @ 10:03 PM
A wallet containing $500 in cash was taken during a robbery Tuesday night in South Peoria.
Apartment fire leaves six people without homes
Posted Apr 30, 2009 @ 09:06 PM
Six people are without a home after a fire late Wednesday night in South Peoria.
Two more South Peoria fires likely arson cases
Posted Apr 29, 2009 @ 09:32 PM
Arson cases continue to pile up after two more fires that appear to have been intentionally set in South Peoria.
One business out of 15 caught selling to minor
Posted Apr 29, 2009 @ 09:23 PM
Alcohol countermeasure enforcement checks of 15 businesses in Marshall and Stark counties yielded one citation Tuesday night.
15-year-old captured after Ace Hardware robbery
Posted Apr 29, 2009 @ 08:38 PM
Police said they quickly captured a 15-year-old male after the Ace Hardware store at 120 W. McClure Ave. was robbed apparently at gunpoint on Wednesday morning.
Man accused of selling $155,000 in employer's tools, parts on eBay
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 09:46 PM
A Canton man faces up to 30 years in prison for allegedly taking tools and parts from his employer and selling them on eBay.
Thieves move cookware to silence their entry
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 09:15 PM
Thieves avoided detection while breaking into a Central Peoria house overnight Sunday by removing cookware hanging next to an open window.
Man at center of brutality case faces new charges
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 08:10 PM
Already at the center of an investigation of alleged police brutality, Bryce R. Scott now faces legal troubles in federal court that could mean he'll spend the rest of his life in prison.
Arson investigate in case of South Peoria house fire
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 08:04 PM
A fire Monday night at a vacant South Peoria home is being investigated as arson.
Three businesses report weekend break-ins
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 07:56 PM
Police are investigating three break-ins at businesses where burglars netted money, a laptop computer and liquor.
Arson suspected at Monday night house fire
Posted Apr 28, 2009 @ 08:35 AM
A fire Monday night at a vacant South Peoria home is being investigated as arson.
Lawyer: Baby was denied basic care
Last update Apr 28, 2009 @ 07:32 PM
Two friends of James Sargent implored him for weeks to get help taking care of his infant son. Every time, the answer was the same. "He always said that he would," said James Burge of his friend. "But it just never happened."
Trio indicted in Family Dollar robbery
Posted Apr 26, 2009 @ 11:18 PM
Three people face charges after being indicted for allegedly participating in the holdup of the Family Dollar store on Harman Highway last month.
Fire at vacant house considered suspicious
Posted Apr 26, 2009 @ 11:16 PM
The cause of a Saturday night South Peoria house fire is considered suspicious and remains under investigation.
Peoria man stabbed twice in the back
Posted Apr 26, 2009 @ 11:13 PM
Peoria man was stabbed twice in the back early Sunday morning. The man was drinking with a woman somewhere in the 700 block of Western Avenue just after midnight when they got into an argument, according to police reports.
Man shot during argument in South Peoria
Posted Apr 25, 2009 @ 11:24 PM
A man was shot Friday night in South Peoria. About midnight, a group of people was arguing when shots were fired from an unknown direction.
South Peoria fire causes $25,000 in damage
Posted Apr 25, 2009 @ 11:23 PM
A South Peoria fire caused about $25,000 in damage Saturday night but injured nobody.
Second suspect in carjacking, shootout arrested
Posted Apr 25, 2009 @ 11:22 PM
The second suspect in a shooting and carjacking Wednesday night has been arrested.
Details of police shootout emerge
Posted Apr 24, 2009 @ 09:53 PM
It started out with a fistfight and wound up with a person shot and another person trading fire with the police.
Sports utility vehicle pulled over after gun play
Posted Apr 24, 2009 @ 08:35 PM
Three gunshots struck a Jeep Cherokee on Wednesday night as it was speeding away from the scene of a fight in South Peoria, but both occupants escaped injury.

Show this video to the young thug in your life

2009-05-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

For the full length video with a special message for the youngsters, click here...

The chaotic nature of the public school lottery

2009-05-12T09:31:00.000-07:00

From the Mommy Files:

Over the weekend, our family went to dinner at some friends who live a few blocks from us on the Mission District-Noe Valley border. They wanted to show us their new kitchen countertops.

As my girlfriend Jamie (who requested that I change her name for this article) toured me through her small condo, she told me about additional renovations she and her husband plan to make. "We need to get this done in two years," she said, "before we put our place on the market and leave the city."

Two years?

Yes, in two years Jamie's son will be 4-years-old and she hopes to settle into a house in the suburbs before he starts kindergarten. Why?

