Almost a Quarter of Californians Now Live in Poverty - California Now hasHhighest Poverty Rate in the U.S., According to the Latest Census Report.

California has highest poverty rate in the U.S., new Census Bureau report reveals

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

 The U.S. poverty rate is higher than previously thought.

The US Census Bureau is testing a new way to measure poverty – and the new measurement indicates that California has the highest poverty rate in the nation.

Almost a quarter of Californians now live in poverty, according to the new Supplemental Poverty Measure, released Wednesday. Under the new measure, California's poverty rate increases from 16.3 percent to 23.5 percent of the population. Not only is that the highest in the nation, but it represents the largest jump from the official rate. The increase is driven in part by California's high cost of living.

The numbers released by the Census Bureau are part of the newly developed measure, which was devised a year ago. It provides a fuller picture of poverty that the government believes can be used to assess safety-net programs by factoring in living expenses and taxpayer-provided benefits that the official formula leaves out. It looks at broader data, including housing costs, child care and medical expenses. It also adjusts for income earned from federal assistance, such as school lunch subsidies and the earned income tax credit.

The Census Bureau is testing the supplemental measure as a replacement for the current system, which hasn't changed since the early 1960s.

Nationally the rate increased from 15 percent to 15.8 percent under the new measure. Overall, the ranks of America's poor edged up last year to a high of 49.7 million, the Associated Press reported.

Based on the revised formula, the number of poor people exceeded the 49 million who were living below the poverty line in 2010.
That came as more people in the slowly improving economy picked up low-wage jobs last year but still struggled to pay living expenses. The revised poverty rate of 16.1 percent also is higher than the record 46.2 million, or 15 percent, that the government's official estimate reported in September.
You can view the full report below.
U.S. Census Bureau Supplemental Poverty Measure

Obey or Quit-The Bullying Mentality In Education

Obey or Quit-The Bullying In Education originally written and published by dianerav http://dianeravitch.net/2013/01/12/obey-or-quit/ A teacher sent me this post, which has generated lots of discussion on Facebook. She said that the discussion on this blog shows a widespread bullying of teachers by administrators, who are in turn being bullied to produce "results." Everyone is under pressure to meet demands created by politicians, economists, and statisticians who never spent a day in a school classroom after their high school graduation. Here goes: "Paul's Story" Yesterday I received an emergency phone call from an experienced teacher in a Bronx school who received his first ever "U" on an observation report. Emotionally overwrought with fear and anger, it took all I could do to calm him down and get him to figure out how he could resolve this issue and continue to teach and at the same time maintain his principles while having to deal with his principal. She, as authoritarian personality as they come, simply follows NYC DOE/Teachers College orders in FORCING her underlings to follow the lockstep TC workshop model lesson plan. Because he veered and used different materials and interacted differently with his kids than the plan permits he was given a "U". It was quite evident after seeing her 20-page write-up that there was something more here. Her discussions of the 2 pre-observation were filled with evidence of her obviously one-track mind.  Do it this way. I will not accept any of your alternatives. Her most consistent and often repeated criticism is that he did not use everything the Model presenter from TC demonstrated in the 3 short demonstrations he attended. It's as if everything that came before NYCDOE/TC's workshop version of teaching was anathema in this new pious world of top down education. By the way...it is a terrible way to teach if used as the one and only lesson plan every single day.  But that is probably why he received this "U" in the first place. You see, he is not passive. He is not one to just follow orders. He speaks up and out. He argues. He was being punished for that more than his not following the lesson plan. He expressed to me that he was ready to give up, to get out, to simply go to the rubber room, or be made into an ATR (absent teacher reserve). That is the new leadership's plan. Veterans: If you don't follow the rules you have two choices. Retire or be exiled. This way "The Big Talking Heads" of education can take in their fresh young faces and train them to be, as my friend said, Star Wars "Clones" obeying the orders of the dark side.

Labor Recruiting Firm must pay $4.5 million to exploited teachers

Firm must pay $4.5 million to exploited teachers in precedent-setting case

A jury ordered a labor recruiting firm and its owner Monday to pay $4.5 million to 350 Filipino teachers they lured to teach in Louisiana public schools and forced into exploitive contracts after arriving in the United States through the federal guest worker program.

