State says Cary’s Cardinal Charter Academy must offer compensatory education to children denied services required by federal law
Last August, Terri Schmitz’s child, who has speech and visual impairments, began the new school year at Cardinal Charter Academy in Cary without the special education services their Individual Education Plan required.
According to a complaint filed with the state Department of Public Instruction, Schmitz’s child and other “similarly situated” students attending the K-8 public charter school did not have a certified or licensed special education teacher in the classroom during the first month of school.
Cardinal Charter, also the target of one private lawsuit, is now under state investigation for its mishandling of special education services for 76 students. Schmitz, a veteran educator also taught math at the school, has filed a separate labor-related complaint after Cardinal did not renew her contract after expressing concerns about the exceptional children’s program. [Read more...]
State has imposed a moratorium on the Siler City facility for chronic noncompliance, preventing new sewer connections for new industry, housing
Downstream from the Siler City wastewater treatment plant, sickness had beset the Rocky River.
At least 30 fish, including the Eastern shiner and some species of chub, “were observed with lesions and appeared stressed,” Tim Savidge, an environmental scientist, wrote in his field notes to the NC Wildlife Resources Commission. “Gasping, irregular swimming, etc.”
On that cloudy, warm day last October, Savidge, who works for Three Oaks Engineering, and his team were conducting a freshwater mussels survey when he observed an even more disturbing phenomenon. “Large concentrations of poultry organs, gizzards, intestines, hearts,” he wrote, were splayed over the river bottom and at the base of the banks where the water level was low.
“It was too much for fish bait,” Savidge told Policy Watch.” And it wasn’t concentrated in one place. As we were moving up the river, we’d see eight or nine parts, then another pile. It seemed kind of unusual.” [Read more...]
3. Election officials can’t access federal funding for security as violent threats mount
Colorado’s election officials, like so many across the country, faced a surge of violent threats after the 2020 election.
Federal authorities are prosecuting a man who pled guilty to threatening a Colorado election official on Instagram, where he wrote: “Do you feel safe? You shouldn’t.” And Colorado police arrested a man accused of calling Secretary of State Jena Griswold and saying that “the angel of death is coming for her.”
So when the Colorado secretary of state’s office learned early this year that the U.S. Department of Justice would allow funding through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant program to be used by state and local election offices to combat threats, they submitted an application in March. The office requested $396,000 to pay contractors to monitor social media for threats and to enhance physical security for the secretary of state’s office staff and county clerks through September 2023.
In May, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Beall made a presentation to the board that determines grant recipients.
“There is a clear threat to Colorado Department of State (CDOS) staff, including the Secretary of State,” Beall wrote in a letter to the Colorado Department of Public Safety, which oversees the grant. “We are, simply stated, facing a threat environment that is unprecedented for election officials and staff.” [Read more...]
4. State Supreme Court issues a limited, well-reasoned check on rogue legislatures
As you might have heard by now, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued one of its more momentous rulings of recent years last week.
As it turns out, it was also one of the best-reasoned.
At issue in the case of North Carolina NAACP v. Moore, was whether state lawmakers elected under maps found by a federal court to be racially and unconstitutionally gerrymandered can lawfully approve constitutional amendments that would:
- allow those same legislators to further entrench their own power,
- insulate them from political accountability, or
- discriminate against the same racial group harmed by the gerrymandering.
By any fair assessment, that’s what happened in our state in 2018 when the GOP-dominated General Assembly hastily approved some momentous constitutional amendments in the closing hours of the legislative session, including one to mandate voter ID and another to lower the constitutional cap on the state income tax.[Read more...]
North Carolina Republicans’ long desire to impose a photo identification requirement to vote has been threatened by the legislature’s failure in 2011 to draw constitutional election districts.
The Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court ruled last week that constitutional amendments proposed by a legislature with members elected from unconstitutional racially gerrymandered districts aren’t automatically considered valid.
The state NAACP challenged constitutional amendments passed in 2018 requiring photo ID for people voting in person and lowering the personal and corporate income tax caps from 10% to 7%. They said legislators from unconstitutional districts couldn’t legitimately propose changes to the constitution. The case tied together redistricting and voter ID, issues that are constant subjects of court battles in the state.
Voter ID and the tax cap were two of six amendments legislators put to voters. Voters defeated two of the amendments and approved four, including voter ID and the tax cap.[Read more...]
6. N.C. Association of Educators responds to report exposing a widening teacher pay gap
The N. C. Association of Educators (NCAE) responded Tuesday to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) that attribute a nationwide teacher retention crisis to a growing “pay penalty” between teachers and similarly qualified professionals.
EPI, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that focuses on economic policies impacting low-and middle-income workers, reports a “pay penalty” of 20% or higher between teachers and other professionals with comparable degrees in more than half of the nation’s states.
The report shows a 24.5 % “pay penalty” between North Carolina teachers and other comparable college-educated workers. [Read more…]
Thousands of survivors of Hurricane Matthew and Hurricane Florence remain out of their homes — some for nearly three years — prompting lawmakers to investigate why disaster relief has been so delayed. The first meeting of the Subcommittee on Hurricane Response and Recovery will meet next month. Although the format has not yet been announced, expect the director of the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency, Laura Hogshead, to testify.
In May, Policy Watch launched an investigative series about the problems at NCORR, also known as ReBuild NC. Interviews with dozens of homeowners have shown how the program has been mismanaged to the detriment of the displaced people. The state has spent upward of $10.6 million on housing hurricane survivors in motels and on mobile storage units for their belongings. [Read more…]
8. Our children are hurting and here’s why
As parents busy themselves gathering last minute back-to-school items for their children, North Carolina’s educators are prepping for what could be one of the most challenging years on record.
Masks and social-distancing will be less common this year, but the pandemic has left an indelible mark on our children.
A new report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation documents that children are struggling with anxiety and depression at unprecedented levels.
More than 1 million people in America have died from the novel coronavirus as of July 2022. More than 200,000 kids have lost a parent or primary caregiver during the pandemic.
One small bright spot coming out of the pandemic, the percent of children living in poverty in North Carolina has fallen from 24% in 2008-11 to 20% in 2016-20. That decline in large part is due to federal relief measures, like the Economic Impact Payments to families and emergency rental assistance. [Read more…]
9. Abortion access is on the ballot in November in these states
WASHINGTON — Voters in at least three states will determine at the polls in November what abortion access looks like for their neighbors, colleagues, friends and family — becoming some of the first Americans to deliver their own verdicts on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Residents of California, Kentucky and Vermont will decide if their state constitutions should protect abortion access. Michigan voters appear likely to join them, though officials are working through a challenge from an antiabortion group, which argued the petition text is “confusing gibberish” due to numerous errors.
The ballot questions are expected to provide a clearer picture of voters’ opinions on abortion than which candidates they vote for during the midterm elections, in part because people rarely pick candidates based on just one issue.[Read more…]
10. Weekly Radio Interviews and Radio Commentaries: 
The post Weekend reads: Election officials seek more funding for security, a charter school shortchanges children with disabilities, and a check on rogue legislators appeared first on The Pulse.