Friday, January 6, 2012

What would YOU do...

IF ONLY YOU KNEW?
Well folks, the "Press Enterprise newspaper" did a perfunctory articule on money missing from student fund coffers at three Moreno Valley Unified schools and how the district's accounting department was soooo contrite.
They are going to fix those schools! Attendance and all! If only those three schools represented the real problems. The fiscal wrong doings at Moreno Valley Unified School District are rampant and well beyond any three schools. So too, it has been alleged that such abuses extend back at least 15 years. However, the problems worsened and became more obvious under former Assistant Superintendent Robert Wallace Crank. Crank, eliminated all positions of fiscal over sight regarding MVUSD'S loosely and randomly regulated student fundraising. There has not been any meaning full systematic structure for handling and accountability in that 15 year span . No training of state aligned methods or manuals, bookkeeping software has been mysteriously been wiped out completely (with no server level back up to be found), on ASB account’s computers. Amazingly, on at least three ocassions; just ahead of some official inquiry by an outside agency or the treat thereof.
I do not however, think of the new Superintendent Dr. White as complicit. I believe though she has been kept uninformed by individuals with vested interest in keeping these things hidden. In any case, most of the personnel who knew the truth have left the district by now. Some retired some forced out by a VERY complicit school board  Those who have not gone and might speak honestly, are systematically being forced out by deceit, harassment,  and lies in the hopes of silencing the truth once and for all and avoiding an incredible amount of liability and embarrassment. The majority of this unethical and sometimes illegal action comes from a top administrator who 20 days into his new job at MVUSD, said he “was going to clean up the reputation of HR.” referring to the unethical behaviors notorious of the previous HR Director.
I am referring for the moment, of nearly half a million dollars a year.  May be more? Probably more. Stolen, misplaced, misappropriated, or just gone. One of the problems is almost all fundraising is done in cash. Due to the logistics of handling returned checks, the schools seldom take them anymore. Large sums of cash were kept in just about any lockable container. Sometimes for months on end.  As an example: In a singular ac, five years ago, $10,000 in cash was stolen directly from the safe at one MVUSD middle school. Under the circumstances I was told, it took less than ten minutes to accomplish and there were only five people who had all the necessary keys to walk in and out with the money. No investigation occurred and no further mention was made of it.  The only persons who should have the key and safe combination are the ASB (Associated Student Body or "government") accountant and the school principal.  The cash sits with no oversight and no truly accurate record of it's existance.  No club fundraising cash deposits go through the ASB cabinet approval process as do purchase orders or check requests. They are handled directly by the ASB accountant under the over site and responsibility of the principal.

About MVUSD "clubs." In general regarding fundraising; it is and has always been mandatory for students to pay to participate in extra-curricular activities. Fundraising seldom covers even half the student expenses. Recently this practice has been deemed ILLEGAL in law suits against surrounding school districts. However at MVUSD, the money parents pay is shown on School Board Minutes as “Voluntary Parent Contributions,” but the child can't participate without paying the fee.  Therefore, it appears that participation is neither voluntary nor a contribution. (Handout, gift, or offering.) The courts have recently interpreted "fair and adequate" to mean that all public school activities requiring parents to pay money or monies for participation; Must be offered free to any and all eligible students. This includes extracurricular sports and any student clubs. It is a violation of the law to charge parents or force students to fund raise their share. In one discussion, the practice was deemed "double dipping," because parents pay for their child's education through taxation. The court's interpretation extended to include uniforms and protective gear.

In keeping with previous years, more than one MVUSD principal of late has been implicated in possible financial wrongdoings regarding student funds. While seldom investigated by MVUSD in any fair and through manner, the problem itself best documented under deposition (Williams v. MVUSD 2006) by former Director of Secondary Education, Kim Kruger. Who further admitted under oath that the problem was commonplace and that he himself had problems regarding student funds as principal at Valley View High School.

More recently, regarding a here to unnamed middle school and their ASB student fund for the 2009-2010 school year; it opened school with a ledger balance rollover from the previous year, somewhere in the vicinity of $115,000.  Which is extremely high and a strange discrepancy in the rollover for any student fund account. This is the ASB general fund to which all other clubs, excluding parent run booster clubs, deposit their fundraising cash, draw their money, pay their bills and obtain their club status. At the end of these first two months, this middle school's account ledger reportly dropped to just over $4,000.  The ASB ledger entries for this school,  during this time period, are said to not make sense nor add up to any where near $100,000. This example was but one school and one school year in Moreno Valley Unified School District.