Universal Placement International of Los Angeles and its owner and president, Lourdes Navarro, were ordered to pay the damages following a two-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in Los Angeles.

“The jury sent a clear message that exploitive and abusive business practices involving federal guest workers will not be tolerated,” said SPLC Legal Director Mary Bauer. “This decision puts unscrupulous recruitment agencies on notice that human beings – regardless of citizenship status – cannot be forced into contracts that require them to pay illegal fees.”

The verdict came in a federal class action lawsuit, Nunag Tanedo v. East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, brought on behalf of the teachers in August 2010. The teachers are represented by the SPLC, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the law firm of Covington & Burling LLP.

The teachers began arriving in the United States in 2007 as part of the H-1B guest-worker program administered by the U.S. Department of Labor. H-1B visas permit foreign nationals with special skills to work in the United States for up to six years. Most teachers paid the placement service about $16,000 – several times the average household income in the Philippines – to obtain their jobs.

Nearly all the teachers had to borrow money to pay the recruiting fees. Sounds like a private school loan most young Americans endure to get the chance to be a teacher. The recruiters referred the teachers to private lenders who charged 3 to 5 percent interest per month. Teachers were forced to pay these exorbitant fees because they had already made substantial investments that would not be returned. The recruiters confiscated their passports and visas until they paid.

“This groundbreaking verdict affirms the principle that all teachers working in our public schools must be treated fairly, regardless of what country they may come from,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “The outrageous abuses provide dramatic examples of the extreme exploitation that can occur, even here in the United States, when there is no proper oversight of the professional recruitment industry. The practices involved in this case – labor contracts signed under duress and other arrangements reminiscent of indentured servitude – are things that should have no place in 21st-century America.”

Sorry Randi, but this is the way all teachers will be treated in the near future. Please don't think that this is a foreign labor affliction. OH wait you should know that. At least the AFT and the Southern Poverty Law Center went to bat for these unfortunate folks. This aid wouldn't have occurred if the NEA or the CTA were involved. It would be a fair bet they would have denied the occurrence. Just as they ignore similar treatment to members right now within their own ranks.

In addition to paying upfront fees, the teachers were forced to sign away an additional 10 percent of the salaries they would earn during their second year of teaching. Teachers who resisted signing the contracts were threatened with being sent home and losing the thousands of dollars they had already paid. The court declared those contracts illegal and unenforceable. “We are very pleased with the verdict in this case and proud to have stood by these brave teachers as they finally obtained justice,” said Dennis Auerbach, lead attorney on the case from Covington and Burling. The theft of thousands of dollars in earnings by California school districts from unsuspecting teachers is much the same. Only difference these folks had some top notch legal help. CTA pays its attorneys a BONUS to settle a case, even at the educators expense or ultimate firing. A percentage of the difference from the super secret maximum dollars in Billable Hours. Hell, as a victim, oops client, you can't even look at the billable hours charged. Speaking of QUALITY representation, when I asked my CTA "fraud" about my Weingarten, lybarger rights as well as due process per the the CTC, I was told, "some things have to be given away to grease the wheels and get things moving!" I had no say nor was I asked.

Dismissal Bill Falters in Assembly

A bill that would make it easier to fire teachers and administrators failed to pass the Assembly Education Committee on Wednesday. Sen. Alex Padilla’s controversial SB 1530 will be dead for the session unless he can persuade one more Democrat to reverse positions.
 
The bill had bipartisan support in the Senate, where it passed 33-4, but, in a test of strength by the California Teachers Association, only one Democrat, Education Committee Chairwoman Julia Brownley, and all four Republicans backed it in the crucial committee vote. The other six Democrats either voted against it (Tom Ammiano, San Francisco; Joan Buchanan, San Ramon) or didn’t vote (Betsy Butler, El Segundo; Wilmer Carter, Rialto; Mike Eng, Alhambra; and Das Williams, Santa Barbara).

The bill follows 2 incidents of sexual abuse in Los Angeles Unified and elsewhere, the worst of which involved Mark Berndt, 61, who’s been accused of 23 lewd acts against children at Miramonte Elementary in LAUSD. Padilla, a Democrat from Van Nuys, said SB 1530 responded to complaints from superintendents and school board members that it takes too long and is too expensive to fire teachers facing even the worst of charges. Rather than go through hearings and potential appeals, LAUSD paid off Berndt with $40,000, including legal fees, to drop the appeal of his firing. PUBLIC RELATIONS BABY!