"I can't deal with the San Francisco public school lottery system," Jamie says. "There's too much uncertainty and it sounds too stressful."

Lottery system?

Yes, you probably already know that if you want to send your child to a public school in San Francisco you have to play 'The Lottery'--though the San Francisco Unified School District prefers to call it a choice system because any student can apply to any school in the district.

Parents pick seven schools where they'd be happy sending their child and then turn their list into the district. Sounds simple, right?

Well, there's a catch. Around 80 percent of all families get one of their seven choices--a significant portion of those are awarded spots because they already have a sibling at the school. In other words, not everyone wins the lottery and many families end up on wait lists at their favorite schools or they opt for private or leave the city all together.

Why this chaotic mess? Rather than assigning kids to the schools closest to their homes, the district is trying to achieve a blend of students of different backgrounds throughout the city. In theory, it's a smart idea.

But my friend Jamie would rather move to the East Bay than go through this system.

Jamie knows the public schools in San Francisco are good--her husband went to Lawton, after all. She knows about the dedicated parents around the city who are working their butts off to improve their children's schools. She knows about Leonard Flynn, the lovely school a few blocks from her house with a diverse population and a Spanish immersion program. And she knows that if she moves back to Danville where she grew up, her family isn't going to get the same experience. She also knows--because I am always reminding her and I'm a huge advocate for public schools--that I love the S.F. public school where my 6-year-old daughter attends a Mandarin immersion kindergarten.

But Jamie also knows what I went through to get into that school. She's aware of how much time I took off from work to tour schools and develop my list of seven favorites. She listened to me cry when my daughter didn't get into any of them. She heard about all the fights I had with my husband when we were trying to decide whether or not to accept a spot offered by a private school. For two years, she dealt with my panic-stricken state as I made my kindergarten search for my daughter the focus of my life. (You can read about my travails in a recent article in San Francisco magazine.)

I tell Jamie that it was worth it and while I struggled, I also learned a lot and grew as a person. I tell her that the experience helped define my family's values as my husband and I realized that it's important to us that our daughter attend a school with children from varied backgrounds.

Jamie doesn't buy it. "I'm not doing it," she often tells me. "I know that it will make me crazy."

This is one of the problems with San Francisco's infamous Student Assignment System. It scares away people like Jamie. It makes them run for the East Bay Hills. It's not the only problem--and certainly not the biggest one. There are others--such as the fact that some of the schools aren't diverse. But for me, a neurotic Noe Valley mom, it's the problem that I hear about most. I have already lost many city friends to the lottery system--and maybe that's why I so badly want Jamie to stay.

Today, I'm going to be a guest on a segment on KQED radio's Forum show focusing on the Student Assignment System--tune in at 9 a.m. While I struggled with the lottery, I think going through it was worth it and I'm hoping I can encourage discouraged parents to charge on because there's almost always a happy ending. I'm also looking forward to hearing Jane Kim, vice president of the Board of Education, and Orla O'Keeffe, special assistant to the superintendent, talk about the upcoming Student Assignment System redesign.

What are my thoughts on the redesign? In short, I don't think the district should revert to neighborhood schools; we should avoid racial isolation. I believe that the intentions of the current system--to create diverse schools and close the achievement gap--are right-on and those should be maintained. Also the data shows that the majority of parents want some choice in the matter. But I'm hoping the district can make some tweaks that will make the process easier, less stressful, less time-intensive, and get people like Jamie to stay.

Why would haters want a Hate Crimes Bill?

2009-05-07T09:51:00.000-07:00

Rep. Steve King (R-Batshittia) introduced an amendment to the hate crimes bill calling for the term "sexual orientation" to exclude "pedophiles" even though the bill specifically defines sexual orientation as "consensual homosexuality or heterosexuality." Pedophelia, as everyone knows, is nonconsensual no matter who engages in it.

Not only was King insinuating the derogatory stereotype that homosexuals are pedophiles, but his amendment would've further validated this stereotype by writing it into the legal record. By the way, Joe the Plumber -- another very serious leader of the Republican Party -- advanced the same stereotype this week when he said that he'd never let his "gay friends" anywhere near his kids. Classy. Nevertheless, King making this kind of distinction is sort of like amending civil rights legislation with: "the term 'African Americans' shall not include anyone who rapes white women." It elevates a stereotype while denying one exists. Pretty slick -- in a creepy, sinister kind of way.

From the Huffington Post. Read entire article here...

2009-05-06T10:52:00.000-07:00

Peoria – the proverbial tale of two cities. One tale is about a Peoria where the youngest member of Congress can thrive and be on the world stage by the age of 26; and the other tale is about a Peoria, that has produced a 13 year old bank robber – a throw away child (if the State’s Attorney is to be believed).