Next report; ASB and Booster Clubs. The difference between the two and why both are ripe for cash skimming.
Posted by I, Praetorian at 8:31 AM 
Praetorian: spent 4 years as an ASB co-director for MVUSD

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Just My Opinion: Of the Two Young Men Shot in Redlands, CA...

Just My Opinion:
Thanks Dmayn1,
I knew one of the boys, Andrew from his time in our middle school. He was a good kid. It wasn't until today that I looked at his picture and realized that I knew him. ...its hard.


I don't know the details of what happened or how it was handled by authorities. But none of our children should ever be at risk of being hurt or killed anywhere anyway.


Our society has grown fat and lazy in its collective morals. We are loosing moral ground when as Americans we have every reason and opportunity to be gaining. The way we protect and nurture our kids is a flat out disgusting shame. From something like this to the way we treat children in Foster Care. WE choose the alter of the almighty green back long before the complete protection and education of our children.


January 20, 1961. JFK said in his inaugural address. " We hold in our mortal hands the means to cure all forms of human suffering and destroy all forms of Human life." We are still fighting over moral ground and electing fools to compromise it.


Seems between the life and times of our children are always used in compromise to the most base and self-important of the rich and therefore powerful eight percent of this American experiment in democracy fueled entirely, not by the greatness of our human possibilities but the hoarding selfness that exists in us all.




School Counseling Podcast

Help and Hope
2011 marred by test cheating scandals across US

DORIE TURNER, AP Education Writer 
Dec. 27, 2011 9:16 PM ET

ATLANTA (AP) — It was the year of the test cheating scandal.
From Atlanta to Philadelphia and Washington to Los Angeles, officials have accused hundreds of educators of changing answers on tests or giving answers to students. Just last week, state investigators revealed that dozens of educators in 11 schools in Georgia's Dougherty County either cheated or failed to prevent cheating on 2009 standardized tests.

In July, those same investigators accused nearly 180 educators in almost half of Atlanta's 100 schools of cheating dating back to 2001 — which experts have called the largest cheating scandal in U.S. history. At least 20 students have been charged on Long Island with cheating on SAT and ACT college-entrance exams by paying someone to take the test for them.

"It's a year in which cheating became a national scandal, a scandal of national proportions," said Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which advocates against high-stakes testing. "The Atlanta case forced policymakers and journalists in other jurisdictions to look to see if there's anything similar going on in their backyards."

Experts say some educators have bowed to the mounting pressure under the federal No Child Left Behind law as schools' benchmarks increase each year toward the ultimate goal of having all children reading and doing math at their grade level by 2014. Teachers in Atlanta reported that administrators created a culture of "fear, intimidation and retaliation" where testing goals had to be met no matter what, according to investigators.

"This problem existed before No Child Left Behind, but NCLB has exacerbated the problem, clearly," said Walter Haney, a retired Boston College education professor and expert on cheating. "I think testing is really important, but the problem has been the misuse of test results without looking behind the test scores to see who and who is not tested."

Federal officials have been saying for more than a year that the law, which is four years overdue for a rewrite, doesn't accurately depict what's happening in schools. While federal lawmakers agree the law needs to be fixed, an overhaul has become mired in the partisan atmosphere in Congress.

At President Obama's invitation, states have begun filing waivers to get relief from the law. Under the 11 waivers already filed, states are asking to use a variety of factors to determine whether they pass muster and to choose how schools will be punished if they don't improve. Among the factors that could be used are college-entrance exam scores or the performance of students on Advanced Placement tests.

At least 39 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have said they will file waivers, though it is unclear how many will get approved.

In Pennsylvania, an investigation continues into irregularities found in 2009 state standardized tests in reading and math. The probe began last summer after a routine forensics report flagged "highly improbable" results in 90 schools across the state.

The state education secretary ordered the 50 districts representing the named schools to conduct internal investigations and submit reports to him by Aug. 15., But nearly four months later, the reports are still being analyzed and have not been made public.

Twenty-eight of the flagged schools were in Philadelphia, the state's largest district. District representative Fernando Gallard said the system is talking with the state Department of Education over how to move forward with the cheating investigation.

In Washington, D.C., federal and city officials are investigating possible cheating in more than 100 schools from 2008 to 2010. The unusually high rate of erasures in those schools became known after a USA Today investigation into improbable test gains in more than 300 schools in six states and D.C.

City officials tossed out test results for three classrooms in May because of proven cases of cheating.

A Waterbury, Conn., principal resigned earlier this month over an alleged cheating scheme on the Connecticut Mastery Test. A dozen teachers who were also caught up in the scandal lost 20 days of pay and have to perform 25 hours of free tutoring.

