15 Students of Vista Del Lago High School Arrested on drug-dealing charges: The principal denies knowing of plain clothes Deputies on her campus. Administration stated drugs are no more a problem (at Vista Del Lago) than at other district schools.

Parents of many fearful students lined up this week to dis-enroll their students from Vista Del Lago High School in Moreno Valley after undercover officers posing as students spent four months there and at another Inland high school gathering evidence that led to Thursday’s (12/09/2011) arrest of 24 teenagers on drug-dealing charges.

Armed with arrest warrants, officers descended on Vista del Lago High School in Moreno Valley and Elsinore High School in Wildomar on Thursday, plucking students from class to arrest them, officials said.

At Vista del Lago, a Riverside County sheriff’s deputy began attending on Aug. 10, the first day of school, court records say. He pretended he was a student while trying to ferret out drug dealing on campus, court records say.

Chief Deputy Boris Robinson confirmed that undercover officers were used in the investigations at both schools but declined to say how many were at each campus. Authorities targeted the schools because the local sheriff’s station captains had received complaints about drugs there, Robinson said.

Other than a similar undercover sting last year at Palm Desert High School, Robinson said he wasn’t aware of other recent undercover drug investigations at Riverside County high schools.

In 2006, the Riverside Police Department conducted a sting in which a youthful-looking officer trained to dress and talk like a teenager enrolled at Ramona High School for a few months in search of students selling drugs. That investigation resulted in the arrest of 13 students, most of whom were caught with small amounts of marijuana. The Los Angeles Police Department pioneered undercover drug busts in high schools decades ago. But the department discontinued its program in 2005 after Los Angeles Unified School District officials noticed an increasing number of students arrested were in special education and that police typically found very small amounts of marijuana. District officials feared the program was failing to catch the serious drug dealers.

Judy White, superintendent of the Moreno Valley Unified School District, said sheriff’s officials approached her about doing an undercover operation, but she declined to say whether she knew which school was targeted. She said Vista del Lago’s principal was not aware of the investigation and that drugs are no more a problem there than at other district schools.

While she initially had concerns about an undercover drug investigation in the schools, such as the risk of entrapment, White said sheriff’s officials reassured her that the probe would be carefully planned and executed and would make the schools safer. The purpose, she said, “is to send a strong message to the youth that they need to think about decisions they are making.” She said that, on Thursday, the officers were on campus for fewer than 15 minutes and the arrests were made without incident.

Lake Elsinore Unified School District Superintendent Frank Passarella, through a spokesman, said he and one other administrator were aware of the investigation, but he declined to discuss potential safety or fairness issues with undercover drug busts in schools. Spokesman Mark Dennis said the superintendent did not want to second-guess the police. Both districts said the busts underscore their “zero-tolerance” policies toward drugs on campus.

“It is important that we show we’re proactive,” Dennis said. The teens charged in the sting range from 15 to 19 years old, Riverside County district attorney’s office spokesman John Hall said. The only adult arrested, former Vista del Lago student Cory Granthum Brown, is charged with two counts of selling marijuana, Hall said.

According to an investigator’s statement in support of an arrest warrant, an undercover deputy began talking with Brown about marijuana in mid-October and bought from Brown on campus twice that month, court records say. The second buy was a $20 transaction, the investigator wrote.

Robinson said Brown was not at the school Thursday but turned himself in later in the day. He was being held at the Southwest Detention Center in French Valley and is scheduled to appear in court Monday, jail records show. Family members did not respond Friday to requests for comment.

Among the 23 minors arrested, 20 were charged with marijuana sales, Hall said. A 17-year-old girl at Elsinore High School was charged with selling cocaine. Three boys at Vista del Lago were charged with selling cocaine, ecstasy or both, Hall said. Sheriff’s officials said deputies seized marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, ecstasy and prescription drugs during the investigation. Robinson would not disclose the amounts of drugs seized because he said the investigation is continuing.

Not mentioned was the reports that a fully functioning “drug trafficking ring” suspected of operating from inside the Moreno Valley campus.

MVGordie.com: The First to Break the Story about School Board Trustee Mike Rios and his horrendous Secret. AND STILL THE ONLY SOURCE TO PUT IT ALL OUT FOR THE BENEFIT OF YOU THE PARENTS.


