Indeed a segment of the population that must pay attention to. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
----------------------------------------------------------------
Chinese Democracy
Why don't we ever hear about the Asian-American vote?
By Christopher Beam
Posted Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2008, at 4:57 PM ET
Read the rest of the Swingers series.
Asian-American voters
Presidential campaigns can feel like an informal census. As the candidates traverse the country, they pander to Latino voters, African-American voters, working-class white voters, older voters, younger voters, elite-college-graduate voters … everyone gets to feel important.
Except Asian-American voters. Somehow, amid all the demographic navel-gazing, the country's third-largest, fastest-growing minority—now 15.2 million people, or 5 percent of the population—gets overlooked.
Not this week. Or, more accurately, not for several hours on Tuesday. That's when a nonprofit group called Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics held a news conference excitingly titled "Political Role of Asian Americans Examined" while the Obama campaign scheduled interviews about its outreach efforts to Asian-American and Pacific Islander voters. The message from both events: Asian voters can make a difference. Attention must be paid.
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More about that later. But first, a question: Why, with all our obsessing over demographics, do we hear so little about the Asian-American vote?
The most obvious reason is size. Asian-Americans make up only 5 percent of the U.S. population. (Note: "Asian-American" here, and at the press conference Tuesday, is defined in the broadest possible sense, to include Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Indian, Pakistani, and Indonesian, among others.) Fifteen million people is a lot, but not compared with other ethnic groups. African-Americans now number 38.4 million, according to the 2006 census; Latinos boast 44.4 million. Plus, Asian-Americans have the lowest proportion of eligible voters compared with the populations (about 52 percent) of any racial group. And of those, very few (about 50 percent in 2006) actually register to vote. So we're talking about 7 million eligible voters and about 3 million actual voters.
But wait—it gets worse! The five states with the largest Asian populations are, in order, California, New York, Texas, Hawaii, and New Jersey. Not exactly the swingiest places around. There are two big exceptions: Nevada and Virginia. Both states have rapidly growing Asian-American populations—they constitute 6 percent of eligible voters in Virginia, possibly enough to swing a competitive presidential race.
Another difficulty is the Asian-American community's heterogeneity. Koreans and Chinese and Vietnamese aren't necessarily more or less fractured than Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans. But, unlike Latinos, they speak different languages. Campaigns can easily cut Spanish-language ads to run nationwide; it's tougher to run ads in Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, etc. (Only about 60 percent of Asian-Americans speak English.) Then you'd need to target ethnic media, which is costly and, on the national level, of marginal benefit.
Then there is the difficulty of targeting Asian-American issues. This is a problem in ethnic politics generally—opinions on immigration, for example, are more diverse among blacks than among the interest groups that lobby on their behalf—but it is especially acute among Asian-Americans. Yes, there are general bread-and-butter issues like health care and education for which platitudes about access and opportunity are useful. There are also hyperspecific concerns that are not ideal campaign talking points: Chinese care a lot about U.S.-China relations. Taiwanese care about China-Taiwan. Vietnamese favor anti-Communist policies. And Filipinos often vote based on whoever supports benefits for Filipino veterans of World War II. Plus, segments of the Asian-American community often disagree—as Taiwanese-Americans and Chinese-Americans do on Taiwan, for example, or Pakistanis and Indians on Kashmir.
Finally, as if demographics and geography and message weren't challenging enough, there is partisanship. Or, more precisely, lack thereof. African-American voters break heavily toward Democrats; Latino voters (with the exception of Cubans) are also largely Democratic. Asian-Americans, meanwhile, can't make up their minds. About a third of them are Republican, a third Democratic, and a third unaffiliated. This last group consists largely of immigrants—more than half of Asian-American were born overseas—who often won't develop party loyalty for another generation.
An argument can be made—and is—that excessive partisanship is exactly the problem with a lot of ethnic politics. It goes something like this: Democrats take black voters for granted, Republicans don't even try to win them over, and the result is that they have less influence than they would if they had less party loyalty.
But an argument can also be made that partisanship enhances influence. On the national level, the most powerful groups—unions, African-Americans, evangelicals—are often the most partisan. A pandering politician wants to maximize the efficiency of his pandering. So if the strategy is to mobilize the base, it makes more sense to court a loyal group. (Plus, it gets you more media coverage. The one time the national media noticed Asian-Americans this election cycle was when Hillary Clinton won 75 percent of their votes in California.)
So what are Asian-Americans planning to do about their underwhelming influence? One idea is something called the 80-20 Initiative, a political action committee dedicated to persuading 80 percent of Asian-Americans to vote for one side. Since 2000, the group has endorsed a candidate and asked Asians to support him or her. (They endorsed Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004. In the 2008 primaries, it was Hillary; in the general, it's Obama.) The goal of the group, the brainchild of former Delaware Lt. Gov. S.B. Woo, is eventually to turn the Asian-American vote into a bloc vote that can swing both ways, Republican or Democrat.
It's a quixotic enterprise. On the one hand, it's an artificial way to replicate the normally organic process of party identification—and so far, it hasn't quite worked. "You can't get to 80-20 by making a targeted approach in a single election cycle," says Taeku Lee, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "You build a constituency over time." At the same time, the Asian-American vote already is increasingly Democratic. By the time 80-20 could persuade four-fifths of the group to vote one way, they might already be there. 80-20 does take credit for Hillary Clinton's winning the California Asian-American vote by 3-1. But swinging party primaries isn't the goal here.
Another solution is strengthening the ground game. In Virginia, the Obama camp has hired Asian-American field directors and recruited Asian-American volunteers. It's also distributing foreign-language campaign literature to local communities in Fairfax County—in Vietnamese, for example, in Falls Church and in Korean in Centreville. "We definitely have the potential to be the swing vote," says Betsy Kim of the Obama campaign. There's evidence, too: In 2006, Jim Webb won 76 percent of the state's Asian-American voters and eked out a victory over George Allen. Many believe those voters—with an assist by Allen's "macaca" moment—made the difference. McCain also has done some outreach, but the enthusiasm seems to lie with the Democrats. One columnist even called Obama "the first Asian-American president."
One area where politicians do make concessions is representation. Asian-Americans make up 5 percent of the population, but only about 1 percent of elected officials. So they want candidates to include more Asian-Americans in their administrations. President Bush earned points by appointing Elaine Chao secretary of labor. On a questionnaire, Hillary Clinton promised to select Asian-American judges; Obama balked at quotas but committed to appointing qualified Asian-Americans.
Experts offer up all sorts of other solutions to the relative invisibility of Asian-Americans in politics. Terry Ao, director of the Asian American Justice Center, argues that congressional districts must be redrawn to consolidate the Asian-American vote. She also says the U.S. census understates their population—since Asian-Americans value their privacy and immigrants are often afraid to provide information—and needs tweaking. Voter registration is another solution. Once Asian-Americans register, says Lee, they vote in high numbers. Some activists also encourage pollsters to include "Asian-American" as a demographic, instead of lumping it in with "Other." And of course, electing more Asian-American leaders would raise their profile considerably. The best-known Asian-American politicians now are probably Hawaii Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka, both Democrats, and Chao and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, both Republicans.
