The District 150 PR machine is in over drive

The end of another contentious year for the Lathan Administration, finds the District 150 public relations machine in virtual overdrive.

The end of the year rally, which was held by the Peoria Federation of Teachers, may have left the Superintendent feeling a bit vulnerable. Since the rally, she has appeared on 1470 WMBD radio, WEEK TV 25, WMBD TV 31, and although I did not see it, I am willing to bet an appearance was made on WHOI TV.

The School District also did something else that was rather unprecedented… they took out a full page ad in the local newspaper, at a cost of $2,500. I don't take the local newspaper, so I didn't see the ad. However, I am told the ad outlined the District’s accomplishments since the 2010 advent of the Lathan Administration. The info below was found on the District's website.

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Thank you soooo much for this wonderful opportunity!

A chance to clear up my long standing Library fines AND benefit the Loaves and Fishes program? I'm getting a box of canned goods together right now!

Food for Fines June 1-9

If you’ve forgotten to renew those library items and accumulated some fines, here is your chance to clear your account while benefitting others. From June 1 through 9, Peoria Public Library will accept non-perishable food items or paper products for overdue fines. For each item donated two dollars will be credited to your account. In other words, if six dollars are owed, three items will clear the account.

All donations will benefit The First United Methodist Church Loaves and Fishes program which feeds the hungry in Peoria. To participate, simply bring your donation to any Peoria Public Library Information Desk or the Bookmobile.

To participate in the Food for Fines program, the library materials must have been returned. If an item is lost or damaged, costs and fees will still apply, although donations can be applied to the overdue fine portion of the bill.

No glass items or expired food items will be accepted. Benefit Peoria’s hungry, clear up overdue accounts and help Peoria Public Library clear records from June 1 – 9! For questions about Peoria Public Library accounts, call 309-497-2167.

This post is for Dennis in Peoria

Recently, Dennis in Peoria suggested that Emerge Peoria has a problem with too many Anonymous commenters. While I understand his point of view - my point of view is that unless you are sitting behind the computer screen, with the person who is commenting at the time - everybody is anonymous, including Dennis in Peoria.

                    

NEW YORK STATE LEGISLATORS WANT TO BAN ANONYMOUS COMMENTS

The cowboys in the New York State Assembly and Senate are trying to wrassle the wild from the internet frontier. And their lasso is spinning directly towards you, internet. The bill, called the Internet Protection Act, was introduced on Monday by co-sponsors Republican Assemblyman Jim Conte and Republican Senator Thomas O’Mara. In an attempt to “crack down on cyber-bullying,” they’re going after anonymous commenters on all New York websites, including:

“social networks, blog forums, message boards or any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.”

So basically, all of the internet. They want every comment ever made on New York City websites to make sure the poster’s:

“IP address, legal name, and home address are accurate. All web site administrators shall have a contact number or e-mail address posted…clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted.”

Because the one thing we want on the internet is for everyone to know what we’re doing on the internet (hi DHS!). Conte is also looking out for your Yelp reviews. He wrote that “in addition to cracking down on cyber-bullying, the bill also prevents people from posting anonymous criticism of local businesses,” which really should be the responsibility of the individual website. Leave small businesses alone! We don’t need even more government, right? This might not be the ultimate reason, though, because Conte does admit that removing anonymity is an attempt to curtail “mean-spirited and baseless political attacks.” He might be forgetting Santorum’s “Google problem” was far from anonymous. Source

UPDATED: Huge turnout to protest at tonight's BOE meeting

                

Reports are that upwards of 450 - 500 protesters have shown up at this evening's Board of Education Meeting, which started at 6:00 p.m. at the Valeska Hinton Early Learning Center. The protesters are District 150 bus drivers, paraprofessionals and teachers. 

Video above, from Tuesday night's protest and the Superintendent's Response to the protest, below.

District 150 rumors picked up from the blog...