In Los Angeles, teachers at three schools have resigned after being accused of coaching students or changing answers on tests. The test scores at two of those schools have been thrown out.

Schaeffer, who follows cheating scandals closely for years, said he's seen as many cheating stories this year as in the last half-dozen years combined. He said there have been confirmed cases of cheating in 30 states and D.C. in the last three years.

___

Reporters Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and Brett Zongker in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

___


Published Online: November 28, 2011 
Includes correction(s): December 13, 2011
Study Links Academic Setbacks to Middle School Transition
By Sarah D. Sparks
Edited by I, Praetorian

While policymakers and researchers alike have focused on improving students’ transition into high school, a new study of Florida schools suggests the critical transition problem may happen years before, when students enter middle school.

The study, part of the Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series at Harvard University, found that students moving from grade 5 into middle school show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year that plagues them as far out as 10th grade, even risking thwarting their ability to graduate from high school and go on to college. Students who make a school transition in 6th grade are absent more often than those who remain in one school through 8th grade, and they are more likely to drop out by 10th grade. “I don’t see eliminating the transition at the high school level as important or beneficial as eliminating the transition at the middle school level,” said Martin R. West, an assistant education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the study. “That to me is a really robust finding,” said David L. Hough, the managing editor of theMiddle Grades Research Journal and a dean emeritus of Missouri State University’s college of education, in Springfield. “All these people are focusing on the transition to high school; it looks to me like they need to be focusing on that transition to middle school.”
Mr. Hough, who was not involved in the Harvard study, has been developing a database of nearly 2,000 schools covering middle-level grades across 25 states. He said that roughly 6,000 schools nationwide are structured in the K-8 configuration and 8,000 are 6-8. While so-called “elemiddle” K-8 schools had been spreading more rapidly than regular middle schools in recent years, Mr. Hough said district moves to swap middle for elemiddle schools have “leveled off” since 2010.

Losing Their Edge
For the Florida study, Mr. West and Guido Schwerdt, a researcher with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich in Germany, used the state’s longitudinal database to track more than 450,000 students in the state’s public schools who proceeded from grades 3 to 10 between 2000-01 and 2008-09.

They found students who attended elementary schools ending at grade 5 had an early edge over those attending K-8 schools in mathematics and language arts, but their performance in both subjects dropped dramatically when they switched to middle school in 6th grade. After the 6th grade transition, middle school students fell by .12 standard deviations in math and .09 standard deviations in reading compared with students at K-8 schools, and then that gap continued to widen throughout middle school and into high school.
Moreover, students who had attended a middle school were 18 percent more likely than students who attended a K-8 school before high school to not enroll in grade 10 after attending grade 9—an indicator that they may have dropped out.
While the middle school drop was most pronounced in urban schools, Mr. West said the same general pattern was repeated in suburban and rural schools.
The Florida findings are “almost identical” to the results of a smaller, 2010 study of New York City public schools, Mr. West said. In it, Columbia University researchers found that students who started in K-5 or K-6 schools performed slightly better than their K-8 peers in math and language arts in 5th grade, but when they moved to a middle school, the K-8 and middle school students changed places, and the achievement gaps between those groups increased through 8th grade.

Mr. Hough has found there is “much popular experience about the shock students experience when first entering middle school from an elementary school, but precious little empirical data have been collected to examine it.”
Rather, he said, most researchers and policymakers focus on the transition into high school. In part, that may be because most students who drop out of high school do so in 9th or 10th grades, yet the Florida study found that the transition from middle to high school was much less traumatic for students than the one from elementary to middle school.

Florida students entering high school did see a drop in achievement, but it was temporary and only one-fifth the size of the drop seen during the middle school transition. “For the high school switchers, they suffer a little one-time drop but then recover,” Mr. West said. “It looks like a much less disruptive transition than the one to middle school; the high school transition is not that different from what you’d see in a typical school transition.”
RELATED BLOG

Visit this blog.
The onset of puberty can exacerbate normal transition problems for younger students, according to Patti Kinney, an associate director of middle-level services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, in Reston, Va. “You’re looking at students making a transition during a time when tremendous physical, cognitive, and emotional transitions are going on at the same time,” Ms. Kinney said. “There’s a wide variety of maturation among different children at that level.”
In contrast, the Mountain View, Calif., research group EdSource found no difference between K-8 and 6-8 school achievement overall in its 2010 study of middle-grade achievement in California, “Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades,” but it did find some schools better than others at helping students transition into middle school, according to Matthew Rosin, an EdSource senior research associate.
“The picture we got was schools that were having higher-achievement outcomes were being more intense and intentional about looking at a wider array of student data [during the middle school transition] and finding out what interventions were needed quickly,” Mr. Rosin said.