Since 1980, the Asian-American population has tripled. By 2030, it's expected to nearly double again. Meanwhile, Asian-Americans are flooding battleground states like Nevada, Minnesota, and Virginia faster than other immigrant groups. So maybe 80-20 shouldn't be telling Asian-Americans how to vote. Maybe it should be telling them where to move.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Measure 58's goal of English-only classes already a reality (from The Oregonian)
Once the numbers of English Language Learners are at a level of "critical mass" in states with booming ELL populations, we should expect similar proposals to emerge, particularly in the South. Such proposals will probably be accompanied by ideas that are not based on research, driven by political purposes, and led by people who are the most removed from public education. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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Measure 58's goal of English-only classes already a reality
Posted by sroux September 20, 2008 21:27PM
Doug Beghtel / The Oregonian
Verenise Hernandez, a fourth-grader at Cornelius Elementary, practices reading in Spanish with help from teacher Marcia Camacho. Forest Grove educators say teaching Spanish-speaking students to read and write well in Spanish is the best way to help them become strong readers and writers of English.
Voters are being asked to decide how Oregon schools should teach nearly 70,000 students learning English as their second language.
Measure 58, one of five measures on the November ballot authored by Bill Sizemore, would prohibit schools from teaching English learners in their native language after one year in elementary school or two years in high school.
Sizemore wants to plunge them into all-English classrooms as soon as possible because, he says, schools intentionally delay getting students fluent in English.
His proposal, and the strong opposition it is generating among educators, spotlight how little most people know about the way the children spend their days in Oregon classrooms.
Roughly 85 percent are taught exclusively in English, without any teaching in their native Spanish, Russian, Somali or Vietnamese, an analysis by The Oregonian shows.
They rely on their teachers' gestures, pictures, diagrams and carefully enunciated English words to learn their new language and math, history, science and literature at the same time.
Oregon's English language learners
80% are in sheltered instruction, in which students learning English go to regular class with English-speaking classmates but the teacher uses extra visual clues, vocabulary lessons, etc.
8% are in short-term instruction in the first language, along with instruction in English, until the student gains basic literacy in the first language plus gains English skills. This is usually done in primary grades.
5% are in dual-language immersion programs, in which English-speaking students learn Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, while native speakers of those languages learn English.
4% are in long-term instruction in native language and English so they become and stay bilingual. (This happens almost only in Woodburn and Canby.)
3% are in separate ESL classes taught exclusively in English.
Source: Oregon Department of Education
The rest of Oregon's English learners are taught part of the day in their native language, in either Spanish, Russian or Chinese.
Most are in classes exclusively for students learning English. But some, such as those in immersion magnet programs in Portland, are in classes designed to help both native English speakers and those learning English become bilingual.
The idea behind teaching English learners partly in their own language is twofold: Students learn to read and write faster when taught in their first language, and those literacy skills then transfer to English. During the years students are still shaky in English, they can learn meaty academic content in their native tongue.
A coalition that includes every major education group in the state is working to defeat Measure 58.
Schools agree that getting nonnative speakers proficient in English is the paramount goal for those students, says Diana Fernandez, director of English as a second language instruction for Portland Public Schools, where about 90 percent of English learners are taught only in English. She acknowledges that some students still languish with only intermediate English skills.
But the approach to teaching English should be based on research and on individual needs of students -- whether they can read and write in any language, for example, or whether they have a learning disability, says Wei-Wei Lou, director of English as a second language instruction in Beaverton schools.
Although it seems counterintuitive, teaching students to read and write in their first language, then transitioning them to English, leads to students who are the strongest at reading and writing English, says Perla Rodriguez, principal of Cornelius Elementary.
Research consistently finds that teaching students literacy in their own language makes them stronger readers of English, agrees Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford professor who directs the Center for Language Minority Education and Research.
A time limit, as would be set by Sizemore's measure, makes no sense, Beaverton's Lou says. "All children are very different. So if you say cap it at one year or cap it at two years, that's not appropriate."
Most-common approach
Unlike other states, such as California and Arizona, Oregon has never been a battleground over bilingual education, in part because the number of students not fluent in English was small.
That population has grown in the past decade, however, and now almost one of every eight students in Oregon is learning English as a second language.
Under federal law, all 68,000 English learners are guaranteed two things: They are entitled to special teaching in English to help them write, read and speak English, and they must be taught the same core academic content as native English speakers.
Oregon school districts have developed a host of different approaches to do that.
By far the most common is what's known as "sheltered instruction," which calls on teachers to use gestures, visual aids, repetition, simplified terms and other cues to teach math, social studies, writing and other subjects. There is no teaching in or translation to students' native language.
With 40 different languages sprinkled across hundreds of Oregon schools, it is impractical to teach each student in his or her native language.
Michael Lloyd / The OregonianWestview High teacher Brian Squire gives Abdi Somow, a refugee from Somalia, feedback on a writing assignment. Like most Oregon students learning English as their second language, Somow is taught exclusively in English with no teaching in or translation into his first language. Students who arrive in the United States as teenagers with little formal education in any language face a steep learning curve to master reading and writing English.
At Beaverton's Westview High, for example, Brian Squire's seventh-period class has 23 students who speak 11 different languages -- Cantonese, Somali, Hebrew, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Spanish, Taiwanese, Korean and Uzbek. Most of them are recent arrivals. The biggest group, Spanish speakers, make up one-third of the class.
The school cannot afford and could not find qualified teachers fluent in all those languages. So Westview groups students by their English level and gives them targeted help in English with biology, global studies and other subjects as well as English instruction.
Squires speaks slowly, gestures emphatically, rephrases and repeats his key messages and tries to tie new ideas in English to familiar ideas and details from students' home cultures.
"I can understand my teacher, just sometimes it's hard," says Alice Morgenva, who arrived from Uzbekistan six months ago after her family won a green card that allowed them to immigrate. "I know information, but to write in English, it's hard for me."
Dual-language instruction
School districts in Woodburn, Forest Grove and Salem-Keizer -- where at least 20 percent of the students speak Spanish as a first language -- together account for about 60 percent of all Oregon students who get taught in a language besides English for part of the day. How are students taught English in Oregon?
Exclusively in English: 85%
Part of the day in English, part of the day in their native language: 10%
In a dual-language immersion program, where some students learn their first language plus English, and native English speakers learn to become bilingual: 5%
Source: Oregon Department of Education
Other school districts, including Portland, Corvallis and Phoenix-Talent, offer popular immersion programs that allow native English speakers to gradually become bilingual in Spanish, Mandarin or Japanese -- and allow speakers of those languages to gradually learn English -- while they learn academic subjects in both languages. Woodburn has switched to that approach in primary grades and will move almost entirely to dual-language immersion one grade at a time.
In most Forest Grove elementary schools, students who speak Spanish at home are taught reading and writing in Spanish for 90 minutes a day, along with a 30-minute English language development class.
Once they have mastered reading and writing in their own language -- by fourth or fifth grade for those who start in kindergarten in Forest Grove -- they are put into an English reading and writing class.
Fourth-grader Alberto Acension came to Cornelius Elementary in second grade. Last week, he was taught in Spanish about techniques for strong, independent reading. "Leer a si mismo" ("to read on your own") read the chart he helped create. He read a biography of Cesar Chavez in Spanish.