Under current law, dismissal cases against teachers and administrators go before a three-person Commission on Professional Competence, which includes two teachers and an administrative law judge. Its decision can be appealed in Superior Court. (Lets not be having any radical notions of educators being innocent until proven guilty by a jury of your peers. OAH IS A TRIBUNAL OF STATE PAID INCOMPETENCE WITH THEIR OWN SET OF DUBIOUS RULES.)


SB 1530 would have carved out a narrow band of exceptions applying to “egregious or serious” offenses by teachers and administrators involving drugs, sex, and violence against children. In those cases, the competence commission would be replaced by a hearing before an administrative law judge whose (SUPPOSED) advisory (AND BULLSHIT SELF-AGGRANDIZEMENT ) recommendation WHICH WILL BE TREATED THE SAME AS A CONVICTION IN CRIMINAL COURT WHERE THEY HAVE RULES BASED ON THE CONSTITUTION,) would go to the local school board for a laughable final decision. That decision was made when the teacher was first suspended, with or without merit. That OAH circus decision is sometimes appealable in court.

The bill also would have made admissible evidence of misconduct older than four years. Berndt had prior reports of abuse that had been removed from his file,  because a statute of limitations in the teachers contract in LAUSD prohibited their use. (Couldn't these self-serving fools find another example?)

School boards already have final say over dismissal of school employees other than teachers and administrators, so the bill would extend that to efforts to remove “a very creepy teacher” from the classroom,” as Oakley Union Elementary School District Superintendent Richard Rogers put it. “What is more fundamental than locally elected officials responsible for hiring and dismissal?” he asked.

The bill had the support of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and the LAUSD president, Monica Garcia, who described her fellow board members as “seven union-friendly Democrats” who want to “get rid of people who will hurt our children.” Monica must receive campaign support from the bills backers.

But Warren Fletcher, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, countered that “SB 1530 solves nothing, places teachers at unfair risk, and diverts attention from the real accountability issues at LAUSD.” Turning the tables, Fletcher, CTA President Dean Vogel, and others have filed statements with the state Commission on Teacher Credentialing to investigate Superintendent John Deasy’s handling of misconduct allegations in the district.

The argument that current law works resonated with Buchanan, who served two decades on the San Ramon Valley School Board. Calling the bill “intellectually dishonest” because nothing can prevent another Miramonte from happening, she said, “We never had problems dismissing employees.” She acknowledged that the “long, expensive dismissal process” needs to be streamlined, but the bill doesn’t get it right. A teacher at a school in her legislative district was accused of sexual misconduct by a student who got a bad grade. That teacher “deserves due process.”

The two teachers on the Commission on Professional Competence provide professional judgment that’s needed to protect the rights of employees, said Patricia Rucker, a CTA lobbyist who’s also a State Board of Education member. “We do value the right to participate and adjudicate standards for holding teachers accountable,” she said.

Fletcher said that school boards would be subject to parental pressure in emotionally charged cases, and, as a policy body, should not be given judicial power. Assemblyman Ammiano, a former teacher, agreed. “A school board is not the one to make the decision,” he said.

Wrong! They make the decision in closed session. The OAH is just a formality. So as to look good on paper.

Full-scale assault on the educator dismissal laws - David Welch wants to make it even easier to be FIRED FOR PERSONALITY AND NON-EDUCATION BASED REASONING