Deonte Moore is just the most recent example of the plague of gang/youth violence that we face daily. Gangs do not exist in a vacum. They are born out of an environment of poverty, lack of jobs, training, educational opportunities, and an absence of inclusion and spiritual engagement. We should be deeply disturbed that our Community has produced (and subsequently failed) Deonte Moore.

On February 13, 2009, a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced H.R.1064 and S. 435, identical House and Senate bills to fund prevention and intervention programs that are comprehensive, community-centered and evidence-based efforts to combat gangs and youth violence. The Bill is called theYouth PROMISE Bill.

PROMISE stands for Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support, and Education and is sponsored by Representatives Robert C. "Bobby" Scott (D-VA) and Michael Castle (R-DE) as well as Senators Robert Casey (D-PA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME). In response to gang bills that emphasized suppression and incarceration over prevention and intervention, Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va) introduced legislation that champions evidenced-based practices and provides an alternative approach for lawmakers looking for effective responses to youth crime and delinquency.

The Youth PROMISE Act builds upon evidence-based methods proven to reduce youth violence and delinquency at the community level. Under the Youth PROMISE Act, communities facing the greatest youth gang and crime challenges will come together – via a local council that includes law enforcement, community-based organizations, schools, faith organizations, health, social service, and mental health providers – to develop and implement a comprehensive plan for evidence-based prevention and intervention strategies targeted at young people and their families to make our communities safer, reduce victimization, and help at-risk young people to lead law-abiding and healthy lives, free from gang and/or other criminal involvement.

The Peoria Community is rich with resources, inclusive of a superstar Congressman named Aaron Schock. What better person to get behind this Bill and push for it’s passing than Aaron Schock. After all the travesty that surrounds Deonte Moore is playing out right here in his home town. Congressman Aaron Schock should care about the passing of this Bill.

I encourage all readers of this blog to write Congressman Schock, tell him it is okay to support this important act. As a matter of fact we need to contact all Sentators and Representatives now and ask for their support of S. 435 and H.R. 1064. Go here to sign a letter.

Click below to view a Section-by-Section Summary of the bill, including a list of current co-sponsors. Section-by-Section Summary

One of the most inane conversations you will ever hear.

2009-05-01T05:48:00.000-07:00

School Activity Fund Frauds: An Accident Waiting to Happen

2009-05-01T00:04:00.000-07:00

From auditnet.blogspot.com:

The following article appeared in the Washington Post on November 9, 2007 (Student Money Vanishes, but Few Are Punished Activity Funds Are Often Plundered and Mismanaged by Adults):I have maintained for a long time that management of these funds was an accident waiting to happen.

As an internal auditor for Fairfax County Public Schools I observed firsthand the types of abuses that occur regularly in school activity funds. Despite reporting mechanisms such as independent audits that show control weaknesses many of the abuses are repeated year after year. This is in large part due to who controls the funds, lack of effective policies and procedures, and an overall position that these are not material to the financial statements and therefore do not warrant attention.

Across the United States millions of dollars are collected each year for student activity funds. These funds are under the direct control of the principal of the school. While the funds may seem immaterial (from several hundred dollars up to hundreds of thousands of dollars) when you consider the amounts collected by school district the number easily reach millions of dollars a year.

Student activity money is collected from vending machines, sporting events, bake sales and other activities approved by the school principal.

The funds are supposed to be used to promote the general welfare, education and morale of students through activities such as field trips, school publications etc.

The funds are the responsibility of the school principal.School districts are supposed to have policies and procedures covering the collection, safeguarding, and expenditure of school activity funds.

The funds should be audited each year by an independent accounting firm.

However the reality is that procedures for collection, safeguarding and dissemination are not always followed. Not all the money collected is recorded in the school's accounting system. Funds are not promptly deposited and are kept in insecure locations (unlocked desks) or safes with access by multiple personnel. Funds are spent for purposes other than the benefit of students.

School principals routinely give the responsibility for oversight of the funds to individuals not properly trained. Due to lack of internal resources (such as internal auditors) funds are not audited on a regular basis. Additionally the school districts external auditors may not even be aware of the funds available and therefore do not look at whether appropriate internal controls are in place.

read more here...

While at Fairfax County Public Schools I reviewed reports issued by an external auditor hired on a contract basis to review the school activity funds. The control weaknesses identified by the external auditor occurred year after year without little if any changes. In addition eventhough the State Education Department mandated that EVERY SCHOOL ACTIVITY FUND BE AUDITED EVERY YEAR, there was no requirement that the State Education Department be provided with a copy of the report. The cost to the County was over $250,000 and was borne by the taxpayers rather than being paid for by the Student Activity funds (over $40 million dollars collected).There needs to be greater oversight by school officials including internal auditors.