Later that day, Alberto learned how to search for books in the school library, eagerly tracking the librarian's directions in English. He checked out a book about soccer, written in English.
"In my house, I already know how to speak Spanish," he says. "In my class, I speak English, too. It's fun."
Which language does he like to read in? "Both," he says.
Forest Grove students show strong results in English. More than half moved up a full level in English proficiency last year. By high school, 60 percent of Latino students read at grade level -- nearly the statewide average for all Oregon sophomores.
But Woodburn, which also teaches its students to read and write in their first language, posts poorer results. After five years getting help with English, only 13 percent of its students were proficient. Only about 40 percent of its Latino 10th-graders passed the state reading test.
That's why the district has switched its approach to be more like Forest Grove's, Superintendent Walt Bloomberg says. The district knows it must do better at getting students fully proficient in English.
Sizemore's reasoning
Sizemore says he got the idea for his ballot measure from a pair of teachers who told him their students were sidelined for years in classes for English learners when they could have done fine with regular all-English lessons.
Schools receive nearly $3,000 in additional money from the state for each student in English as a second language. Sizemore says many schools keep students in the program just to get the money.
"My message is that if you're going to come here, we want you to be successful, and you have to learn English, because it's the gateway to success," Sizemore says. "Instead, for the first two years here, we teach them to be proficient in Spanish or Laotian or whatever their language is. That's nonsense."
Educators say he is misinformed -- no Oregon students are taught in Laotian, for instance, and every English language learner is taught in English for part of every day.
Eduardo Lopez, a second-grader at Cornelius Elementary, is glad he gets to learn about animals and other second-grade subjects in two languages. It allows him to communicate with people who speak only Spanish, like his parents, and only English, like many of his schoolmates.
"That way you can understand and talk to them," he says.
-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@news.oregonian.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Measure 58's goal of English-only classes already a reality
Posted by sroux September 20, 2008 21:27PM
Doug Beghtel / The Oregonian
Verenise Hernandez, a fourth-grader at Cornelius Elementary, practices reading in Spanish with help from teacher Marcia Camacho. Forest Grove educators say teaching Spanish-speaking students to read and write well in Spanish is the best way to help them become strong readers and writers of English.
Voters are being asked to decide how Oregon schools should teach nearly 70,000 students learning English as their second language.
Measure 58, one of five measures on the November ballot authored by Bill Sizemore, would prohibit schools from teaching English learners in their native language after one year in elementary school or two years in high school.
Sizemore wants to plunge them into all-English classrooms as soon as possible because, he says, schools intentionally delay getting students fluent in English.
His proposal, and the strong opposition it is generating among educators, spotlight how little most people know about the way the children spend their days in Oregon classrooms.
Roughly 85 percent are taught exclusively in English, without any teaching in their native Spanish, Russian, Somali or Vietnamese, an analysis by The Oregonian shows.
They rely on their teachers' gestures, pictures, diagrams and carefully enunciated English words to learn their new language and math, history, science and literature at the same time.
Oregon's English language learners
80% are in sheltered instruction, in which students learning English go to regular class with English-speaking classmates but the teacher uses extra visual clues, vocabulary lessons, etc.
8% are in short-term instruction in the first language, along with instruction in English, until the student gains basic literacy in the first language plus gains English skills. This is usually done in primary grades.
5% are in dual-language immersion programs, in which English-speaking students learn Spanish, Japanese or Mandarin, while native speakers of those languages learn English.
4% are in long-term instruction in native language and English so they become and stay bilingual. (This happens almost only in Woodburn and Canby.)
3% are in separate ESL classes taught exclusively in English.
Source: Oregon Department of Education
The rest of Oregon's English learners are taught part of the day in their native language, in either Spanish, Russian or Chinese.
Most are in classes exclusively for students learning English. But some, such as those in immersion magnet programs in Portland, are in classes designed to help both native English speakers and those learning English become bilingual.
The idea behind teaching English learners partly in their own language is twofold: Students learn to read and write faster when taught in their first language, and those literacy skills then transfer to English. During the years students are still shaky in English, they can learn meaty academic content in their native tongue.
A coalition that includes every major education group in the state is working to defeat Measure 58.
Schools agree that getting nonnative speakers proficient in English is the paramount goal for those students, says Diana Fernandez, director of English as a second language instruction for Portland Public Schools, where about 90 percent of English learners are taught only in English. She acknowledges that some students still languish with only intermediate English skills.
But the approach to teaching English should be based on research and on individual needs of students -- whether they can read and write in any language, for example, or whether they have a learning disability, says Wei-Wei Lou, director of English as a second language instruction in Beaverton schools.
Although it seems counterintuitive, teaching students to read and write in their first language, then transitioning them to English, leads to students who are the strongest at reading and writing English, says Perla Rodriguez, principal of Cornelius Elementary.
Research consistently finds that teaching students literacy in their own language makes them stronger readers of English, agrees Claude Goldenberg, a Stanford professor who directs the Center for Language Minority Education and Research.
A time limit, as would be set by Sizemore's measure, makes no sense, Beaverton's Lou says. "All children are very different. So if you say cap it at one year or cap it at two years, that's not appropriate."
Most-common approach
Unlike other states, such as California and Arizona, Oregon has never been a battleground over bilingual education, in part because the number of students not fluent in English was small.
That population has grown in the past decade, however, and now almost one of every eight students in Oregon is learning English as a second language.
Under federal law, all 68,000 English learners are guaranteed two things: They are entitled to special teaching in English to help them write, read and speak English, and they must be taught the same core academic content as native English speakers.
Oregon school districts have developed a host of different approaches to do that.
By far the most common is what's known as "sheltered instruction," which calls on teachers to use gestures, visual aids, repetition, simplified terms and other cues to teach math, social studies, writing and other subjects. There is no teaching in or translation to students' native language.
With 40 different languages sprinkled across hundreds of Oregon schools, it is impractical to teach each student in his or her native language.
Michael Lloyd / The OregonianWestview High teacher Brian Squire gives Abdi Somow, a refugee from Somalia, feedback on a writing assignment. Like most Oregon students learning English as their second language, Somow is taught exclusively in English with no teaching in or translation into his first language. Students who arrive in the United States as teenagers with little formal education in any language face a steep learning curve to master reading and writing English.
At Beaverton's Westview High, for example, Brian Squire's seventh-period class has 23 students who speak 11 different languages -- Cantonese, Somali, Hebrew, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, German, Spanish, Taiwanese, Korean and Uzbek. Most of them are recent arrivals. The biggest group, Spanish speakers, make up one-third of the class.
The school cannot afford and could not find qualified teachers fluent in all those languages. So Westview groups students by their English level and gives them targeted help in English with biology, global studies and other subjects as well as English instruction.
Squires speaks slowly, gestures emphatically, rephrases and repeats his key messages and tries to tie new ideas in English to familiar ideas and details from students' home cultures.
"I can understand my teacher, just sometimes it's hard," says Alice Morgenva, who arrived from Uzbekistan six months ago after her family won a green card that allowed them to immigrate. "I know information, but to write in English, it's hard for me."
Dual-language instruction
School districts in Woodburn, Forest Grove and Salem-Keizer -- where at least 20 percent of the students speak Spanish as a first language -- together account for about 60 percent of all Oregon students who get taught in a language besides English for part of the day. How are students taught English in Oregon?