Check out some of the latest rumors I am hearing about District 150:

• On Tuesday, May 1, 2012, substitutes came in for reading teachers, because they were scheduled for Professional Development (PD). The teachers were sitting out at board room ready for PD, but no one was there. An email went out at 9:00 a.m. that morning saying that the meeting was cancelled and rescheduled for Thursday. The teachers sat there at the board room for an hour and had no idea what was going on.

• Some teachers are being offered dollars as part of a grievance. The District is saying they would give them money and change their rating if the teachers would agree to resign instead of being fired.

• Principal Noly Branscumb has been moved from Roosevelt to Glen Oak.

• Principal Jamie Brown is moving from Hines to Roosevelt.

• Assistant Principal at Franklin has been resigned (have not heard where to).

• ELITE will be going to Glen Oak.

• Carolyn Nunn (Trewyn) is retiring in June but has already been told she's getting hired back. You may recall, that Nunn is the Assistant Principal who is alleged to have slapped a child.

Don't forget tonight's School Board Meeting, which is being held at the Valeska Hinton Center. I am being told A LOT of teachers and support staff will be showing up to protest against the Lathan Administration.

Find out What Black Men Think, tonight

Why so many vehicles at 150 Administration "overnight Tuesday"?

Tires were slashed on numerous Peoria School District 150 vehicles overnight Tuesday, causing an estimated $4,500 in damage.

Sixteen vehicles at the district's administration building at 3202 Wisconsin Ave. were vandalized, according to a police report. Nineteen tires were cut, resulting in $4,554 in damage. Source

Peoria Federation of Teachers to picket Tuesday's BOE Meeting

... I heard that too, Anonymous in Ptown, from a pretty reliable source (not Marvin).

The Peoria Federation of Teachers plan to picket/rally at Tuesday's Board of Education Meeting. The meeting will be held on May 29, 2012, at the Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center, at 6:00 p.m.  Teachers are expected to picket/rally from 5:30 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. The teachers do not plan on entering the meeting.

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A tale of two hoodies: Mark Zuckerberg vs. Trayvon Martin

In my opinion, the following blog post is so significant, it is my hope that every black blogger in the blogosphere will re-post it:

Why not invoke Charles Dickens given the dramatic times in which we are living? Two young men -- one still a minor. Two hoodies. One dies in his hoodie and the other becomes an overnight billionaire.

Trayvon Martin and Mark Zuckerberg both sported the hooded sweatshirts, known as hoodies, that are near-universal gear for those under 30, and beyond. Hey, even I've got a couple and maybe you do, too. People who support George Zimmerman claim that leftists want to make Trayvon Martin's death into a race issue when it is not -- even to the degree of blaming the victim for being killed by Zimmerman because he was wearing an ubiquitous hoodie.

"I think what's far more significant is what Trayvon Martin looked like on that night, Bill. Aside from the fact that he's dressed in that thug wear -- look at the size of him, he's not a little kid."

Geraldo Rivera to Bill O'Reilly Fox News

Never mind that George Zimmerman outweighed his teenage victim Trayvon by about 100 lbs, reportedly. The hoodie made Trayvon look like a hood justifying an attack by a neighborhood vigilante. Yet when Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Wall Street during the roadshow run-up to Facebook's IPO, his choice of a hoodie instead of a stiff suit was lauded as culturally cool.

Sure, Zuck caught some static from Wall Street haters who wear ties, but most saw his casual attire represented via hoodie as a nod to Silicon Valley style where what's in your brain is more important than what you're wearing. Indeed, Zuckerberg's hoodie is standard issue at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters and bears a special mandala design inside that expresses FB's design construct and flow.

Star Jones recently pointed out the double standard inherent in how two young men wearing hoodies were treated in the public eye by the media. She was dismissed as just another angry black woman by others on the show, and right-leaning bloggers on the 'net.

 

But does Star have a point? Trayvon committed no crime -- he was merely walking home one fateful night after a trip to 7-11 for Skittles -- yet was accosted by a stranger as suspicious in part, it's claimed, because of his hoodie. When Mark Zukerberg wore a hoodie to launch Facebook's public stock offering, he was praised as an icon of a new generation representing the best of American values.

