Homeless Woman Arrested For Sending Her 5-Year-Old To School & Embezzled By the School District

Tanya McDowell, who is homeless, faces 20 years in jail and a $15,000 fine for first-degree larceny, Change.Org reported yesterday. Her crime: “stealing her son’s education.” McDowell either sleeps in a minivan or shelter with her son A.J. Without a permanent address of her own, she used her babysitter’s address to sign him up for kindergarten. Norwalk authorities have said that because A.J. doesn’t live in their district it is illegal for him to attend their schools. However, this argument is specious as he sleeps in a Norwalk Emergency Shelter.

McDowell’s son attended Brookside Elementary for four months before being kicked out. In that time he did not miss a day of class and, according to his mother, loved his school. The school system wants McDowell to pay $15,686 for the educational services she “stole.” However, this figure is what Norwalk spends per student for an entire school year (see The Daily Norwalk), whereas A.J. was only enrolled for half of a school year, suggesting that Norwalk is trying to embezzle $7,843 from McDowell.

This is now the second case in the past six months of a poor mother facing jail time simply for trying to enroll her child in public school. Kelley Williams-Bolar had a similar experience in Ohio. (See Modern School: Black Mom Jailed for Sending Kids to White School—Grandpa Guilty of Stealing White Kids’ Education). Ohio Governor John Kasich was asked by activists to pardon Williams-Bolar, but he punted, sending the case to the Parole Board. Their decision is expected this summer, according to Change.Org.

As with Williams-Bolar, Change.Org has taken on McDowell’s cause and has organized a petition to get her exonerated. They say that Norwalk Mayor Richard Moccia has received emails in support of McDowell from across the country. However, Moccia has not shown much empathy for her. On the contrary, he told FOX News that she "not a poor, picked-upon homeless person. . . [she] is an ex con, and somehow the city of Norwalk is made into the ogre in this. She has a checkered past at best."

McDowells’ past is irrelevant to the case. She has no history of trying to take advantage of the school system and her past convictions do not justify denying her son the right to a decent education. Rather than attacking her character, McDowell should be commended for her extraordinary resolve and courage in trying to get her son enrolled in school despite the incredible challenges of being homeless and single. Dealing with educational bureaucracies is no walk in the park even for two-parent families with homes and steady incomes. Furthermore, she had every right to enroll her child at Brookside. Not only were she and her son sleeping at a Norwalk shelter, which would make them Norwalk residents, but the McKinney-Vento Act gives the parents or guardians of a homeless child the right to attend the school in the district where they currently reside, according to the Connecticut Post. Connecticut currently has $230,780 in McKinney-Vento funds to offset the cost of educating homeless kids. Furthermore, the law requires that schools continue to keep children enrolled until disputes have been resolved.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

(Page 1 of 2)

McDowell enrolled A.J. at Brookside Elementary in Norwalk, using the address of a friend who babysat for them at the Roodner Court public housing complex. The Stamford Advocate reported that the friend was evicted from her apartment as a result of the investigation, even though McDowell claims she never lived there.

The Bigger Picture

There are over 1.35 million children who experience homelessness each year in the U.S., according to the Department of Education. Homeless people have a difficult time providing stability for their children, moving as many as 12 times as often as people who have permanent housing. This puts their children at a huge disadvantage academically. According to the Educational Testing Service, 41% of students who changed schools frequently were below grade level in reading and 33% were below grade level in math, compared to 26% and 17%, respectively, for those who remained at the same schools (See 8 Delusions About Education).  They miss out on the benefit of establishing relationships with teachers. They are less likely to have a quiet, organized place to do homework. They suffer stress from financial and housing insecurity and from elevated levels of violence. According to the DOE, domestic violence affects as many as 63% of homeless parents. Prior to the passing of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, up to 50% of homeless children were not attending school regularly.

To see the details of The McKinney-Vento Act, please click here.