Exclusively in English: 85%
Part of the day in English, part of the day in their native language: 10%
In a dual-language immersion program, where some students learn their first language plus English, and native English speakers learn to become bilingual: 5%
Source: Oregon Department of Education
Other school districts, including Portland, Corvallis and Phoenix-Talent, offer popular immersion programs that allow native English speakers to gradually become bilingual in Spanish, Mandarin or Japanese -- and allow speakers of those languages to gradually learn English -- while they learn academic subjects in both languages. Woodburn has switched to that approach in primary grades and will move almost entirely to dual-language immersion one grade at a time.
In most Forest Grove elementary schools, students who speak Spanish at home are taught reading and writing in Spanish for 90 minutes a day, along with a 30-minute English language development class.
Once they have mastered reading and writing in their own language -- by fourth or fifth grade for those who start in kindergarten in Forest Grove -- they are put into an English reading and writing class.
Fourth-grader Alberto Acension came to Cornelius Elementary in second grade. Last week, he was taught in Spanish about techniques for strong, independent reading. "Leer a si mismo" ("to read on your own") read the chart he helped create. He read a biography of Cesar Chavez in Spanish.
Later that day, Alberto learned how to search for books in the school library, eagerly tracking the librarian's directions in English. He checked out a book about soccer, written in English.
"In my house, I already know how to speak Spanish," he says. "In my class, I speak English, too. It's fun."
Which language does he like to read in? "Both," he says.
Forest Grove students show strong results in English. More than half moved up a full level in English proficiency last year. By high school, 60 percent of Latino students read at grade level -- nearly the statewide average for all Oregon sophomores.
But Woodburn, which also teaches its students to read and write in their first language, posts poorer results. After five years getting help with English, only 13 percent of its students were proficient. Only about 40 percent of its Latino 10th-graders passed the state reading test.
That's why the district has switched its approach to be more like Forest Grove's, Superintendent Walt Bloomberg says. The district knows it must do better at getting students fully proficient in English.
Sizemore's reasoning
Sizemore says he got the idea for his ballot measure from a pair of teachers who told him their students were sidelined for years in classes for English learners when they could have done fine with regular all-English lessons.
Schools receive nearly $3,000 in additional money from the state for each student in English as a second language. Sizemore says many schools keep students in the program just to get the money.
"My message is that if you're going to come here, we want you to be successful, and you have to learn English, because it's the gateway to success," Sizemore says. "Instead, for the first two years here, we teach them to be proficient in Spanish or Laotian or whatever their language is. That's nonsense."
Educators say he is misinformed -- no Oregon students are taught in Laotian, for instance, and every English language learner is taught in English for part of every day.
Eduardo Lopez, a second-grader at Cornelius Elementary, is glad he gets to learn about animals and other second-grade subjects in two languages. It allows him to communicate with people who speak only Spanish, like his parents, and only English, like many of his schoolmates.
"That way you can understand and talk to them," he says.
-- Betsy Hammond; betsyhammond@news.oregonian.com
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Report finds Latinos gloomy over economy (from The Desert Sun)
Interesting findings as the presidential election approaches. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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The Desert Sun
September 18, 2008
Report finds Latinos gloomy over economy
Nicole C. Brambila
The Desert Sun
One in two Latinos say their situation is worse now than a year ago, according to a poll released today.
The news comes on the heels of multi-billion government bailouts, low consumer confidence and an increasingly shaky Wall Street.
In 2007, just 42 percent of all Latinos said their situation had worsened, according to the poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Among the report’s findings:
• 15 percent say that finding and keeping a job is difficult because they are Latino
• 81 percent say immigration enforcement should be done by the federal government, not local law enforcement.
• 76 percent disapprove of workplace raids and 70 percent disapprove of criminal prosecution for employers who hire undocumented workers.
• 10 percent say police and other authorities have stopped them and asked about their immigration status.
• The majority of Latinos worry about deportation, 57 percent.
The poll of 2,015 Latinos – 44 percent of who report they are registered to vote – was conducted June 9 through July 13.
This gloomy outlook is most prevalent among immigrants, 63 percent of whom say their situation has worsened in the past year as the down turn in the economy and rising unemployment has hit Latinos especially hard and the federal government steps up enforcement.
Founded in 2001, the Pew Hispanic Center conducts research on Latinos and their impact in the United States to foster education. The Center does not take policy positions.
To read the full report, go to www.pewhispanic.org.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Desert Sun
September 18, 2008
Report finds Latinos gloomy over economy
Nicole C. Brambila
The Desert Sun
One in two Latinos say their situation is worse now than a year ago, according to a poll released today.
The news comes on the heels of multi-billion government bailouts, low consumer confidence and an increasingly shaky Wall Street.
In 2007, just 42 percent of all Latinos said their situation had worsened, according to the poll conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Among the report’s findings:
• 15 percent say that finding and keeping a job is difficult because they are Latino
• 81 percent say immigration enforcement should be done by the federal government, not local law enforcement.
• 76 percent disapprove of workplace raids and 70 percent disapprove of criminal prosecution for employers who hire undocumented workers.
• 10 percent say police and other authorities have stopped them and asked about their immigration status.
• The majority of Latinos worry about deportation, 57 percent.
The poll of 2,015 Latinos – 44 percent of who report they are registered to vote – was conducted June 9 through July 13.
This gloomy outlook is most prevalent among immigrants, 63 percent of whom say their situation has worsened in the past year as the down turn in the economy and rising unemployment has hit Latinos especially hard and the federal government steps up enforcement.
Founded in 2001, the Pew Hispanic Center conducts research on Latinos and their impact in the United States to foster education. The Center does not take policy positions.
To read the full report, go to www.pewhispanic.org.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Rudy Crew gets $368,000 to leave Miami-Dade schools (The Miami Herald)
My response coming soon! --Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
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The Miami Herald
Posted on Wed, Sep. 10, 2008
Rudy Crew gets $368,000 to leave Miami-Dade schools
BY KATHLEEN McGRORY
Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew and the School Board agreed to part ways Wednesday, ending Crew's tenure at the helm of the nation's fourth largest school district.
To buyout Crew's contract, the board will pay the schools chief a lump sum of $297,000. It will also provide Crew with health, disability and insurance benefits for two years and will contribute to his retirement.
The total severance package will cost the district $368,000, board Chairman Agustín Barrera said.
Said Barrera: ``Do we want to continue to barrage of attacking the administration publicly?''
Voting for the agreement: Barrera, board Vice Chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman and board members Wilbert ''Tee'' Holloway, Martin Karp and Solomon Stinson.
''Man, if I were him, I'd be so happy,'' said Stinson. ``I'd be packing my clothes, leaving my house and getting the hell out of Dade County.''
Crew, whose final few months in Miami-Dade were riddled with controversy, did not attend the meeting.
Crew's attorney H.T. Smith said Crew was happy with the settlement, but that he had ``mixed emotions.''
''He loves the children, and he's concerned about the progress that's going to be made on his initiatives like the Parent Academy,'' Smith said. ``But he understands that the minority of board members have made him ineffective.''
Smith would not say if Crew had another job lined up. But he added, ``There will be a place for him in public education.''