Full-scale assault on dismissal laws

Nonprofit with big name attorneys files suit

Posted on 5/17/12 • Categorized as

By  John Fensterwald

EDUCATED GUESS
 

 A nonprofit founded by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur has filed a sweeping, high-stakes lawsuit challenging state teacher protection laws. A victory would overturn a tenure, dismissal, and layoff system that critics blame for the hiring and retention of ineffective teachers. A loss in court could produce bad case law, impeding more targeted efforts to achieve some of the same goals.
Students Matter is the creation of David Welch, co-founder of Infinera, a manufacturer of optical telecommunications systems in Sunnyvale. The new nonprofit filed its lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday on behalf of eight students who attend four school districts. A spokesperson for the organization told the Los Angeles Times that Los Angeles philanthropist Eli Broad and a few other individuals are underwriting the lawsuit. They have hired two top-gun attorneys to lead the case: Ted Boutrous, a partner in the Los Angeles law firm of  Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, and Ted Olsen, former solicitor general for President George W. Bush.
The lawsuit asserts that five “outdated statutes” prevent administrators from making employment decisions in students’ interest. The tenure statute forces districts to decide after teachers are on the job only 18 months whether to grant them permanent job status. Once granted tenure, they gain due-process rights that make it expensive and difficult to fire them even if they’re “grossly ineffective.” And then, when an economic downturn comes – witness the last four years – a Last In/First Out (LIFO) requirement leads to layoffs based strictly on seniority, not competency.
The protection of ineffective teachers “creates arbitrary and unjustifiable inequality among students,” especially low-income children in low-performing schools, where less experienced teachers are hired and inept veteran teachers are shunted off, under a familiar “dance of the lemons” since they cant be fired. Because education is a “fundamental interest” under the state Constitution, the five statutes that “dictate this unequal, arbitrary result violate the equal protection provisions of the California Constitution” and should be overturned.  The lawsuit doesn’t prescribe a solution.

Incremental versus global approach

Students Matter’s wholesale assault on the laws contrasts with fact-specific, narrowly tailored lawsuits brought by attorneys for the ACLU of Southern California and Public Counsel Law Center. Two years ago, they won a landmark victory in Reed v. the State of California when Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William Highberger found that the heavy churn of teachers due to LIFO at three Los Angeles Unified middle schools violated students’ right to an equal educational opportunity. That decision led to a settlement between the district, the mayor’s office, and the attorneys that has protected the staffs of 45 low-performing schools from layoffs for the past three years. The strength of that case lay in its ability to tie specific harm to students to the layoff law, which explicitly permits exceptions to seniority layoffs to protect students’ fundamental constitutional rights. LAUSD had not exercised that exception. (United Teachers Los Angeles has appealed; arguments will be heard June 28.)
Earlier this year, the Sacramento-based nonprofit EdVoice brought suit against Los Angeles Unified over the pro forma way it conducts teacher evaluations. But here, the suit isn’t seeking to overturn the Stull Act, which defines how evaluations are done; it says that the district (along with nearly every other one) has chosen to ignore the law’s requirement that student performance be included in teacher evaluations.
 


There’s no shortage of critics of the tenure, dismissal, and layoff laws, which teachers unions have lobbied hard to preserve. California is one of few states that have not lengthened the probationary period for teachers. More than two dozen states have strengthened their evaluation systems in the past several years. California’s dismissal law, with its 10-step process laden with due process, can cost districts hundreds of thousands of dollars to fire a teacher on the grounds of unsatisfactory performance, which is why districts often work around it by paying teachers to retire or pushing them from one school to another.

Persuading a judge that the practical problems and the effects of the laws rise to the level of a constitutional violation is another matter. (In an analogous case, California is among the nation’s bottom spenders on K-12 education; it has tough standards and a challenging student population. But attorneys last year failed to convince a Superior Court judge in Robles-Wong v. California and Campaign for Quality Education v. California that adequate education funding is a constitutional right.)

Tough burden of proof

The tenure law may be particularly challenging. As the suit points out, something like 98 percent of probationary teachers have gotten tenure. The two-year probationary period (actually 18 months, since teachers must be notified by March of their second year) is not long enough. Too often evaluations have been slapdash. But the law itself doesn’t require a district even to cite a cause in denying tenure; the power of dismissal lies with the employer.

Students named in the lawsuit are from Los Angles Unified, Pasadena Unified, Sequoia Union High School District, and Alum Rock Union Elementary District, although only Los Angeles Unified and Alum Rock, which serves 11,000 students in San Jose, are specifically cited as defendants, along with  Gov. Brown, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson, the State Board of Education, the state, and the State Department of Education.