The ONLY honest investigative News of Moreno Valley, California. It is with Great Pride that I Occasionally Plagerize His Hard Work.

A Man I am Proud to Call Friend (When no one else is around...) Gordie of MVGORDIE.COM.
Thanks,
I,Praetorian

When Moreno Valley Mayor Richard Stewart Is Asked To Tell The Truth, His Response Is Silence.

 •December 14, 2011 • Leave a Comment

Mayor Stewart had told the public that it is the responsibility of the City Staff and City Council to clarify any miss information made by the public during the publics portion of speaking during City Council meetings, however that doesn’t seem to be the case when that misinformation or outright lies are the making of the Council or the City Staff themselves.

mvgordie.com had made an email request to seek answers in a truthful nature from Mayor Richard Stewart in regards to public comments and statements made on the record during numerous city council meetings, however no response to the questions asked has been made by the Mayor.

Well I guess if you can’t answer truthfully, or the truth will go to prove that prior statements were in fact incorrect and or misleading, the best answer would be no answer at all.

Although the questions asked were problematic for the City, the public has a right to know the answers, after all the questions were $75 million questions.

Here are the questions which were asked:

Dear Mayor, 

With your last council statements of the need for City Staff and Council to keep the public informed of the truth, by correcting misstatements of facts etc. made by members of the public, maybe you could clarify a few points of interest to me as to some of the falsehoods, misleading statements and so on made by you and members of the City Staff.

Here are just a few which need addressing: 

1.       With the Mayor and City Manager publicly announcing a joint venture between The City of Moreno Valley and Highland Fairview for a mixed use medical complex along Nason Street, can you please tell the public where they can obtain a copy of this publicly announced agreement which we are moving forward through the spending of $75 million in roadway improvements? 

2.       It seems to have slipped my mind but the public hearing on this joint public private project was held when? 

3.       Why is it that the term medical corridor is being misused as to what actions were taken by the City Council on September 26^th, 2006. When that action only limited development in that area to developments which would be compatible with existing medical facilities in the area, and not that development in that area was to be for medical use only? 

4.       Why is it that the Mayor continues to rain down praise upon the City Manager for actions which were not of his making, but were directly out of the playbook of Highland Fairview, and merely appeased their (Highland Fairview’s) desires? Such as designating the eastern edge of Moreno Valley as Industrial (Distribution and Warehousing) Zone, which was the desire of Highland Fairview, and was plainly stated out within their EIR for the Highland Fairview Corporate Park Project, in a letter submitted on their behalf by CB Richard Ellis, as well as converting the use of a portion of the Aqua Bella Specific Plan, to a mixed use medical complex, as stated by Iddo Benzeevi in a letter to the City of Moreno Valley in 2010 regarding Highland Fairview’s desire to keep its development agreement for Aqua Bella active during its annual review. 

5.       Why would the City enter into an agreement to the tune of 75 million dollars with Highland Fairview, when it wasn’t able to finance its Corporate Park Project, and needed to create several joint venture corporation with Skechers, in order for Skechers to seek the funding for the projects construction, with Highland Fairview only supplying the land for which the project sits? 

6.       Has the City even taken the time to see how and whom is paying off the sub-contractors for the Highland Fairview Corporate Park Project, to see if Highland Fairview is even a financially solvent company?

Now did those questions seem to hard to address?

Here is a copy of the exact email sent:Click Image to Enlarge

What was interesting however was how the all references to the “Medical Complex” was avoided until the City Manager mentioned it, Mayor Stewart only referred to it a “The Thing.”






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This is Just One Example of Why We 

Must Always Stand Up For Those Who Can Not Stand For Themselves! Even If It Means Risking Our Jobs. "a man of valor can die only one death, a coward will die a thousand!" 