Today is Crew's 58th birthday, his attorney said.
It's not the first time the Miami-Dade School board has ended its relationship with a schools chief on his birthday.
In 2001, Roger C. Cuevas was fired on a 6-3 vote on his 58th birthday.
Board members said they were happy to see the Crew matter settled and were already considering how to move forward.
Some board members said they believed the board would name Crew's successor later on in the meeting.
The decision to buy out Crew, this year's National Superintendent of the Year, came after only a short discussion at a School Board meeting Wednesday. Crew had said publicly that he was ready to leave the district, and even Crew's supporters said they wanted to move on.
Some board members were reluctant to pay Crew a severance package, given Crew's $325,000 salary.
Board member Marta Pérez called the deal ''overly generous,'' and said the board could not afford it.
''I think this could run into the millions of dollars,'' said Pérez, who has been one of Crew's most vocal critics. ``It seems to me that we are really giving and giving. And we don't have the money to give.''
Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla asked Crew to resign without taking any severance.
''The district cannot afford this golden parachute,'' he said. ``How many jobs will be lost? How will it affect the classrooms?''
But Murray A. Greenberg, who was hired by the district last week to negotiate the buyout, called the deal ``fair.''
''This was the best we could do under the time constraints,'' he said.
Crew was wooed to Miami in 2004, where he became the highest paid superintendent in the country. Community leaders chipped in to buy him a house.
Crew will leave South Florida with a mixed record.
During his tenure, students posted incremental gains in reading, writing and math on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
Crew also helped reduce school overcrowding, and rallied businesses and local municipalities to take part in the school system.
But Crew's management abilities were called into question when the district came in overbudget two years in a row. And critics lambasted him for failing to reach out to Miami's Cuban community.
In June, board member Diaz de la Portilla, led a charge to fire Crew for cause.
While his campaign gained momentum over the summer, it was ultimately defeated in a 5-4 vote in August.
Later that month, Crew lost his majority on the board when incumbent School Board member Evelyn Greer lost her seat to retired principal Larry Feldman. Greer did not attend Wednesday's meeting.
On Thursday, the board hired Greenberg and voted to negotiate a buyout.
Had the board not negotiated a buyout, it could have fired Crew for any reason. But without cause, the board would have had to pay Crew what remains in his contract, or about $700,000.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Miami Herald
Posted on Wed, Sep. 10, 2008
Rudy Crew gets $368,000 to leave Miami-Dade schools
BY KATHLEEN McGRORY
Miami-Dade Schools Superintendent Rudy Crew and the School Board agreed to part ways Wednesday, ending Crew's tenure at the helm of the nation's fourth largest school district.
To buyout Crew's contract, the board will pay the schools chief a lump sum of $297,000. It will also provide Crew with health, disability and insurance benefits for two years and will contribute to his retirement.
The total severance package will cost the district $368,000, board Chairman Agustín Barrera said.
Said Barrera: ``Do we want to continue to barrage of attacking the administration publicly?''
Voting for the agreement: Barrera, board Vice Chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman and board members Wilbert ''Tee'' Holloway, Martin Karp and Solomon Stinson.
''Man, if I were him, I'd be so happy,'' said Stinson. ``I'd be packing my clothes, leaving my house and getting the hell out of Dade County.''
Crew, whose final few months in Miami-Dade were riddled with controversy, did not attend the meeting.
Crew's attorney H.T. Smith said Crew was happy with the settlement, but that he had ``mixed emotions.''
''He loves the children, and he's concerned about the progress that's going to be made on his initiatives like the Parent Academy,'' Smith said. ``But he understands that the minority of board members have made him ineffective.''
Smith would not say if Crew had another job lined up. But he added, ``There will be a place for him in public education.''
Today is Crew's 58th birthday, his attorney said.
It's not the first time the Miami-Dade School board has ended its relationship with a schools chief on his birthday.
In 2001, Roger C. Cuevas was fired on a 6-3 vote on his 58th birthday.
Board members said they were happy to see the Crew matter settled and were already considering how to move forward.
Some board members said they believed the board would name Crew's successor later on in the meeting.
The decision to buy out Crew, this year's National Superintendent of the Year, came after only a short discussion at a School Board meeting Wednesday. Crew had said publicly that he was ready to leave the district, and even Crew's supporters said they wanted to move on.
Some board members were reluctant to pay Crew a severance package, given Crew's $325,000 salary.
Board member Marta Pérez called the deal ''overly generous,'' and said the board could not afford it.
''I think this could run into the millions of dollars,'' said Pérez, who has been one of Crew's most vocal critics. ``It seems to me that we are really giving and giving. And we don't have the money to give.''
Board member Renier Diaz de la Portilla asked Crew to resign without taking any severance.
''The district cannot afford this golden parachute,'' he said. ``How many jobs will be lost? How will it affect the classrooms?''
But Murray A. Greenberg, who was hired by the district last week to negotiate the buyout, called the deal ``fair.''
''This was the best we could do under the time constraints,'' he said.
Crew was wooed to Miami in 2004, where he became the highest paid superintendent in the country. Community leaders chipped in to buy him a house.
Crew will leave South Florida with a mixed record.
During his tenure, students posted incremental gains in reading, writing and math on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
Crew also helped reduce school overcrowding, and rallied businesses and local municipalities to take part in the school system.
But Crew's management abilities were called into question when the district came in overbudget two years in a row. And critics lambasted him for failing to reach out to Miami's Cuban community.
In June, board member Diaz de la Portilla, led a charge to fire Crew for cause.
While his campaign gained momentum over the summer, it was ultimately defeated in a 5-4 vote in August.
Later that month, Crew lost his majority on the board when incumbent School Board member Evelyn Greer lost her seat to retired principal Larry Feldman. Greer did not attend Wednesday's meeting.
On Thursday, the board hired Greenberg and voted to negotiate a buyout.
Had the board not negotiated a buyout, it could have fired Crew for any reason. But without cause, the board would have had to pay Crew what remains in his contract, or about $700,000.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Inadequate coverage of Miami-Dade School Board-Rudy Crew saga (from Miami Herald)
Definitley some questions we should be thinking about as this chapter unfolds.
-Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Sep. 07, 2008
Inadequate coverage of Miami-Dade School Board-Rudy Crew saga
BY EDWARD SCHUMACHER-MATOS
No story is more important to you and me as readers of The Miami Herald than the state of our schools. In them lie not just the obvious future of our children, but the less obvious future of our local economy, our home values and our civic culture.
So the shocking fall of Miami-Dade schools superintendent Rudy Crew from being named National Superintendent of the Year by his peers to what even his backers say will be his likely firing or resignation would seem to be grist for crucial stories about just what is happening in the schools.
But those stories have gone missing. Since the saga devolved over the past 10 weeks from School Board grousing to racially tinged charges by Crew, who is African-American, of being ''lynched'' and ''treated like a dog,'' the coverage has been almost exclusively about political in-fighting, with mostly a ''he-said, she-said'' sort of false objectivity.
Manny Garcia, Senior Editor of News, said that The Herald has been planning for some time to do a more analytical step-back but that the daily rush of a fast-evolving story and the changes created by the recent staff cutbacks have interfered. The education editor took a recent buyout, and a new education editor, Heidi Carr, began last week.