Easing Transitions
For example, the 1,400-student La Merced Intermediate School, part of the Montebello Unified School District outside Los Angeles, asks the elementary teachers of all incoming 6th graders to fill out academic-history reports, including their previous grades and test scores, problem areas, favorite subjects, and extracurricular activities. “Those sheets allow teachers to go, ‘OK, what is the range of our students’ interests and how do we get them involved in the activities that really resonate with their interests?’ ” Mr. Rosin said.
The teachers from the smaller elementary schools that feed into La Merced also accompany their 5th grade students on a site visit to the middle school, to help the students learn the campus layout and prepare for the differences in structure from one grade to the next.
For the Florida study, the researchers used a survey of principals to compare instructional practices at the various schools, but did not find much difference between practices or class sizes at K-8 and 6-8 schools. However, they did find that 6-8 middle schools had more than twice as many students at each grade level, 363, than the 125 students per grade on average at K-8 schools.
That larger grade-level group may make it harder to tailor instruction and ease the moves from grade to grade, Mr. West suggested.
Ms. Kinney of the NASSP said that effective transitions should be “a process, not an event.” “A lot of times, people talk about transition programs, and they are talking about what they are doing in 9th grade, when they really need to be working with their middle schools to support students much earlier,” she said.

“Kids develop at their own rates; what’s important is how you are personalizing that environment for them,” Ms. Kinney said. “The grade configuration in a lot of ways is a secondary consideration.”

The NASSP’s Breaking Ranks in the Middlebook on improving student achievement in middle grades calls for schools serving those grades to provide each student with a “personal adult advocate” to help him or her understand the changing academic requirements and social dynamics.
“It is easy for those who don’t work regularly with middle-level students to forget that 6th graders are only five or six years removed from their teddy bears,” Breaking Ranksnotes, and “those who do work with middle-level students sometimes forget that, by the time students leave ‘the middle,’ the rigors of college are only four short years away.”

Special coverage on the alignment between K-12 schools and postsecondary education is supported in part by a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, at www.luminafoundation.org.
Vol. 31, Issue 13, Pages 1,23

RELATED STORIES
NYC Study Gives K-8 Schools an Edge Over Middle Schools,” September 1, 2010.
KIPP Middle Schools Found to Spur Learning Gains,” June 22, 2010.

Saturday, December 24, 2011


Moreno Valley School Board member Mike (Miguel) Rios' wife and sole support is facing deportation to El Salvador


By City News Service, on November 29, 2011
Dora Landaverde-Torres, 39, is the wife of Moreno Valley Unified School District Board of Trustees member, Mike Rios.
According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokeswoman, Virginia Kice, Landaverde-Torres has been held in an immigration facility in Santa Ana.
She was arrested Sept. 20 in a 7-day, nationwide operation during which 2,901 illegal immigrants who had been convicted of crimes were apprehended, Kice said.


Landaverde-Torres’ was originally arrested based on a felony drug conviction and deportation in the late 1990s according to Kice
Inmate locater records indicate that Landaverde-Torres is currently in custody at the City of Santa Ana jail.
Her arrest by ICE agents came during Operation Cross Check, which focused on apprehending illegal immigrants who committed crimes or were previously deported.
Court records indicate a guilty plea was entered by Landaverde-Torres on Oct.10, 1996, in an Orange County court for “the sale or transport of marijuana”. She received a sentence of 270-days in jail and 3-years probation.
Published reports indicate that she was deported but apparently re-entered the United States, where she again faces deportation, this time to El Salvador.
“Ms. Landaverde’s legal representatives have filed a motion with the immigration courts, seeking to reopen her deportation case.  Her removal has been stayed while the court considers that motion,” Kice said.
Mike Rios, 41, gained attention in July 2010, after 17-year-old Norma Lopez was abducted and killed while walking home from summer school classes. He told news outlets that he was a member of the City Council and represented the city in statements to the news media and press.
Rios further claimed there was a $7,500 reward for the teenager’s safe return two days after she went missing. In a subsequent statement at that time, Mayor Bonnie Flickinger publicly disavowed any knowledge of a reward, pointedly clarifying that Rios was not an elected official.
Rios was later elected to the school board in November 2010, campaigning as “the people’s candidate”, receiving the most votes in an eight-way race. There was considerable question to the validity of some of those votes.

Friday, December 16, 2011

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 26th, 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.”