A COWARD MAKES OR SAVES BOTH AGENCIES A LOT OF MONEY! This is why the CTA can never be truly effective in helping us to achieve the things we want and need.  Almost no teacher or educator will stand on their hind legs when confronted with the most spurious of lies which is the new tactic of choice in California public schools HR Departments and too many times the CTA local is all too happy to advise them to run thereby saving the local thousands on CTA attorneys fees  and ingratiating them with administration to grease the all pervasive contract negotiations. Your district's HR department or insurance carrier has an actuarial table that shows the profitability of lieing versus taking an employee through the department of educations prescribed due process for 2011. If their is any potential for litigation against the district, you can bet that the truth is their loss. So, they bet you,ll run if faced with dismissal over a complete lie made up about you the employee.

 I, Praetorian

HARRISBURG, Pa.  According to the AP.,  A Penn State assistant football coach testified Friday that he believes he saw former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky molesting a boy and that he fully conveyed what he had seen to two Penn State administrators.

Mike McQueary, speaking for the first time in public about the 2002 encounter in a Penn State locker room, said he believes that Sandusky was attacking the child with his hands around the boy’s waist but said he wasn’t 100 percent sure it was intercourse.

McQueary took the stand Friday morning in a Pennsylvania courtroom during a preliminary hearing for Tim Curley and Gary Schultz, two university officials who are accused of lying to a grand jury about what McQueary told them. The hearing was expected to last most of the day.

Jerry Sandusky

McQueary’s story is central to the case against Curley and Schultz. They testified to the grand jury that McQueary never relayed the seriousness of what he saw. The officials, and Penn State coach Joe Paterno, have been criticized for never telling police about the 2002 allegation. Prosecutors say Sandusky continued to abuse boys for six more years.

McQueary said he had stopped by a campus football locker room to drop off a pair of sneakers in the spring of 2002 when he happened upon Sandusky and the boy in a shower.

He said Sandusky was behind the boy he estimated to be 10 or 12 years old, with his hands wrapped around the boy’s waist. He said the boy was facing a wall, with his hands on it.

McQueary said he has never described what he saw as anal rape or anal intercourse and couldn’t see Sandusky’s genitals, but that “it was very clear that it looked like there was intercourse going on.”

Under cross examination by an attorney for Curley, McQueary reiterated that he had not seen Sandusky penetrating or fondling the boy but was nearly certain he knew an assault happened in part because the two were standing so close and Sandusky’s arms were wrapped around the youth.

He said he peeked into the shower several times and that the last time he looked in, Sandusky and the boy had separated. He said he didn’t say anything, but “I know they saw me. They looked directly in my eye, both of them.”

McQueary said he reported what he saw to Paterno but never went to police.

He said he did not give Paterno explicit details of what he believed he’d seen, saying he wouldn’t have used terms like sodomy or anal intercourse out of respect for the longtime coach.

He said Paterno told him he’d “done the right thing” by reporting what he saw. The head coach appeared shocked and saddened and slumped back in his chair, McQueary said.

Paterno told McQueary he would talk to others about what he’d reported.

Nine or 10 days later, McQueary said he met with Curley and Shultz and told them he’d seen Sandusky and a boy, both naked, in the shower after hearing skin on skin slapping sounds.

“I told them that I saw Jerry in the showers with a young boy and that what I had seen was extremely sexual and over the lines and it was wrong,” McQueary said. “I would have described that it was extremely sexual and I thought that some kind of intercourse was going on.”

McQueary said he was left with the impression both men took his report seriously. When asked why he didn’t go to police, he referenced Shultz’s position as a vice president at the university who had overseen the campus police

“I thought I was talking to the head of the police, to be frank with you,” he said. “In my mind it was like speaking to a (district attorney). It was someone who police reported to and would know what to do with it.”

Under cross-examination, McQueary said he considered what he saw a crime but didn’t call police because “it was delicate in nature.”

“I tried to use my best judgment,” he said. “I was sure the act was over.” He said he never tried to find the boy.

Curley and Schultz are charged with lying to a grand jury and failing to properly report what McQueary allegedly told them.

Their lawyers say the men are innocent and contest McQueary’s statements.

Later, Thomas Harmon, the former chief of the Penn State police department, said Schultz didn’t tell him about the shower allegation.

District Judge William C. Wenner was hearing testimony Friday to help him decide whether state prosecutors have enough evidence against the pair to send their cases to trial.