There should be minimum standards for individuals responsible for student activity funds. Additionally when problems are identified prompt action needs to be taken. The cost of independent audits or audit oversight for these activity funds should be be funded by proceeds collected.There are many public school districts where the internal audit department has responbility for auditing school activity funds. Unfortunately many of those same public school districts do not adequately fund internal audit functions to maintain effective oversight of internal controls for student activity funds or other school district operations.

What happened in the District of Columbia should be a wake up call for public school districts across the United States.

Why School Boards Won't Tell You the Reasons for Employee Discipline or Dismissal

2009-04-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

Boards of education are sometimes asked by news reporters or other citizens to explain the reasons when they fire an administrator, teacher or other employee. Some school boards, in fact, are publicly criticized when they refuse to divulge such reasons or do not speak out in defense of a dismissal.

The Illinois Association of School Boards believes such criticism is almost always unwarranted and unfair. The public needs to know that a school board must treat information regarding an employee dismissal as completely confidential.

The fact is, a public right to know rarely if ever attaches to an employee dismissal, especially when the employer is a public body. Even in those rare situations involving criminal misconduct, responsibility for publicly releasing information about formal charges would rest, not with the public employer, but with law enforcement officials.

Under any circumstances imaginable, it would be improper for the members of a school board to comment publicly regarding an employee dismissal for at least three reasons:

1) Barring some heinous misconduct on the part of the employee, no employer should wish to make future employment any more difficult than necessary.

2) Releasing stigmatizing information on an employee, even in the form of accusations or opinions, will increase the level of hostility and make an amicable settlement of an employment dispute impossible. The cost of going to court is many times greater than the cost of an out-of-court settlement and is not a prudent use of dollars that should be spent on educating children.

3) Public employees have constitutionally protected interests in personal reputation, integrity and the right to future employment opportunities. A public body that divulges stigmatizing information in dismissing an employee jeopardizes the constitutional rights of that employee and creates an intricate and costly web of procedural due process requirements. Even where stigmatizing information is believed to be true, efforts to prove it in court carry enormous financial risks.

These are among the reasons that Illinois law specifically exempts the discussion of employee performance or conduct from open meetings requirements and shields personnel records from public scrutiny.

The Illinois Association of School Boards recognizes the public's right to know as an essential element of self-government and urges boards of education to operate as openly as possible. At the same time, however, IASB recognizes that the public's right to know is not without limit and must be weighed against such factors as individual rights of privacy and the need to protect the citizenry from unnecessary financial liability.

Costly litigation, regardless of whether it results in financial judgments against the public body, creates tax burdens that must be weighed against the public's desire to know the reasons for a public employee's dismissal.

Attorneys advise school boards not to disclose information regarding the dismissal of any employee. Following such legal advice is a wise course, especially when public pressure tempts members of the public body to speak out and let taxpayers finance the huge court costs, legal fees and damage settlements that are sure to follow.

Taxpayers and the news media alike should congratulate any school board for following its attorney's advice when such advice reduces the school district's exposure to litigation and possible liability for damages.

The Illinois Association of School Boards recommends careful consideration of these legal issues before asking members of a board of education to divulge reasons for an employee dismissal.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is copyrighted © by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

The run on Popeye's Chicken

2009-04-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

It didn't appear on the local news like it did in other cities, but I heard the Popeye's Chicken in Peoria ran out of chicken last week when they had their $4.99 special. The person who told me said she waited in a long line before they found out they were out of chicken. She was miffed, but she able to laugh it off. Now I know white folks go to Popeye's Chicken too (at least here in Peoria they do). How come they didn't interview any of them for this piece (no pun intended).The above video is from Rochester, NY. The following video is from Minneapolis, MN:

This video is from NRP Music:

Lethal Bird Flu Mixed With Human Flu Vaccine & Shipped To 18 Countries...

2009-04-26T10:45:00.000-07:00

That was in early March. Fast forward to today and BAM!!! Swine flu pandemic? I ran across this story today and decided to take a read:

"Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The "mistake" was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada...

How could this company have accidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material? The shocking answer is that this couldn't have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials..."

Excerpt from Natural News, 3/03/2009: Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries

Interesting read over at Keep It Trill...

EmergingPeoria: Police Brutality Press Conference

2009-04-24T15:02:00.000-07:00

EmergingPeoria: Police Brutality Press Conference

Police Brutality Press Conference

2009-04-24T14:34:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Stella for the photos:

Today’s press conference held by Pastor Harvey Burnett on the steps of City Hall was in full attendance by local television and radio stations. There were also several individuals who appeared along side Pastor Burnett who spoke specifically to the police brutality they each allegedly faced at the hands of Peoria Police.