STEAL THIS BLOG PLEASE! I, Praetorian
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.  

This is the fight of our professional careers. Are You In or Out?

What's taking so long? This is the fight of our professional careers. Are You In or Out? "Hell has a special level for those who sit by idly during times of great crisis."
Robert Kennedy

The Art of SETTING LIMITS, Its not as easy as it looks.

Art of Setting Limits Setting limits is one of the most powerful tools that professionals have to promote positive behavior change for their clients, students, residents, patients, etc. Knowing there are limits on their behavior helps the individuals in your charge to feel safe. It also helps them learn to make appropriate choices.


There are many ways to go about setting limits, but staff members who use these techniques must keep three things in mind:
Setting a limit is not the same as issuing an ultimatum.
Limits aren’t threats—If you don’t attend group, your weekend privileges will be suspended.

Limits offer choices with consequences—If you attend group and follow the other steps in your plan, you’ll be able to attend all of the special activities this weekend. If you don’t attend group, then you’ll have to stay behind. It’s your decision.
The purpose of limits is to teach, not to punish.
Through limits, people begin to understand that their actions, positive or negative, result in predictable consequences. By giving such choices and consequences, staff members provide a structure for good decision making.
Setting limits is more about listening than talking.
Taking the time to really listen to those in your charge will help you better understand their thoughts and feelings. By listening, you will learn more about what’s important to them, and that will help you set more meaningful limits.
Download The Art of Setting Limits

SYSTEMATIC USE OF CHILD LABOR


CHILD DOMESTIC HELP
by Amanda Kloer

Published February 21, 2010 @ 09:00AM PT
category: Child Labor
Wanted: Domestic worker. Must be willing to cook, clean, work with garbage, and do all other chores as assigned. No contract available, payment based on employer's mood or current financial situation. No days off. Violence, rape, and sexual harassment may be part of the job.

Would you take that job? No way. But for thousands of child domestic workers in Indonesia, this ad doesn't just describe their job, it describes their life.

A recent CARE International survey of over 200 child domestic workers in Indonesia found that 90% of them didn't have a contract with their employer, and thus no way to legally guarantee them a fair wage (or any wage at all) for their work. 65% of them had never had a day off in their whole employment, and 12% had experienced violence. Child domestic workers remain one of the most vulnerable populations to human trafficking and exploitation. And while work and life may look a little grim for the kids who answered CARE's survey, it's likely that the most abused and exploited domestic workers didn't even have the opportunity to take the survey.

In part, child domestic workers have it so much harder than adults because the people who hire children are more likely looking for someone easy to exploit. Think about it -- if you wanted to hire a domestic worker, wouldn't you choose an adult with a stronger body and more life experience to lift and haul and cook than a kid? If you could get them both for the same price, of course you would. But what if the kid was cheaper, free even, because you knew she wouldn't try and leave if you stopped paying her. Or even if you threatened her with death.



Congress Aims to Improve Laws for Runaway, Prostituted Kids

by Amanda Kloer

categories: Child Prostitution, Pimping

Published February 20, 2010 @ 09:00AM PT

The prospects for healthcare reform may be chillier than DC weather, but Democrats in the House and Senate are turning their attention to another warmer but still significant national issue: the increasing number of runaway and throwaway youth who are being forced into prostitution. In response to the growing concerns that desperate, runaway teens will be forced into prostitution in a sluggish economy, Congress is pushing several bills to improve how runaway kids are tracked by the police, fund crucial social services, and prevent teens from being caught in sex trafficking. Here's the gist of what the new legislation is trying to accomplish:

Shelter: Lack of shelter is one of the biggest vulnerabilities of runaway and homeless youth. Pimps will often use an offer of shelter as an entree to a relationship with a child or a straight up trade for sex. In the past couple years, at least 10 states have made legislative efforts to increase the number of shelters, extend shelter options, and change state reporting requirements so that youth shelters have enough time to win trust and provide services before they need to report the runaways to the police. Much of the new federal legislation would make similar increases in the availability and flexibility of shelter options.

Police Reporting: Right now, police are supposed to enter all missing persons into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database within two hours of receiving the case. In reality, that reporting doesn't always get done, making it almost impossible for law enforcement to search for missing kids across districts. This hole is a big problem in finding child prostitution victims and their pimps, since pimps will often transport girls from state to state. The new bill would strengthen reporting requirements, as well as facilitate communication between the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the National Runaway Switchboard

We Must Never Forget These Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen and Women

We Must Never Forget These Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen and Women
Nor the Fool Politicians that used so many American GIs' lives as fodder for the fight over an english noun - "Communism"