''I don't want it to be an excuse,'' Garcia said. ``We have to deliver strong daily copy, but we need also to find the time to give the enterprise and context readers expect from us.''
As I write, an analytical story that Garcia says will ''look at benchmarks of how superintendents are normally measured across the country'' and examines the challenges that await the next superintendent is being prepared and will run elsewhere in the paper today. I have not seen the article, but I question whether even it will be enough.
[Editor's note: The article mentioned above, which was researched and reported over the past three weeks, appears today on Page 1A.]
The article also comes late. Some board members were up for reelection two weeks ago, which resulted in a balance of power shifting to Crew's critics. Whether better coverage would have changed the vote will never be known.
None of my criticism is meant to take sides. Crew often seems to be his own worst enemy. He has been strangely poor at board, media and community relations. His lapses have allowed critics to set the tone of the debate and make even mundane issues a referendum on his performance. This doesn't mean that The Miami Herald should allow itself to be played.
ISSUES THAT MATTER
Two real issues for readers, it seems to me, are whether Crew has been a good educator and a good manager.
On the first, the consensus seems to be that Crew has raised the educational quality of the schools. Yet, not one article over the past 10 weeks explored Crew's educational record. A review of the past six months finds several good features on individual schools and a wonderful back-to-school package. But there is little analytical coverage, and the one story that attempts this is a hatchet job. ''Zone initiative ineffective,'' said the June 27 headline about an internal report ''obtained'' by The Herald. The ''ineffectiveness'' concerned the first year of the new School Improvement Zone program. That year ended two years ago. The story offered almost nothing about the program's development since, making the report near worthless today.
Yet it was treated as a great revelation, critical of a signature Crew innovation. It even quoted Crew critic and board member Ana Rivas Logan saying of the entire program: ''According to this report, it was a total flop.'' I have no idea if the program today is a failure, but that was a dishonest quote about a report that dealt only with the first year. It never should have been allowed to stand alone, if even published.
Crew's management record in going over this and last year's budgets is the source of much criticism. This year's overrun, by my simple calculation from the confusing stories, is less than 1.5 percent. Is that major? Unprecedented? I don't know from The Herald's coverage, which never analyzes the budget.
I do know that news columnist Miriam Marquez was unfair when she blamed Crew for sloppiness because of an unjustified $10,000 moving expense by a school attorney. The executive in charge of a $5.5 billion budget should not be checking employee expense accounts.
One story by reporter Nirvi Shah at least gave an insightful measure by which to judge Crew. Shah compared the more-harmonious board and budget process in Broward County. There, new superintendent Jim Notter, according to Shah, is more solicitous of the board than Crew. He also began last year to make larger cutbacks in anticipation of state cuts.
The implications I derive from the coverage and reader letters is that Crew may have been more focused on pushing educational improvements, despite the new budget realities. ''We're at a crossroads here,'' board chairman Agustín Barrera says in a July 16 story by Kathleen McGrory that nicely lists a lot of the budget and political issues. ``We're being funded for basic education, and that's what we're going to have to provide.''
Wow. If that's true, where are the follow-up stories on the implications of what that means not just for schoolchildren, but for South Florida in a globally competitive information age? School Board members and state legislators can hide from confronting real issues, but The Miami Herald should not.
Another difficult budget issue readers deserved to know more about concerns withholding teacher raises and/or firing hundreds of teachers. What are the implications of Crew's whopping proposal of front-office cuts of 30 percent?
CRITICAL QUESTIONS
Board member Renier Díaz de la Portilla says in one story that Crew was responsible for ''a mistake classifying special-needs students that contributed to a $66 million overage in the 2007-08 budget.'' He says: ''I don't think taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for his incompetence and negligence.'' OK. But I as a reader want the impartial Herald to tell me what the truth is about this mysterious overage. Is this charge demagoguery, or did Crew make an egregious mistake?
The damage to Crew is done by leaving the charge standing and unchallenged.
Many letter writers and online comments say a Cuban-American vendetta is behind the attacks on Crew because of earlier alleged slights. Marquez persuasively reports in a column that the blame is exaggerated, and that Crew was at fault for not winning over those parts of the Cuban community opposed to him. Still, this sensitive issue and the role of Cuban talk radio deserved more reporting.
After Crew barely survived a vote last month on his tenure, reporter Matthew Pinzur brought some needed perspective to what at least Crew's weakened status means. Calling it a ''dark soap opera that has polarized the community and shoved educational issues off stage.'' Pinzur writes: ''The most vital question is whether the heady politics that produced Monday's 5-4 vote will color every future policy debate of Crew's tenure.'' It might be possible, others say, but Pinzur himself concludes: ``Navigating such narrow political waters can be exhaustingly time-consuming and require a level of compromise and tongue-biting that Crew has rarely shown.''
Now that is good analysis. Readers should have had more of that.
http://www.miamiherald.com
-Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Sep. 07, 2008
Inadequate coverage of Miami-Dade School Board-Rudy Crew saga
BY EDWARD SCHUMACHER-MATOS
No story is more important to you and me as readers of The Miami Herald than the state of our schools. In them lie not just the obvious future of our children, but the less obvious future of our local economy, our home values and our civic culture.
So the shocking fall of Miami-Dade schools superintendent Rudy Crew from being named National Superintendent of the Year by his peers to what even his backers say will be his likely firing or resignation would seem to be grist for crucial stories about just what is happening in the schools.
But those stories have gone missing. Since the saga devolved over the past 10 weeks from School Board grousing to racially tinged charges by Crew, who is African-American, of being ''lynched'' and ''treated like a dog,'' the coverage has been almost exclusively about political in-fighting, with mostly a ''he-said, she-said'' sort of false objectivity.
Manny Garcia, Senior Editor of News, said that The Herald has been planning for some time to do a more analytical step-back but that the daily rush of a fast-evolving story and the changes created by the recent staff cutbacks have interfered. The education editor took a recent buyout, and a new education editor, Heidi Carr, began last week.
''I don't want it to be an excuse,'' Garcia said. ``We have to deliver strong daily copy, but we need also to find the time to give the enterprise and context readers expect from us.''
As I write, an analytical story that Garcia says will ''look at benchmarks of how superintendents are normally measured across the country'' and examines the challenges that await the next superintendent is being prepared and will run elsewhere in the paper today. I have not seen the article, but I question whether even it will be enough.
[Editor's note: The article mentioned above, which was researched and reported over the past three weeks, appears today on Page 1A.]
The article also comes late. Some board members were up for reelection two weeks ago, which resulted in a balance of power shifting to Crew's critics. Whether better coverage would have changed the vote will never be known.
None of my criticism is meant to take sides. Crew often seems to be his own worst enemy. He has been strangely poor at board, media and community relations. His lapses have allowed critics to set the tone of the debate and make even mundane issues a referendum on his performance. This doesn't mean that The Miami Herald should allow itself to be played.
ISSUES THAT MATTER
Two real issues for readers, it seems to me, are whether Crew has been a good educator and a good manager.
