CPD IN THE NEWS

Democrats rallied at Legislative Hall on Tuesday in favor of legislation that would allow Delawareans to register to vote on the same day as a primary or general election.

"We should so everything we can to make sure eligible others have every opportunity to exercise their constitutional right to vote," said Rep. John Viola, D-Newark, the legislation's sponsor.

Democrats and activists supporting the bill dismissed concerns that same-day registration could lead to voter fraud.

"There's nothing there," Viola said, adding that he feels "confident" the bill will pass the House in the "next couple weeks."

The bill was voted out of committee in May, and would still need to go to the Senate for committee and floor votes if it passes the House. Delaware's current registration deadline is the fourth Saturday prior to an election.

Rep. John Kowalko, a Newark Democrat, told supporters gathered outside Legislative Hall on Tuesday that "you deserve the right to vote" and said the measure only reinforces the constitutional rights of Delawareans. Rep. Paul Baumbach, D-Newark, called the legislation "as American as it gets."

Representatives from several left-leaning advocacy groups attended the rally in support of the legislation on Tuesday, including the Delaware Alliance for Community Advancement and American for Democratic Action.

Same-day registration is already law in 11 states and the District of Columbia, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Mike Begatto, executive director of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the public employees union, also spoke in favor of the bill on Tuesday. Sen. Margaret Rose Henry, a Wilmington Democrat, is sponsoring the measure in the Senate.

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The Times-Picayune - 05-08-2015 - Louisiana understaffs its charter schools oversight offices and, instead of proactively investigating these schools, relies on charters' own reports and whistleblowers to uncover problems, according to a report released Tuesday (May 12) by the Center for Popular Democracy and the Coalition for Community Schools. That allows theft, cheating and mismanagement to happen, such as the $26,000 stolen from Lake Area New Tech High and the years of special education violations alleged at Lagniappe Academies. 

The report also casts a skeptical eye on the veracity of the data that Louisiana uses to calculate the performance scores that keep charters open and determine their renewal terms. And it faults the state for closing struggling charters instead of intervening to improve them.

The Center for Popular Democracy's partners include the American Federation of Teachers, which has an uneasy relationship with charters, and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, which studies charter school oversight. Kyle Serrette, the center's director of educational justice campaigns, said its parent members had children in charter and conventional public schools.

That said, one of the report's recommendations is to "impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed."

The Louisiana-based Coalition for Community Schools opposes charter schools outright and filed a civil rights complaint against the state Education Department in 2014. That complaint also included a demand to freeze chartering in New Orleans.

The two groups' report said Louisiana charters could suffer from "tens of millions of fraud in the 2013-14 school year alone," based on the methodology of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. In that time, employees of three New Orleans charter schools stole about $110,000, and two charter operators were accused of meddling with retirement payments.

Oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes."  

"The state has invested heavily in increasing the number of charter schools while failing to create a solid regulatory framework that truly protects students, families and taxpayers," the authors write. Furthermore, "oversight agencies play almost no role in helping charter schools improve academic outcomes. ... The state has no system in place to provide a path to high-quality academics for all struggling charter schools."

Charter schools are publicly funded but run by independent non-profit boards. They control their own curriculum and hiring but must meet academic and operational standards to stay open. The state Education Department oversees most of Louisiana's 130-plus charters; local school systems oversee the rest.

Read the report

However, as of December, the Education Department's charter audit team consisted of only three people, according to a critical December report from the Louisiana legislative auditor's office. Education Superintendent John White defended his team at the time, saying they reviewed charter schools' audits, among other activities.

Tuesday's paper says that isn't enough. Not only do charters hire their own accountants to conduct annual audits, but the audits are not designed to prevent or detect fraud. Indeed, reports typically contain a disclaimer saying they are not expressing an opinion on fraud controls. The legislative auditor's office might dig deeper but rarely does so, the report states.

"The only audits Louisiana charter schools routinely undergo are the ones they pay for themselves," the authors write.