The only specific reference to Alum Rock was in the identification of plaintiff Daniella Martinez, 10, whom the lawsuit says chose to transfer to a public charter school because “of the substantial risk that she would be assigned to a grossly ineffective teacher who impedes her equal access to the opportunity to receive a meaningful education.” The initial filing doesn’t cite evidence of  specific teachers who negatively affected Daniella or the other seven defendants. It refers to studies by such groups as the National Council On Teacher Quality, which issued a blunt assessment of the tenure and dismissal practices of Los Angeles Unified, and on research by Hoover Institution author Eric Hanushek, who concludes that just by dismissing 6 to 10 percent of weakest teachers, students’ academic achievement and long-term earnings as adults would increase significantly.
Los Angeles, as the state’s largest district, may have been named as a defendant because its superintendent, John Deasy, has been outspoken about the need to change labor laws. United Teachers Los Angeles has also  sued over a comprehensive teacher evaluation system that Deasy has put in place.

Deasy would appear to be a friendly witness for the plaintiffs. In a statement, he said he supports lengthening the probationary period, quickening the dismissal process, and reforming the state’s layoff law. “To my dismay, we have lost thousands of our best and hardest-working classroom instructors through the last hired, first fired rule. When forced to reduce our teaching staff through budget cuts, we are compelled through state law and union rules to base these difficult decisions primarily on seniority,” Deasy said.

But when questioned, Deasy will be pressed to acknowledge that it may not be the laws but the implementation that counts. Since joining the district, first as deputy superintendent, then superintendent, Deasy has pushed administrators to apply more scrutiny in granting tenure and more perseverance in dismissing bad teachers. Last year the district terminated 853 teachers. Furthermore, the number of probationary teachers denied tenure rose significantly last year: from 89 in 2009-10 (10 percent of those eligible) to 120 teachers in their first year and 30 in their second year. Other superintendents would agree that well-trained, persistent principals can document the case for teacher dismissa ls, notwithstanding cumbersome, excessively burdensome requirements.

Another School District in State Receivership

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Release: #12-109
December 7, 2012

Contact: Paul Hefner
E-mail: communications@cde.ca.gov
Phone: 916-319-0818

New Interim Administrator Appointed for Inglewood Unified School District

SACRAMENTO—State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson today appointed La Tanya Kirk-Carter to serve as interim Administrator of the Inglewood Unified School District after accepting the resignation of Administrator Kent Taylor.
"This change is in the best interests of taxpayers, students, and employees of the Inglewood Unified School District," Torlakson said. "I'm confident that our work to address the district's troubled finances will proceed without interruption."
Taylor stepped down after the California Department of Education (CDE) learned of financial commitments he had made without the required CDE approval and prior to the completion of a financial review and plan to restore the district to fiscal health.
Kirk-Carter previously served as Assistant Superintendent of Business Services at the district. She will serve in an interim capacity until a new permanent administrator is named.
The state took over the district in September under legislation passed at the request of the district that provided up to $55 million in emergency state loans to help the district meet its financial obligations. The legislation required the State Superintendent of Public Instruction to assume all the legal rights, duties, and powers of the governing board of the district.
Inglewood Unified School District is the ninth school district in California to request an emergency loan, thus triggering the state takeover, since 1990. Since then, local governance has been returned to four of these districts.

Related Content

• State Emergency Loans - Information on emergency loans made to school districts.
• State Takeover of Inglewood Unified - State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Comments on State Takeover of Financially Troubled Inglewood Unified School District.
• Inglewood Administrator Appointed - State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Appoints Inglewood High Alumnus as State Administrator for Inglewood Unified School District.

# # # #

Tom Torlakson — State Superintendent of Public Instruction
Communications Division, Room 5206, 916-319-0818, Fax 916-319-0100

California Department of Education
1430 N Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

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Last Reviewed: Friday, December 07, 2012

CTA REFUSES TO USE BUT A FRACTION OF IT'S ONE-THIRD BILLION DOLLAR annual INCOME TO onerously and relectantly PROTECT AND DEFEND (some not all of) IT'S MEMBERS IN NEED.

Our's is the first era where Teachers in California Have NO Enforced Rights though dozens of laws, statutes, and codes exist to protect our them. This has come to pass due mostly to the ineptitude and corporate style greed of The California Teachers Association, Our "Union." Sometimes calling itself a "Professional Organzation," not a Union. 