Sandusky says he is innocent of more than 50 charges stemming from what authorities say were sexual assaults over 12 years on 10 boys in his home, on Penn State property and elsewhere. The scandal has provoked strong criticism that Penn State officials didn’t do enough to stop Sandusky, and prompted the departures of Hall of Fame football coach Joe Paterno and the school’s longtime president, Graham Spanier.

Curley, 57, Penn State’s athletic director, was placed on leave by the university after his arrest. Schultz, 62, returned to retirement after spending about four decades at the school, most recently as senior vice president for business and finance, and treasurer.  

In Finland, etc.


Once in the profession, teachers have a lot of autonomy over their classroom. A national curriculum set by the local government—with input from the national teachers union—explains what should be learned but not how to teach it. Teachers have control over that part.

"In Finland it's very common for us to write our own textbooks or choose the methods and curriculum or textbooks we want to buy," said Sepoo Nyyssönen, a philosophy teacher at Sibelius High School, an arts-based school in Helsinki.

"I think that's why I feel that teaching is good—you are like the king or queen of your own classroom," Nyyssönen said.

Curriculum

In the 1970s and '80s, Finland sought to eliminate a tracking system that divided students after fourth grade, at age 10. Children who seemed college-bound were offered a more rigorous curriculum, while others were ushered to less academic classes. The Finns instead implemented a comprehensive nine-year system of schooling that goes from age 7 to 16. At that point, students can decide for themselves if they want to go to the college-prep lukio to complete upper secondary school, or if they want to spend the next three years in the vocational high schools, where they can start to learn a trade.

Students can switch between the high school options, however, and choosing the vocational track does not preclude a student from getting into a university.

Recently, there's been more discussion in Wisconsin of breathing new life into vocational training options for high school students, and acknowledging that not all students need or want to pursue an expensive four-year bachelor's degree.

A bill batted around in Madison this legislative session called for more flexibility in substituting vocational classes for certain academic high school credits.

Local advocates of vocational education, such as Tim Sullivan, the former CEO of Bucyrus International Inc., have said that Wisconsin manufacturers have jobs to fill, but can't find qualified local graduates.

Play, Social Development

Just about everyone believes in the importance of getting children off to a good start in life from birth, but the Finnish government offers resources to make that happen. Taxes are high in Finland as a result: Income taxes are assessed on a progressive scale depending on income and range from 6.5% to 30%. Municipal taxes can range from 16% to 21% of a payer's income.

The trade-off: Parents can take up to about 17 weeks of paid maternity leave, and up to three years of unpaid leave if they wish to care for their children at home in the first years of their child's life.

There's a tradition of women working in Finland, encouraged by the fact that the government pays for day care from infancy to kindergarten. If parents decide to not enroll their child in day care, they receive an additional monthly child home-care allowance.

The government grants parents an allotment of child support money each month until the child turns 18, because it believes that raising children shouldn't be an undue financial burden for families.

Real academic learning doesn't take place until compulsory schooling starts in first grade. And even then, days for students include an emphasis on social skills and development. Being outside is also important—many schools in Finland are flanked by vast playgrounds and forests that allow children to spread out and play before, during and after school.

"If children don't have a good home background, we think they need sports and arts and other activities to help them feel good about themselves," said Irmeli Halinen, head of curriculum development of general education for the Finnish National Board of Education.

"If a child feels good, he learns better," she said.

Halinen said it's not just the education system in Finland, it's the whole support system that makes it happen.

"During the '72 through '77 reforms, there were parents who wanted their kids to have a better education," she said. "It was the time after the wars with Russia, and we were building and investing in technology and industry. We needed people to have a good education and knowledge."

The system is not perfect. Parents still complain about less-than-stellar teachers. School leadership still matters. High-flying students might get neglected in a system set up to improve the bottom and the middle.

But if steady overall improvement is the intent, the country is accomplishing it.

"It doesn't matter where you live here," Nordberg said. "You're going to get a good education."