We can see this mirror in law enforcement practices. Study after study shows that young whites are more likely to use marijuana than blacks or Latinos, yet blacks are at least seven times more likely to get arrested for the same offense. Mark Zuckerberg was probably not a victim of New York City's [or Peoria's] terrible "Stop and Frisk" policy during his recent trip to Wall Street's halls of power. But who's the real gangsta here?

Some Wall Street analysts are questioning possible unethical behavior by Facebook's executives and its partner Morgan Stanley in "selective dissemination of information" that gave insider knowledge to some large investors but not others. FB's stock is being called "muppet bait for the masses" who didn't know that Facebook's quarter one earnings estimates had been cut mid-launch. The stock is now sinking like a stone in the NASDAQ stock echange. It's not clear how much Zuckerberg himself knew about the alleged financial shenanigans and shakedowns. But we all must be left wondering -- who would Geraldo name as the hood wearing "thug wear" now?

It's a tale of two hoodies where guilt and innocence are turned upside down, where one young man ends up rich and another ends up dead -- depending on whether you're white or you're black.

Cheryl Contee writes as Jill Tubman for the award-winning & top-ranked black political blog JackAndJillPolitics.com, which she co-founded in 2006. She is also the co-founder of Fission Strategy, which provides innovative social media & mobile services to nonprofits and foundations. Cheryl specializes in online advocacy, engagement, and communications. Follow Cheryl Contee on Twitter at @ch3ryl.

Peoria Police “…this is a trend throughout the city"

I consider myself somewhat of a trend spotter. The yellow jeans trend is hot - I have a pair of those myself and I have only seen one other person trying to pull them off (to date). However, the current crime trend we are seeing in Peoria is NOT HOT. 

"Police released its first quarter crime index. Property crimes, including burglaries, arson, theft and motor vehicle theft, are up nearly 20 percent. Overall, crime is up 21 percent from this time last year. Burglaries, alone, are up nearly 50 percent year-to-date. Aggravated assaults and robberies have also seen increases in the city." Source

Imagine wearing your trendy, yellow jeans to attend a concert at the Civic Center and you get mugged before you make it to the safe confines of the Catwalk - that would not be cute.

Don't even try and blame the increase in crime on the weather. Put the blame where it should be, inside the horseshoe.

Evaluating Lathan

Teachers are conducting their evaluation of Lathan, teachers union President Bob Darling told District 150 board members Monday. Lathan and board members will receive the evaluation and Lathan will have 90 days to respond . The teachers' evaluation of Lathan will not be made public, Darling said, "because it's a personnel issue." Source

If the results of last week's poll question about the Superintendent of Schools and her administration is any indicator, we can pretty much guess what the teacher's evaluation will look like.

The poll reveals that 8% of respondents believe the Super has found it and a over whelming 91% believes that she has...

the results of this poll are not scientific. :)

A poll: "Has Lathan found it, or lost it?"

"… once a superintendent loses the principals, those middle managers charged with implementing the vision, it can be game over on achieving that agenda. There is a balance to be had. Has Lathan found it, or lost it?"

PJStar Editorial

Is our illustrious Superintendent of Schools on the cusp of finding a balance? Take the Emerge Peoria poll. 

Local education advocates receive the ACLU's Sam Belfer Community Service Award

Last night, the Peoria chapter of the ACLU of Illinois held its 51st Annual Meeting at the Ivy Club. 

During the business portion of the meeting, they presented this year's 2012 Sam Belfer Community Service Award to two Peoria education activists, "Terry Knapp and Sharon Crews, Peoria activists who speak out at Peoria District 150 School Board meetings, to hold the district accountable and compel transparency in the public interest. They recently spent $300 to obtain documents on class sizes using the Freedom of Information Act to determine whether students are receiving equitable educations. Information they obtained on student discipline led to discussion by board members." Source

Belfer Award Comments
by Elaine Hopkins

At every meeting of the Peoria District 150 School Board, two Peoria activists, Sharon Crews and Terry Knapp, speak out to encourage the district to be accountable to the public, the taxpayers, and the parents and children the district serves.  They recognize the vital role of the public schools in fostering democracy. This year they are receiving the Peoria ACLU’s 2012 Belfer Award, for their activism in using free speech in the public interest.