Pastor Burnett:
On June 30th 2007 The Peoria Association of Pastors For Community & Spiritual Renewal along with the residents of this city, some Christian and otherwise, met in front of this Peoria City Hall prayed prayers, read biblical scriptures and marched to Morgan Park where we conducted a rally against violence, crime and murder. At that time violent crime had taken this city causing residents to fear for their lives and very existence within the community. The week of that event there were 3 murders that had taken place. Thankfully there has not been another week in this city quite like that since. However there is still yet a fear.

Last time we marched away from City Hall to better serve the community. This time we stand prepared to march into City Hall because it is time that this city better serve the needs of all of its citizens.

Approximately one year ago, after my initial press conference exposing incidents of alleged police brutality, Peoria Police Chief Settingsgaard told me in front of other pastors that there was no problem with police brutality in this city and that I was simply stirring up or creating a problem. I first want to say that the statements I am about to make are not directed toward the many fine police offices that do their job exceptionally well everyday. I want to say that those officers are a benefit to this community and to the many families who count on their service. To them we wish to say thank you and please continue to the job that all citizens of Peoria can be and are proud of. .

But to those officers who feel that a badge and a gun empowers them to decide what civil rights a person has in their presence, to you we say your reign of terror upon the citizens of this community is over and we will peacefully do everything that we can to bring about change even if that means forcing you to surrender your badge.

Over a year since the Chief made his astounding proclamation to me in the face of evidence, new and shocking video evidence has surfaced, of not just one incident, but at least two incidents of alleged police brutality, at least three officers are now preparing to defend themselves in court for such alleged abuses. We have city officials some of whom seem to be derelict in dealing with any incidents or allegations of police brutality because they seem to value image of the city over the citizenry of the community. Might I remind you that this problem has long been a problem before I spoke out against it last year. As early as 2005 the Peoria Pundit Blog was asking questions and doing stories about allegations of Police Brutality in Peoria. My comments are not and should not be taken as an anomoly.

To the critic, who thinks, “why should the rights of criminals be protected?” or “they just should have obeyed the law” I would have you to know that not all of these people were criminals and not all of them were disobeying the law when they were allegedly brutalized. Some of them were elders of our community with good and impeccable work records. Some were simply inquiring about the status of family and friends only to find themselves at the wrong end of a tazer multiple times or being kicked insistently while handcuffed and subdued.

In fact, behind me stands the citizens of this community. Many of them either having had their civil rights violated by a City Police Officer or having witnessed the rights of others taken away through strong-arm and what I call Gestapo tactics. Some of them were tazed multiply; in one incidence approximately 22 times. As stated, some were handcuffed, then beaten, while they were told that they were “resisting” with no regard to the fact that they had already been subdued. Just about all of them were cussed at insistently, and many asked repeatedly, “Do you know who I am?” which is coded police street language usurping dominion over a persons actions. Some of these persons were even denied adequate medical care so that the full extent of their injuries would not be immediately made known. Still yet others were taken to the hospital and woke up 24 to 36 hours later with a court date but not under arrest. Police have entered homes and businesses using foul language and disrespecting families and business owners because they felt it was convenient to do so. These actions are the actions of criminals. These actions instill fear in the hearts of citizens. These actions must cease.

This is why we are here today. To shed light on wrong and to demand that this city and its police department come to accountability for its actions.

We hold Police Chief Settingsgaard responsible for the actions of his officers in the field. Even though his officers have voted no confidence in him, he proudly states that he is the chief policy maker for this department. We only wish to affirm that if his policies results in actions such as these that have been alleged by this representative group of citizens, both it and he must be changed.

We also hold Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis accountable for his inaction over the same period of time since I spoke with him regarding allegations and incidents. We hold the Peoria County States Attorney’s Office accountable for not hearing the multiple complaints or responding to my personal calls and faxes to his office to intervene. In fact all attempts to engage his office went UNANSWERED. We blame the Peoria legal community, for their silence and refusal to take cases because of who the actions would be against.

Yes there is a fundamental problem and that problem must be fixed. As citizens of the community we demand that it be fixed. We demand that the civil rights of individuals who have dealing with the police for whatever reason and under whatever circumstance be protected.

Today we will submit written and verbal complaints through the city attorney’s office. We hope that our actions will spark a new day in Peoria where all of its citizens will feel that the police are truly a partner with the citizens of the community and not a threat to the safety of any of our loved ones.

Thank you.