Copyright (c) 2011, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

WEB ONLY

RELATED STORIES

• “U.S. Reforms Out of Sync With High-Performing Nations, Report Finds,” May 27, 2011.
• “U.S. Found to Recruit Fewer Teachers From Top Ranks,” October 15,      2010.
• “Poverty’s Effect on U.S. Scores Greater Than for Other Nations,” December 12, 2007.
• “Finnish Students Are at the Top of the World Class,” March 16, 2005.

reading, math and science, according to a respected international exam. The country has one of the narrowest gaps in achievement between its highest and lowest-performing schools, and on average spends less per pupil than the United States.

The country's education system has come to be regarded as one of the highest-performing in the world, and a growing number of foreigners are trying to figure out if and how they can emulate it.

Though its students always had good literacy skills, Finland used to be mediocre on other international measures, which prompted it to undertake a series of education reforms in the 1970s and 1980s. Those efforts reshaped teacher training by raising the bar to become an educator, and standardized the curriculum from elementary through middle school.

"We looked at what qualities we thought our kids needed to have to compete in the international world market, and then we made the changes to get that," said Olli Määttä, principal of the upper secondary school at the Normal Lyceum of Helsinki. Lyceum means high school in English, though the building serves grades seven through 12.

"We developed a system in what some call the fourth way, or the Finnish way," Määttä added.

Wisconsin is finding its own way through major reforms. It's trying to reshape teaching and learning by developing new teacher evaluation systems, a new school accountability system, more useful professional development and better outcomes for kids, all with fewer dollars than in previous years.

Wisconsin's government and demographics differ from Finland in some important respects, but there are still lessons to be learned from the steps this northern European nation has taken to better serve all students and educators, including:

• Improving teacher recruitment and training at colleges of education.

• Offering a high-quality curriculum with pathways to high-quality vocational training at younger grades.

• Emphasizing play and the arts in education.

In the current political environment, it's easy to fixate on the most tenuous aspects of Wisconsin's educational landscape: reduced budgets, teachers who feel like they're under attack, layoffs, larger class sizes, recall efforts.

But outside Wisconsin, there's growing evidence that American education as a whole has stagnated. Recent studies have shown the educational attainment of U.S. students has remained about the same while other countries' students have improved.

Several recent studies have sought to slice international achievement data in new ways. Adjusting for the differences in state, national and international tests, one report shows 56% of Finland's students perform at or above a level considered to be proficient in math, compared with 36% of the students in Wisconsin and 32% of U.S. students on average.

Finland has attracted attention largely because of its students' results on a respected exam known as the Programme for International Student Assessment. Also known as PISA, the test is given to a representative sample of 15-year-olds in participating developed countries every three years. In 2009, Finland's students scored third in reading, sixth in math and second in science out of 65 countries that participated in the exam.

American students scored 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math.

But looking at the Finnish system comes with caveats—some characteristics of the country head in the opposite direction from the way things are moving in American education.

For example, Finnish education and government leaders downplay standardized testing. They place more value on developing creativity and independent thought, and don't believe in judging schools by test scores. The country's internal testing of students is so light that the PISA scores came as a surprise for most; many teachers say they knew their students were doing well, just not that well.

Finland has a relatively homogenous population; the country is predominantly white and Lutheran. The U.S. has a diverse population of people from different cultures, with different values and priorities, especially when it comes to education.

Strong believers in equality, the Finns have long supported a system where wealth is distributed more evenly, making it nearly impossible to live in abject poverty. The income ladder ranges more greatly in the U.S., with intense wealth at the top and intense poverty at the bottom.

Some schools in Finland do serve a predominantly low-income population, and the pace of instruction at those schools is indeed slower than at the schools in middle-income areas. But the low-income schools are supported in other ways to try to give all students the tools needed to reach a basic level of education by the end of ninth grade.

Teacher Training

Finland has been praised for the way in which it attracts, and subsequently develops, future teachers.

Education at the university level is funded by the government, but the openings are limited, which creates competition. Teacher-studies programs set a particularly high bar for applicants: At the University of Helsinki, a mere 6.7% of those who applied to be primary school teachers were admitted this year to the education school.

That's a lower acceptance rate than the 10% of applicants admitted to the University of Helsinki's schools of law and medicine. By comparison, the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee accepted 96% of undergraduate students who applied for the 2011 year, and 88% of post-baccalaureate applicants.