Both are retired teachers in the district who remain committed to serving the public.  They talk with people who know what is  taking place in District 150, and file Freedom of Information requests to obtain documents to find more information that otherwise never reaches the public. They then share the information with the board and the public and speak about it.

They recently spent $300 of their own money to get documents on class sizes.  A request for documents on student discipline spurred the district to begin issuing discipline information to the board, apparently for the first time. A board member then commented on the discipline information.

When Knapp and Crews speak, their comments are always well researched, and usually go beyond opinion to be based on facts. They also stand up for the rights of students and teachers, including the due process rights of those who have been fired or disciplined.

Knapp, formerly a science teacher, was the first member of the public to condemn at a board meeting the censorship of an editorial and cartoon in the student newspaper at Richwoods High School .

Crews, a former English teacher, read the district’s recent Remarkable Times newsletter and noted more than 60 grammatical errors there, which sets a very bad example for students in the district. Pretty remarkable!

The district has tried to silence them, by taking the meetings off live cable TV and refusing to webcast the meetings, though that could be done inexpensively by students who would benefit from the training.

The district arbitrarily shifts the times and places of the meetings between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., and requires anyone wishing to speak to sign up before the meeting begins, to thwart latecomers.

The district arbitrarily cuts back the public comment time limit from 5 minutes to 2 minutes then 3 minutes at some meetings.  At one meeting in a school gym, there was no sound system so the large audience could not hear what was taking place. None of these tactics have discouraged Knapp and Crews.

They are there at the sometimes long, boring and highly scripted meetings, watching, listening, and commenting on what is taking place, to encourage transparency in the public interest.

Hat tip to Diane Vespa for photo and comments.

Serving at local food bank gives area Superintendents an idea how difficult life is for many of the families they serve

The work of educational leaders in the community never ends, but when you are in a leadership role, you have to be flexible and want to make a connection to the community and students you serve...

About two weekends ago, local school superintendents prepared 3,200 packets of food at the Midwest Food Bank in Peoria.

The group of 17 volunteers was from the Central Illinois Valley region of the Illinois Association of School Administrators, an advocacy organization for superintendents and other school administrators. The region covers Peoria, Mason, Tazewell and Woodford counties.

Patrick Martin, superintendent of District 50 in Washington, helped organize the region's first service day project after hearing a presentation at a Rotary Club meeting about the food bank.  "Most superintendents are active in their own communities. We decided to do something on a larger scale as a group," he said.

It was the second time in a month that Roger Alvey, superintendent of Elmwood District 322, worked as a volunteer at the food bank. "Working there makes you realize you take a lot of things for granted, and how difficult life is for many families," he said.

The food bank is a not-for-profit, nondenominational organization that gathers food donations from national corporations and distributes them at no charge to social service organizations and at disaster sites.

Volunteers such as the school superintendents repackage donated food for distribution to food pantries and into disaster relief boxes.Source

Superintendents who volunteered at the food bank…

Patrick Martin, Washington District 50

Roger Alvey, Elmwood District 322

Chad Allaman, Washington District 51

John Asplund, Farmington Central District 265

Don Beard, Tremont District 702

Jeanne Davis, Creve Coeur District 76

Mike Dickson, North Pekin/Marquette Heights District 102

Tim Dotson, Limestone Walters District 316

Shannon Duling, Princeville District 326

Jim Dunnan, Washington District 308

Allan Gresham, Limestone District 310

Sam Light, Illini Bluffs District 327

Nick Polyak, Illinois Valley Central District 321

John Tignor, Washington District 52

Randy Toepke, Metamora District 122

Chad Wagner, Oak Grove District 68

Steve Yarnall, Deer Creek-Mackinaw District 701.