On the first, the consensus seems to be that Crew has raised the educational quality of the schools. Yet, not one article over the past 10 weeks explored Crew's educational record. A review of the past six months finds several good features on individual schools and a wonderful back-to-school package. But there is little analytical coverage, and the one story that attempts this is a hatchet job. ''Zone initiative ineffective,'' said the June 27 headline about an internal report ''obtained'' by The Herald. The ''ineffectiveness'' concerned the first year of the new School Improvement Zone program. That year ended two years ago. The story offered almost nothing about the program's development since, making the report near worthless today.
Yet it was treated as a great revelation, critical of a signature Crew innovation. It even quoted Crew critic and board member Ana Rivas Logan saying of the entire program: ''According to this report, it was a total flop.'' I have no idea if the program today is a failure, but that was a dishonest quote about a report that dealt only with the first year. It never should have been allowed to stand alone, if even published.
Crew's management record in going over this and last year's budgets is the source of much criticism. This year's overrun, by my simple calculation from the confusing stories, is less than 1.5 percent. Is that major? Unprecedented? I don't know from The Herald's coverage, which never analyzes the budget.
I do know that news columnist Miriam Marquez was unfair when she blamed Crew for sloppiness because of an unjustified $10,000 moving expense by a school attorney. The executive in charge of a $5.5 billion budget should not be checking employee expense accounts.
One story by reporter Nirvi Shah at least gave an insightful measure by which to judge Crew. Shah compared the more-harmonious board and budget process in Broward County. There, new superintendent Jim Notter, according to Shah, is more solicitous of the board than Crew. He also began last year to make larger cutbacks in anticipation of state cuts.
The implications I derive from the coverage and reader letters is that Crew may have been more focused on pushing educational improvements, despite the new budget realities. ''We're at a crossroads here,'' board chairman Agustín Barrera says in a July 16 story by Kathleen McGrory that nicely lists a lot of the budget and political issues. ``We're being funded for basic education, and that's what we're going to have to provide.''
Wow. If that's true, where are the follow-up stories on the implications of what that means not just for schoolchildren, but for South Florida in a globally competitive information age? School Board members and state legislators can hide from confronting real issues, but The Miami Herald should not.
Another difficult budget issue readers deserved to know more about concerns withholding teacher raises and/or firing hundreds of teachers. What are the implications of Crew's whopping proposal of front-office cuts of 30 percent?
CRITICAL QUESTIONS
Board member Renier Díaz de la Portilla says in one story that Crew was responsible for ''a mistake classifying special-needs students that contributed to a $66 million overage in the 2007-08 budget.'' He says: ''I don't think taxpayers should continue to foot the bill for his incompetence and negligence.'' OK. But I as a reader want the impartial Herald to tell me what the truth is about this mysterious overage. Is this charge demagoguery, or did Crew make an egregious mistake?
The damage to Crew is done by leaving the charge standing and unchallenged.
Many letter writers and online comments say a Cuban-American vendetta is behind the attacks on Crew because of earlier alleged slights. Marquez persuasively reports in a column that the blame is exaggerated, and that Crew was at fault for not winning over those parts of the Cuban community opposed to him. Still, this sensitive issue and the role of Cuban talk radio deserved more reporting.
After Crew barely survived a vote last month on his tenure, reporter Matthew Pinzur brought some needed perspective to what at least Crew's weakened status means. Calling it a ''dark soap opera that has polarized the community and shoved educational issues off stage.'' Pinzur writes: ''The most vital question is whether the heady politics that produced Monday's 5-4 vote will color every future policy debate of Crew's tenure.'' It might be possible, others say, but Pinzur himself concludes: ``Navigating such narrow political waters can be exhaustingly time-consuming and require a level of compromise and tongue-biting that Crew has rarely shown.''
Now that is good analysis. Readers should have had more of that.
http://www.miamiherald.com
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Commentary: On Black Leadership, Black Politics, and the U.S. Immigration Debate
Below is a link (from the http://www.nassoc.orgwebsite) essay about Black Politics in the context of the immigration debate. The author analyzes some common arguments that typically position the Black and immigrant/Latina/o community against one another. -Dr. Louie F. Rodriguez
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nassoc.org/blog/soulsimmigration.pdf
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.nassoc.org/blog/soulsimmigration.pdf
Monday, July 21, 2008
Sleepy Dade School Board voting at 3 a.m. (from Miami Hearld)
EDUCATION
Sleepy Dade School Board voting at 3 a.m.
All-night meetings are becoming the norm for the School Board as it tackles budget shortfalls, but experts say 3 a.m. is no time to be voting.
BY KATHLEEN McGRORY
kmcgrory@MiamiHerald.com
Miami-Dade School Board member Ana Rivas Logan rubbed her eyes and yawned. Vice Chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman stood up to stretch her legs. Others on the dais were bleary-eyed.
It was nearing midnight and only about a dozen die-hard spectators remained seated in the once-crowded School Board Administrative Building auditorium. One man was snoring.
Last Tuesday's meeting finally ended around 12:30 a.m. -- more than 14 hours after the board first convened at a 10 a.m. pre-meeting workshop.
As far as the last few assemblages went, it was a relatively early finish:
The previous month's meeting had lasted until 3:30 a.m. The one before that until just after 3 a.m.
''I couldn't even read my own notes,'' board member Marta Pérez said, two days after the July meeting. ``My eyes were shutting.''
With scores of budget issues to hash out, the past few gatherings of the Miami-Dade School Board have become all-night affairs.
In Broward County, where School Board meetings start at 10 a.m. instead of 1 p.m., sessions have also run long, lasting until 7:30 p.m. on several occasions in recent months.
While the meetings may be critical for a school system, doctors say the marathon meetings are not ideal venues for decision making.
''If you're not rested, you are not going to be able to make the same kind of careful and thoughtful decisions that you would make if you were fully awake,'' said Roberto Sassi, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
''You are much more likely to make mistakes,'' he added.
One board member agrees: ''By the time it gets to the end of the night, the important questions are not being asked,'' said board member Ana Rivas Logan. ``The debate is not as on-cue as it should be because everyone is tired.''
In years past, it was not uncommon for Miami-Dade School Board meetings to run until 10 p.m., spokesman John Schuster said.
But back-to-back 3 a.m. finishes?
''These past few meetings have definitely been some of the latest,'' Schuster said.
The district's budget woes are partly to blame in Miami-Dade.
For months, the board has struggled to balance its $5.5 billion budget, which is due to the state Department of Education by September.
Meetings have been made up of intense -- and often lengthy -- debates over what to cut and what to save. And as Superintendent Rudy Crew has turned to layoffs, hundreds of employees have appeared to speak before the board, pleading for their jobs.
Adding to the tension, the board has been sharply divided between those who support Crew and those who don't. And with four members seeking reelection in August, small disagreements have evolved into high-stakes battles.
''There's a clear dividing line right now and that's the superintendent,'' said Brian Peterson, a Florida International University professor who edits a daily newsletter called the Miami Education Review.
''Board members can't agree to be sensible,'' Peterson said.
The extra long meetings haven't been unique to Miami-Dade.
Throughout Florida, school boards have been burning the midnight oil to balance their budgets, said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association.
NOT SURPRISED
While Blanton hadn't heard of any meetings lasting quite as long as those in Miami-Dade County, he wasn't surprised.