CTA REFUSES TO USE BUT A FRACTION OF IT'S ONE-THIRD BILLION DOLLAR annual INCOME TO onerously and relectantly PROTECT AND DEFEND (some not all of) IT'S MEMBERS IN NEED. It seems fitting you should know the salaries of the people who take an average of $75 per month from each educator (CTA states 325,000, down from over 345,000 members.) 75X325,000.00 = $ 24,375,000 PER MONTH, 12mo.X $24,375,000.00 = $292,500,000.00 per year. CTA is the richest state union in the country and the richest of its type in the world. The same CTA that gave itself through your local representatives, no membership votes were cast, an income increase every year that there have been teacher layoffs - the last six years.

I personally couldn't get a qualified CTA attorney to represent me at all. Inspite the local's CTA representative promising me that "it would be no problem." CTA legal refused to allow me an attorney in an administrative hearing regarding my pending dismissal on a set of out and out LIES by Moreno Valley Unified School District's, HR Drag Queen - Henry H. Voro's. CTA legal also refused an explanation or to provide the total each member is allotted for legal defense.
What are they hiding now?

Zero tolerance for intoxicated drivers - except Judge H. James Ahler. The fact he killed a pedestrian on that drive seems to matter even less!

California Administrative Per Se- Facts (Zero tolerance for intoxicated drivers - except Judge H. James Ahler!)

Administrative Per Se (DUI) Background

Prepared by DMV Research and Development Branch

In 1990, California became the 28th state to implement an immediate driver license suspension law for alcohol-impaired drivers, also referred to as an “Administrative Per Se (APS)” or “on-the-spot” license suspension law.  The California APS law requires the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to suspend or revoke the driving privilege of persons who are arrested for driving with a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of .08% or more, or who refuse a chemical test upon arrest.  In January 1994, California implemented a companion driver license suspension law, known as the “zero tolerance law,” which requires DMV to suspend for one year any driver under age 21 with a BAC of .01% or more as measured by a preliminary alcohol screening test, or who refuses or fails to complete the test.  These administrative actions are independent of any criminal penalties imposed in court for conviction of the driving-under-the-influence (DUI) offense.  Upon arrest, or detention (as applicable in the .01% APS law), the driver’s license is immediately confiscated and an order of suspension or revocation served.

For either law, due process is allowed by the issuance of a 30-day temporary license intended to provide the driver with sufficient time to challenge the suspension through DMV administrative review.  (Oh, yeah. Ahler was DMV staff attorney before becoming a quasi-judge) The time allowed to challenge the suspension was reduced from 45 days on July 1, 1993.  As of January 1, 1993, offenders who are dismissed for insufficient evidence or are never charged by the court may request an APS dismissal hearing to consider setting aside the associated APS action.  Under the .08% APS law, when a driver submits to and “fails” a BAC test and has no prior DUI convictions or APS actions (within 7 years prior to September 20, 2005 and within 10 years thereafter), a 4-month license suspension is imposed.  Following 30 days of “hard” suspension, and providing they first demonstrate proof of insurance, show proof of enrollment in an approved alcohol treatment program, and pay all penalty fees, the law provided for such drivers to obtain a 5-month restricted license that allows only driving to and from an alcohol treatment program, and to, from, and during the course of employment.  A 1-year suspension is imposed on drivers having one or more prior DUI convictions or APS actions within 7 years prior to September 20, 2005 and within 10 years thereafter, with no provision for a restricted license. 

Under this law, for offenders refusing a BAC test, a 1-year license suspension is imposed for a first offense, a 2-year revocation is imposed for a second offender refusal, and a 3-year revocation is imposed for a third-or-subsequent offender refusal (within 7 years prior to September 20, 2005 and within 10 years thereafter).  There are no provisions for issuance of a restricted license following a BAC test refusal.

The .01% BAC law requires a 1-year suspension and provides for a hardship restriction only if a BAC test was completed and the driver can demonstrate a critical need to drive.

As of September 20, 2005 commercial drivers arrested in a noncommercial vehicle and having no 
prior DUI convictions or APS actions (within 7 years prior to September 20, 2005 and within 10 years thereafter) are handled no differently than other first offenders and are no longer granted an automatic restriction to drive to, from, and during the course of employment following a 30-day “hard” suspension as they originally were.  (A noncommercial vehicle is one not requiring a commercial driver license, or heavy-vehicle operator’s license, to drive.)