The report faults the Education Department for not spending enough time on-site at charters. Charters receive regular visits and reviews from state inspectors, and Louisiana Recovery School District officials said their own findings of wrongdoing at Lagniappe Academies in New Orleans showed that their oversight procedures worked.

The authors of Tuesday's report disagreed. The state's 2013-14 review of Lagniappe Academies gave full points for special education, the two organizations said, and it was only later that state inspectors uncovered extensive reports of violations during that time period.

"The situation at Lagniappe shows exactly the problems with the state's oversight structure for charter schools," the report says. "The state relies on a
largely self-reporting oversight structure that is easily manipulated by the schools themselves."

The authors doubt the accuracy of the test scores that are used to measure charters' academic performance, writing that the data "is vulnerable to manipulation."

Finally, the authors disagree with the state's readiness to close charters, including Lagniappe.

"Clearly there are times when problems are significant enough that a school must be closed. Yet, the current intervention (process) is designed to make school closure a normal and common part of the state's accountability system," the authors write. "The system needs to be updated to produce more stability for Louisiana children." In six years, more than 1,700 New Orleans students have seen their charter schools close, according to the report.

Louisiana's laws are "designed to set a high standard but not to help," Serrette said.

The state does at times intervene instead of closing schools, although this is not mentioned in the report. The Recovery School District has chosen successful charter operators to take over failing schools, for example, and White directed Lycée Français to find a new chief executive and assigned it a consultant team. Lycée has gone on to make a B grade, and its charter contract has been extended.

The report's recommendations include:

Require fraud audits every three years, to be conducted by the state legislative auditor's office

Train charter staff and boards on preventing fraud

Hire more staff for the legislative auditor's office and charter school oversight teams

Require "mandatory, hands-on, long-term, strategic support" for charters in trouble

Go beyond test scores when calculating school letter grades

Create local committees, including neighbors and parents, to design schools that serve the needs of a community

Coordinate social services at and around schools

Release raw testing data to the public.

Some of these issues are not unique to charters. Louisiana's conventional public schools also face pressure to keep test scores high: If they don't, they may be taken over by the state. There have been numerous examples of corruption and fraud in school boards and systems. Serrette said it was likely Louisiana's regular school systems needed stronger oversight as well.

Source: Nola.com

 

More than a hundred Democratic party lawmakers have written to Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen complaining of a lack of diversity within the central bank system and a leadership that is “overwhelmingly and disproportionately white and male”.

The letter, signed by 11 senators and 116 representatives, calls on the Fed to do more to ensure its senior ranks reflect the country’s make-up in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, economic background and occupation. It also demands that the Fed place greater priority on securing full employment for minorities as it pursues its economic goals.

“When the voices of women, African-Americans, Latinos, and representatives of consumers and labour are excluded from key discussions, their interests are too often neglected,” the letter says. “By fostering genuine full employment, the Federal Reserve can help combat discrimination and dramatically reduce the disproportionate unemployment faced by minority populations.”

The signatories include senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Bernie Sanders from Vermont and Kirsten Gillibrand from New York; and representatives including Maxine Waters, the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee and John Conyers from Michigan. All Democratic members of the Congressional Black Caucus put their names to the letter. It was not signed by Republican lawmakers.

The letter is the latest sign of political pressure on the Fed from both sides of the party divide. Republicans have been calling for greater Congressional scrutiny over the Fed amid persistent concerns about the ultra-loose monetary policy stance it has pursued since the financial crisis. Democrats, on the other hand, have urged Ms Yellen to maintain low interest rates in pursuit of higher employment, and in her most recent hearings before Congress Ms Yellen faced a barrage of complaints about the uneven economic progress seen between different races and ethnicities.

Eleven of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Bank presidents are white and 10 of the 12 are men. All of the 10 current voting members of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, are white, while four of them are women. Members of the Fed’s Board of Governors, who rank among the top rate-setters, are selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate, but the Board of Governors has a key role in selecting the Fed’s regional bank presidents.