Unemployment rates for blacks with degrees skyrocket

2009-04-23T11:31:00.000-07:00

Fifteen months into a deep recession, college-educated white workers still had a relatively low unemployment rate of 3.8% in March of this year. The same could not be said for African Americans with four-year degrees. The March 2009 unemployment rate for college-educated blacks was 7.2%-almost twice as high as the white rate-and up 4.5 percentage points from March 2007, before the start of the current recession (see chart). Hispanics and Asian Americans with college degrees were in between, both with March 2009 unemployment rates of 5%.

Some argue that the problem of joblessness among African Americans can be solved by education alone, but at every education level the unemployment rate for blacks exceeds that of whites. The disparities among the college-educated and other evidence strongly suggest that even if the black educational attainment distribution was exactly the same as the white distribution, blacks would still have a higher unemployment rate than whites. Without a renewed commitment to anti-discrimination in employment and job creation in black communities, high rates of black joblessness will likely persist.

From Dollars & Sense blog.

Baby goes to church

2009-04-23T09:23:00.000-07:00

Could you be a bit more... terrific

2009-04-23T09:22:00.000-07:00

Scream!!!!

2009-04-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

I look at Peoria Chronicle and I refuse to be pulled into the never ending discussions about all that is wrong with District 150 - every little intricacy - from self proclaimed experts. From an outsider looking in, it looks like people are arguing about it just because they can.

Our children deserve better schools - it is past time. Oh yeah, the nostalgia from Woodruff is so special. Really? I went to Woodruff, all of my siblings went to Woodruff, some of our off spring attend Woodruff - not one of us could not care any less if they were to make it a birth - 12 (or whatever) community center. Please just do it already and get it over with.

Hopefully the Board will not back down this time because some hell raisers are standing outside protesting schools, when they need to be protesting down in front of City Hall. These people about pee their pants every time they talk about making schools better South of War Memorial. What is this argument about really? That same damn 800 lb gorilla - that's what. Let me break it down for you:

Nobody is complaining about the $20 million Charter School that will be opening in 2010; nobody is complaining about all the money that goes to Washington Gifted School; and nobody is complaining about construction projects happening in the schools North of War Memorial. Oh, nobody said anything about that? Well here is what District 150 already has under way North of War Memorial:

From 150.org:

While not new site construction, a $12.5 million dollar project has been approved for the Richwoods attendance area. Bonds have been issued for the projects and contracts will soon, if not already, be awarded for all four locations. Northmoor-Edison Primary, Kellar Primary, Lindbergh Middle and Richwoods High will all get additions and renovations to their current properties.

• Richwoods High School plans include: interior and exterior window replacement; update security system; connecting hallway; three classroom addition. Funding for the project comes from the PBC at $4,900,000.

• Lindbergh Middle School plans include: a three classroom addition with one media center; new restrooms. Funding for the project comes from the PBC at $1,930,000.

• Northmoor Edison Primary School plans include: new cafeteria / multi-purpose room; new secure main entry; faculty development area. Funding for the project comes from the PBC at $2,110,000.

• Kellar Primary School plans include: a four classroom addition; remodel of existing area to conference room and open office space. Funding for the project comes from the PBC at $2,130,000.

What's really rich is how these people have already floated using the 800 lb gorilla hoping it will help them keep inner city kids in substandard schools (yes, one of the leaders have already mentioned the race card). I guess they figure since the NAACP or nobody else is using it - why not?

But you know what - I want to go on record - I'm holding a race card too. I say inner city kids deserve better schools and if the schools they are currently in are so bad - build them new. I say inner city parents who have elected to live in Peoria (myself and many others) and are concerned about a better education, deserve to have a better choice.

Personally, I am looking forward to the MST Charter School, I happen to have an exceptional child who would benefit from that type of environment. Anybody who would be opposed to better schools South of War Memorial, I have to look at you sideways and question what is your true motivation? What you want puts my child and my neighborhood at a distinct disadvantage. Do you even care?

Desegregation in Peoria Schools

2009-04-12T20:24:00.000-07:00

In 1966 when initial planning for desegregation began, minority students were concentrated in 9 of Peoria's 39 schools. Twenty of the city's schools had white enrollments of more than 98 percent, indicating the most minimal percentage of minority students in more than half the city's schools. Four schools were totally white.

The Board fully realized that the Peoria Public Schools must be integrated promptly to insure quality education and equality of educational opportunities for all children.

The plan was quickly put into effect to coincide with the fall 1968 opening of Peoria’s schools. A few incidents of limited physical violence occurred but the Peoria Journal Star, in its account of the desegregation process noted, "There were no major incidents. Busing, at least on a limited basis and as long as it did not involve advantaged whites, seemed to work well in Peoria.