Gail Schneider, associate dean of academic affairs at UWM's education school, said there's more going on behind the numbers.

"While our admission numbers may appear relatively high compared to Finland," she said, "considerable levels of self-determination and advising occurs prior to the application process to ensure that applicants hold high promise of becoming committed, exemplary teachers."

At Marquette University, the College of Education accepts only freshman students who rank in the top third of their high school class, Dean Bill Henk said. The college's three-year average shows an acceptance rate of 63%.

Henk is a proponent of making it more difficult to become a teacher. But he worries about whether the current teaching climate in Wisconsin would attract any of the best and brightest to the profession.

Being a teacher in Finland, by contrast, comes with a status of prestige—though not necessarily high pay. Adjusting for currency conversions, teachers in Finland make less in gross salary and pay more in taxes than the average American teacher.

Part of what raises the status of the profession is the rigorous training they have to undergo. Teachers who plan to teach seventh through 12th grade in a specific area, such as math or history or English, need a master's degree in that subject. Classroom teachers—the educators in the younger grades—need a master's degree in a general education field.

"Every teacher has to be a master of something," Nordberg said one afternoon in September in his office after class at the Normal Lyceum of Helsinki.

Nordberg got his master's degree in English. His thesis focused on the way English core modals (can, must, may, etc.) are portrayed in Finnish upper secondary school textbooks. He also had to do a thesis for his bachelor's degree. And another specifically for teacher training.

"It was agony," he recalls of his master's thesis. "But I did it."

Like other applicants to teacher-studies programs, Nordberg had to have high academic marks, pass an entrance exam and pass an in-person interview before he was accepted to the program.STEAL THIS BLOG PLEASE! I, Praetorian

San Bernardino City Unified School District could lose an estimated $6.5 million in state funding over the next four academic years and faces losing up to 40 teaching positions because of avoidable errors made at four low-performing schools.

Edited by I,Praetorian

In one case, Curtis Middle School failed to meet required teacher-to-student ratios. Three elementary schools, Bradley, Mount Vernon and Wilson, each had one teacher who did not meet teaching qualifications.

“That’s an awful lot of money to lose for something that shouldn’t have happened,” said school board trustee Bobbie Perong, who was elected to the board last month. She was among three new trustees and an incumbent who were sworn in at Tuesday’s meeting.

The school district learned of the deficiencies last month following a review by the San Bernardino County Department of Education. A fifth school, Arrowhead Elementary School, could lose about $650,000 because it didn’t meet Academic Performance Index targets.

The state superintendent of public instruction is expected to decide next month whether the schools will lose the money, said Interim Superintendent Yolanda Ortega during Tuesday’s board meeting. If the superintendent cuts the money, which is awarded as a result of the state’s Quality Education Investment Act, the district has said it will file a waiver with the California Board of Education.

So far, the state Board of Education has granted waivers to about a dozen school districts with similar problems, officials said.

“If we lose, that’s 40 teaching positions,” said trustee Barbara Flores, adding that 17 positions would come from Curtis. “That’s one of our neediest areas. We can’t afford to lose those teachers.”

Ortega told school board trustees that processes have been implemented to comply with the program, ensure mistakes are avoided and mitigate the possibility of losing money. District officials now monitor schools daily to determine whether they meet class size requirements, said assistant superintendent Eliseo Davalos.

No one could explain how the oversights happened. Staff somehow dropped the ball, the board was told.

Trustee Danny Tillman noted that had the program been sufficiently monitored, the problems, which were discovered in August, could have been avoided.

“The tragedy here is that we submitted documentation to the county showing that we didn’t meet requirements,” Tillman said. “If we had known, we could have prevented this.”

The act provides $2.5 billion over seven years to nearly 500 California schools with low API scores. The money comes from a settlement between former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Teachers Association, which sued Schwarzenegger after he failed to fulfill a promise to repay billions of dollars owed to schools.

Schools must maintain class ratios and have one counselor for every 300 students. The money is to be used to hire qualified and experienced teachers, offer professional development and comply with federal laws regarding maintenance of clean schools and adequate books. Schools in compliance could receive funding until 2014-15.

Twenty-one San Bernardino City schools receive QEIA money.