A spokesperson for the Federal Reserve Board said: “The Federal Reserve is committed to fostering diversity — by race, ethnicity, gender, and professional background — within its leadership ranks. To bring a variety of perspectives to Federal Reserve Bank and Branch boards, we have focused considerable attention in recent years on recruiting directors with diverse backgrounds and experiences.”

The Fed said that minority representation on its reserve bank and branch boards had increased from 16 per cent in 2010 to 24 per cent in 2016, while the proportion of women directors has risen from 23 per cent to 30 per cent over the same period. Some 46 per cent of all directors are “diverse in terms of race and/or gender”, the Fed added.

The Fed in December lifted interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade. It has since kept them on hold as it weighs up conflicting evidence about the strength of the recovery. Referring to monetary policy, the letter from the lawmakers urges Ms Yellen to “give due consideration to the interests and priorities of the millions of people around the country who still have not benefited from this recovery”.

Jesse Ferguson, a Clinton campaign spokesman, said: “The American people should have no doubt that the Fed is serving the public interest. That’s why Secretary Clinton believes that the Fed needs to be more representative of America as a whole as well as that commonsense reforms — like getting bankers off the boards of regional Federal Reserve banks — are long overdue.”

By Sam Fleming

Source

El Diario – October 25, 2013, by Juan Matossian -

En el 60% de los casos de fallecimientos por caídas, investigados entre 2003 y 2011 en el estado, la víctima era latino y/o inmigrante

Los obreros de construcción hispanos e inmigrantes sufren muchos másaccidentes y muertes por caídas que otros trabajadores del mismo gremio, debido a las pobres condiciones de seguridad en las que trabajan en el estado de Nueva York, según reveló un estudio.

El reporte, comisionado por el Center for Popular Democracy, muestra que en el 60% de las muertes por caídas en los accidentes, investigados entre 2003 y 2011 en el estado, el fallecido era latino y/o inmigrante.

En la ciudad, esta cifra se incrementa hasta casi el 75% – tres de cada cuatro – a pesar de que sólo supone el 40% de la fuerza total de trabajo en ese reglón.

Encuestas realizadas a empleados latinos evidenciaron que muy pocos se atreven a quejarse por las condiciones de seguridad por temor a represalias de sus jefes.

Problemas de seguridad

Ese fue el caso de Pedro Corchado, un obrero que cayó desde una escalera durante la renovación de un edificio hace cinco años, y sufrió graves heridas por no contar con un arnés de seguridad.

“Casi cualquiera que trabaje en construcción te dirá que es muy difícil negarse a las órdenes de escalar un andamio que no es seguro o subir una escalera sin equipamiento de seguridad”, dijo Corchado. “Para la mayoría de trabajadores como yo, decir ‘no’ al jefe simplemente no es una opción”.

El grupo que elaboró el estudio y otras organizaciones que defienden a estos trabajadores, argumentaron que la mejor manera de detener esta tendencia es aumentar los fondos deOSHA, porque ahora mismo la oficina no cuenta con los suficientes medios ni inspectores.

Calcularon que, para que OSHA inspeccione cada lugar de construcción que hay actualmente en Nueva York, les llevaría 107 años.

Por otro lado, hicieron un llamado para que se proteja la llamada “Ley del Andamio”, que ayuda a asegurar las condiciones de seguridad en los sitios de construcción y que varios promotores inmobiliarios presionan para que se derogue porque incrementa significativamente el coste de nuevos edificios.

“En lugar de invertir en la seguridad en el trabajo, la comunidad de negocios quiere que la responsabilidad por heridas y muertes pase a los que son más vulnerables y no tienen control sobre las condiciones laborales”, denunció Joel Shufro, director ejecutivo delComité para Seguridad y Salud en el Trabajo de Nueva York. “Pondría a todos los obreros de construcción en riesgo, particularmente a los jornaleros y a los no sindicados”.

Una última petición es que se tomen medidas para asegurar que tanto los promotores, dueños y trabajadores de la construcción, reciban entrenamiento de seguridad de acuerdo con los estándares de OSHA.

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