In some respects, the Peoria schools during the 1970s began to look more segregated than even prior to the initiation of desegregation. In 1966 Peoria's minority students were concentrated in nine schools; eight of these schools failed to meet State guidelines because they had an overpopulation of minority students. By the 1975-76 school year, the district had a total of nine schools which had an overpopulation of minority students by State standards.

A central aspect of the "Quality/Equality" plan was the initiation of the middle-school concept and a new building program to improve physical facilities. The building program was tied, in many ways, to local school referenda. However, the "Quality/Equality" plan stated that "the plan...will be implemented regardless of whether new buildings are built and regardless of the outcome of any bond referendum". Nevertheless, school bond referenda have failed on a number of occasions and the middle-school concept has not gone forward.

On January 8, 1976, the Illinois Office of Education announced that Peoria District 150 was not in compliance with State desegregation guidelines. The State found 20 Peoria schools not in compliance and ordered the district to submit detailed desegregation plans. The order noted that failure to do so could result in a loss of funding and further legal action by the State. A new plan from the district has now been received by the State and is currently under review.

Superintendent Harry Whitaker agreed that Peoria's schools should be within the State guidelines, but has also argued that the district should not be made to bus white students to predominantly black schools to achieve this end:

"We believe in integration. There's no question about that," Mr. Whitaker stated, "but we don't believe in integration to the point that we have to move youngsters back and forth. We think that that is going to be detrimental....My goal is not to re-segregate District 150, but, hopefully, to maintain the community as it is now."

Over the years, the city's public housing population has grown increasingly black. Thus, for instance, school desegregation on Peoria’s far south side must now be entirely reprogrammed in light of the high concentration of black families who have moved into the once predominantly white, blue-collar Harrison Homes project, which is located in the area. The middle-school concept (which has not been implemented in Peoria) still offers the potential, through careful planning, for serving as a means of drawing city residents into multiracial living situations as an outgrowth of the involvement and interest of parents in the middle schools. The city's central urban renewal area offers one possible site for new middle-school construction and residential development.

Following its 1976 review of the desegregation status of Peoria's schools, the Illinois Office of Education assigned a consultant to review the school district's desegregation plan. The consultant recommended the closing of the five remaining predominantly black inner-city schools and the busing of students from these schools to largely white schools.

These recommendations were forwarded to the Peoria school district for its consideration and response. The district held public meetings on the proposed closing and found that the community response was overwhelming negative. On January 3, 1977, the school board unanimously rejected the State's recommendations. The State's consultant observed that school closings were but one of many suggested approaches to the problems of desegregating Peoria's schools. On April 14, 1977, the State board of education voted to waive partially its desegregation guidelines for Peoria, and granted the school district an additional 1 year to bring the remaining schools into compliance.

Read the entire report here.

Hiring a New Superintendent - Some Appropriate Roles

2009-04-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

There are appropriate roles for citizens and news media in the hiring of a new school district superintendent. There also are some inappropriate roles that can make selection of a new superintendent a school board nightmare.

The problems arise when: interest groups publicly demand to interview candidates for the job and to express their opinions as to who should be hired, and/or the identities of candidates are leaked to the news media.

The first problem is sure to discourage serious candidates and likely to result in a mismatch between the superintendent and the school board. (If the board expects the new superintendent to be accountable to the board, then the board must do the hiring, not the teachers union, business community or local television station.)

The second problem creates embarrassment for candidates who had been getting along fine with their current employers and is likely to result in withdrawals, not to mention a reduced pool of candidates the next time that school board goes looking for a superintendent.

To prevent such situations from arising, a school board that is about to launch a superintendent search must clearly establish its role as the employer. School boards are elected to represent the public, and one of their most important jobs is to employ a superintendent. Interviewing finalists and selecting the one who best meets the school district's needs is the job of the school board.

Activities that are appropriate to an election have no place in the selection of an educational leader for the school district.

It is not appropriate, for example, for a school board to present candidates to the public and make a selection on the basis of a popularity poll. News media representatives who advocate public forums evaluating candidates confuse election campaigns with the employment process.

By the same token, news media representatives who treat candidates for the superintendency like public celebrities create a reputation for their school districts that discourages successful administrators from becoming candidates.

To accommodate those eager for involvement and preclude unreasonable demands, the school board should establish procedures for ascertaining the views of the community in establishing qualifications and standards for the superintendency. There are many ways to seek these views, including surveys, committees, public hearings, and just generally listening to what people say they would like in a new superintendent. Newspapers and broadcast media can play a key role by encouraging interested people to speak up and publicizing different points of view as to what the district needs.