''It's only natural that the meetings are going to be longer in Dade because the budget is so large,'' Blanton said. ``It's going to take a lot of delving into the budget to make the proper cuts.''
Linda Embrey, a spokeswoman for the National School Boards Association, said budget discussions have been sending school board meetings into extra innings nationwide. ''These very late meetings are definitely not the norm,'' she said.
Experts, however, say making big budget decisions after 14 hours of meeting is far from ideal.
For one, the time of night presents a problem, said Sassi, the University of Miami psychiatrist.
''Most of the School Board members are not night-shift workers,'' Sassi said. ``So 3 a.m. is a time at which most of them would be sleeping. Their bodies are not prepared to make big decisions then.''
Some people are more resilient than others, Sassi said. And some can stay alert by drinking coffee or taking afternoon naps.
''But the truth is, people are more likely to be impulsive and less likely to be thorough after they've been awake that long,'' he said.
It's a bad idea from a public administration standpoint, too, said Michael Milakovich, a professor of political science at UM.
''People can't be that sharp after being locked in a room for 12 hours,'' he said.
The long meetings have caused some unrest on the board. For the past three months, board members haven't had a chance to propose their own items until the early hours of the morning.
SUGGESTION DIES
Last month, board member Pérez suggested that actions proposed by board members be brought to the floor earlier. The item failed in a close vote.
''It's very frustrating,'' Pérez said. ``You prepare to present those items, but by that time, you know your colleagues are exhausted. The public is exhausted, too. And ultimately, what happens is those items get swept under the rug.''
An earlier start is not necessarily a solution. In Broward, that's a source of controversy as some board members say some members of the public can't attend the hearings.
In Miami-Dade, many wishing to speak sign up but by the time their name is called, they're home asleep.
With the budget crisis unresolved, observers don't expect the lengthy meetings in Miami-Dade to end anytime soon.
Said Sassi: ``If they could plan and spread out the meetings, that would make more sense.''
If that isn't possible, those trapped must consider power naps, fresh air and coffee, but he warns: ``There's only so much the brain can do for us.''
Miami Herald staff writer Nirvi Shah contributed to this report.
Sleepy Dade School Board voting at 3 a.m.
All-night meetings are becoming the norm for the School Board as it tackles budget shortfalls, but experts say 3 a.m. is no time to be voting.
BY KATHLEEN McGRORY
kmcgrory@MiamiHerald.com
Miami-Dade School Board member Ana Rivas Logan rubbed her eyes and yawned. Vice Chairwoman Perla Tabares Hantman stood up to stretch her legs. Others on the dais were bleary-eyed.
It was nearing midnight and only about a dozen die-hard spectators remained seated in the once-crowded School Board Administrative Building auditorium. One man was snoring.
Last Tuesday's meeting finally ended around 12:30 a.m. -- more than 14 hours after the board first convened at a 10 a.m. pre-meeting workshop.
As far as the last few assemblages went, it was a relatively early finish:
The previous month's meeting had lasted until 3:30 a.m. The one before that until just after 3 a.m.
''I couldn't even read my own notes,'' board member Marta Pérez said, two days after the July meeting. ``My eyes were shutting.''
With scores of budget issues to hash out, the past few gatherings of the Miami-Dade School Board have become all-night affairs.
In Broward County, where School Board meetings start at 10 a.m. instead of 1 p.m., sessions have also run long, lasting until 7:30 p.m. on several occasions in recent months.
While the meetings may be critical for a school system, doctors say the marathon meetings are not ideal venues for decision making.
''If you're not rested, you are not going to be able to make the same kind of careful and thoughtful decisions that you would make if you were fully awake,'' said Roberto Sassi, professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of Miami School of Medicine.
''You are much more likely to make mistakes,'' he added.
One board member agrees: ''By the time it gets to the end of the night, the important questions are not being asked,'' said board member Ana Rivas Logan. ``The debate is not as on-cue as it should be because everyone is tired.''
In years past, it was not uncommon for Miami-Dade School Board meetings to run until 10 p.m., spokesman John Schuster said.
But back-to-back 3 a.m. finishes?
''These past few meetings have definitely been some of the latest,'' Schuster said.
The district's budget woes are partly to blame in Miami-Dade.
For months, the board has struggled to balance its $5.5 billion budget, which is due to the state Department of Education by September.
Meetings have been made up of intense -- and often lengthy -- debates over what to cut and what to save. And as Superintendent Rudy Crew has turned to layoffs, hundreds of employees have appeared to speak before the board, pleading for their jobs.
Adding to the tension, the board has been sharply divided between those who support Crew and those who don't. And with four members seeking reelection in August, small disagreements have evolved into high-stakes battles.
''There's a clear dividing line right now and that's the superintendent,'' said Brian Peterson, a Florida International University professor who edits a daily newsletter called the Miami Education Review.
''Board members can't agree to be sensible,'' Peterson said.
The extra long meetings haven't been unique to Miami-Dade.
Throughout Florida, school boards have been burning the midnight oil to balance their budgets, said Wayne Blanton, executive director of the Florida School Boards Association.
NOT SURPRISED
While Blanton hadn't heard of any meetings lasting quite as long as those in Miami-Dade County, he wasn't surprised.
''It's only natural that the meetings are going to be longer in Dade because the budget is so large,'' Blanton said. ``It's going to take a lot of delving into the budget to make the proper cuts.''
Linda Embrey, a spokeswoman for the National School Boards Association, said budget discussions have been sending school board meetings into extra innings nationwide. ''These very late meetings are definitely not the norm,'' she said.
Experts, however, say making big budget decisions after 14 hours of meeting is far from ideal.
For one, the time of night presents a problem, said Sassi, the University of Miami psychiatrist.
''Most of the School Board members are not night-shift workers,'' Sassi said. ``So 3 a.m. is a time at which most of them would be sleeping. Their bodies are not prepared to make big decisions then.''
Some people are more resilient than others, Sassi said. And some can stay alert by drinking coffee or taking afternoon naps.
''But the truth is, people are more likely to be impulsive and less likely to be thorough after they've been awake that long,'' he said.
It's a bad idea from a public administration standpoint, too, said Michael Milakovich, a professor of political science at UM.
''People can't be that sharp after being locked in a room for 12 hours,'' he said.
The long meetings have caused some unrest on the board. For the past three months, board members haven't had a chance to propose their own items until the early hours of the morning.
SUGGESTION DIES
Last month, board member Pérez suggested that actions proposed by board members be brought to the floor earlier. The item failed in a close vote.
''It's very frustrating,'' Pérez said. ``You prepare to present those items, but by that time, you know your colleagues are exhausted. The public is exhausted, too. And ultimately, what happens is those items get swept under the rug.''
An earlier start is not necessarily a solution. In Broward, that's a source of controversy as some board members say some members of the public can't attend the hearings.
In Miami-Dade, many wishing to speak sign up but by the time their name is called, they're home asleep.
With the budget crisis unresolved, observers don't expect the lengthy meetings in Miami-Dade to end anytime soon.
Said Sassi: ``If they could plan and spread out the meetings, that would make more sense.''
If that isn't possible, those trapped must consider power naps, fresh air and coffee, but he warns: ``There's only so much the brain can do for us.''
Miami Herald staff writer Nirvi Shah contributed to this report.
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