However, public discussion of what the district needs in a superintendent must come long before the pool of applicants is narrowed down to a few finalists. Identifying desired qualifications and characteristics should be an initial step, for this information plays an important part of the board's advertising to solicit candidates.

During the final stages of the selection process, there probably are key persons in any community that a prospective superintendent might want or need to meet. Matching a superintendent with a community is usually a two-way sales situation, so the community must sell itself to the candidate as well as vice versa. A school board might arrange for two or three finalists to meet key school-community leaders.

A school board might also provide a public explanation of the consequences of inappropriate procedures. A mismatch between the job and the person ultimately hired results when candidates receive a distorted picture of who the employer is. And when news reporters use personal contacts to learn the identities of candidates for the superintendency and publicize their names and their current employers, candidates become leery of applying for the job--including perhaps the very one who would have been best for the district.

Some employing school boards are aware that their superintendents are pursuing other jobs, some are not. School boards usually must promise anonymity to candidates or advise candidates from the outset that anonymity cannot be guaranteed. School boards that cannot guarantee anonymity will receive fewer applications and have fewer candidates from which to choose a new superintendent. A school board that promises anonymity and doesn't deliver it sends an unpleasant message that reaches prospective candidates everywhere.

School boards, community leaders and news media should work together in their appropriate roles in seeking the very best educational leader for their schools.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE -- This document is copyrighted © by the Illinois Association of School Boards. IASB hereby grants to school districts and other Internet users the right to download, print and reproduce this document provided that (a) the Illinois Association of School Boards is noted as publisher and copyright holder of the document and (b) any reproductions of this document are disseminated without charge and not used for any commercial purpose.

Bloggers and the News Ombudsman

2009-03-26T08:07:00.000-07:00

Across the country newspapers are looking at ways to cut costs and are letting go of their newspaper ombudsmen. Why? Because it is a widely held belief that because newspapers now allow bloggers to comment on stories, we no longer need ombudsmen to make sure that a story is not slanted one way or another. However, I am under the impression that the opposite needs to happen. In my opinion, the advent of local blogs and citizen bloggers make it even more necessary for newspapers to hire ombudsmen to protect the integrity of the newspaper and the city as a whole.

A news ombudsman receives and investigates complaints from newspaper readers or listeners or viewers of radio and television stations about accuracy, fairness, balance and good taste in news coverage. He or she recommends appropriate remedies or responses to correct or clarify news reports. News ombudsmen generally function in an advisory capacity only, not as disciplinarians. Some newspapers use titles such as "readers' representative," "readers' advocate," or "public editor." Others have an assistant managing editor or an assistant to a senior editor who act as ombudsman. (from newsombudsmen.org)

If you read pjstar.com, you know that citizen bloggers are expressing negative feelings for fellow citizens, for City initiatives and for the City as a whole. More specifically, if there is a story about minorities committing crimes, the school district, new taxes, or the police, the comments of bloggers can be down right nasty. So nasty, that the City and the Journal Star could come off looking like they condone such hateful comments when they can’t catch them fast enough.

If you were looking to move to Peoria and read the local blogs or the newspaper on line, chances are you would come away with the impression that Peoria is filled with negativity; all political leaders care about is a museum; gangs run the City; and/or the schools are worthless. These conclusions may or may not be true, but outsiders could possibly begin to view Peoria as a city devoid of culture and indifferent to diversity.

Lately the Journal Star has been restricting comments on certain stories. It’s difficult to pin point what story they may or may not allow posting, readers are left to guess why. Sometimes they allow posting on a story that seems like they should have closed. Local bloggers pick up on the story and people go to the local blogs and comment and yes, sometimes in this process, the City and the Journal Star are slammed for closing off comments and not allowing the story to be explored further by citizen bloggers.

Newspapers don’t like it, but local blogs have an impact on what stories city newspapers cover. Community blogs that have high reader interaction often raise issues that the main stream media (i.e., local news stations and newspapers) are not covering. As a result, citizens could be left to question if the news [paper] is fair and balanced in their coverage of certain issues. Closing off all comments on certain stories invites this type of scrutiny.

It’s not just locally that there are concerns about negative bloggers. In Salisbury, Maryland, the mayor has gone on record with her belief that malicious bloggers are endangering the moral of the city.

Citizens - bloggers (negative and otherwise) are challenging newspapers and city leaders like never before. In the current environment, any city and/or newspaper with a citizenship that actively participates in blogging could benefit from the ombudsman. As newspapers struggle to compete with the blogosphere, self-regulation and reputation management will be more important than ever. A person on staff, who the public know is an advocate, is good public relations for a city and a newspaper.

2009-03-23T11:45:00.000-07:00

Coming soon....