Today in Labor History—April 28

Fletcher Christian's Home (public domain)

April 28, 1789 – Fletcher Christian led a group of mutineers against Captain William Bligh’s brutal working conditions on the HMS Bounty. The story was later retold by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall in their trilogy. “Mutiny on the Bounty,” was, of course, the most famous of the trilogy. The descendents of Christian and the other mutineers live today on the South Pacific island of Pitcairn. (From the Daily Bleed)

Jules Bonot, After the Cops Got Him

April 28, 1912 – Jules Bonnot, French leader of the anarchist/illegalist Bonnot Gang, was killed in a police shootout. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1914 – 181-192 workers died in a coal mine collapse disaster at Eccles, West Virginia. The mine was owned by the Guggenheim family. (From the Daily Bleed and Wikipedia)

April 28, 1919 – A bomb plot was discovered in which over 30 dynamite bombs were to be sent people "on the anarchists' enemies list," including U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who had been rounding up, imprisoning and deporting anarchists and union activists. Other targets included  J. P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1924 – 119 workers died in the Benwood, West Virginia coal mine disaster. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1945 – Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini was hanged by partisans. (From the Daily Bleed, which also asked the question: Was he hung well??) 

Execution of Mussolini (Click here for newsreel footage)

April 28, 1953 – After overthrowing the democratically elected government Iran, the CIA installed the Shah, launching a 25-year reign of terror against the Persian people. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1965 – 20,000 U.S. Marines invaded the Dominican Republic to prevent democracy and to prop up the military junta. (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1967 – Muhammad Ali refused to be drafted to fight in Vietnam and was thus stripped of his boxing title within hours. His justification for refusing to go:  "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” (From the Daily Bleed)

April 28, 1970 – Congress approved the creation of OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (only to watch idly as it was gutted by Reagan, and again by his successors). The AFL-CIO declared April 28 “Workers Memorial Day” to honor the hundreds of thousands of working people killed and injured on the job every year. (From Workday Minnesota)

April 28, 1977 – The Mothers of the Disappeared held their first rally at Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires. Under the U.S.-supported military dictatorship, 20,000 to 30,000 people were murdered or disappeared in Argentina between 1976 and 1983. (From the Daily Bleed)

Rick Snyder Likes It Longer, Harder, Faster and Cut

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder confirmed Tuesday that he wants to impose a merit pay system for teachers. The Detroit News suggested that his goal was to reward excellent teachers to keep them in the classroom, rather than seeing them move into higher-paid jobs in school administration. Since few teachers successfully move into administration, Snyder either has a very delusional sense of this “problem” or he believes there are very few “excellent” teachers who deserve merit raises.

Considering that he plans on slashing K-12 funding by $470 per student, there will be a lot less money available to pay teachers. Therefore, when he talks about “merit pay,” what he is really talking about is pay cuts for the majority of teachers, and salary stability for “excellent” teachers. However, excellent teachers will have to become much more excellent to keep their meager wages. The budget cuts will make it much more difficult for all teachers to do a good job, and will result in many teachers spending even more than they already do out of pocket to purchase supplies and putting in even longer hours to help their struggling students.

Snyder implied as much, claiming that despite the “huge” amount of resources going into education, it is not achieving the needed results. Therefore, he wants teachers to work longer, harder and faster. He hinted at a longer school year and cuts to summer vacation. He also suggested more online learning, which will result in cuts to teaching jobs.

Apparently, Snyder also has a car fetish, saying he wants more “dashboards” to measure school performance, or perhaps this is just how Michigan politicians talk. Showing his hip safe sex side, he implied that charter schools be capped (ostensibly to keep them from spreading STDs to traditional public schools), but in sign of mercy he suggested that the cap be raised so that they can swell and engorge without turning blue.

Gates & Broad Purchase LAUSD One Boss At A Time

Los Angeles Unified School District new superintendent, John Deasy, has hired five new over-priced administrators at a time when LAUSD is slashing jobs and educational services and faces a $400 million deficit. The new administrators will be partially funded by philanthropists, particularly the Broad and Gates Foundations, according to the Los Angeles Times. The school board approved all five administrators in a closed door session.

Not surprisingly, Deasy chose the appointments to increase teacher accountability and support the creation of more charter schools. Both goals are consistent with the Broad/Gates agenda of privatizing public school systems and exerting greater managerial control over teachers. Furthermore, many of the new administrators, as well as some of the returning ones, have backgrounds working for charter schools and no doubt share these goals. All of which confirms that Deasy has become LAUSD’s new educational hit man, owned by Gates and Broad, given the task of gutting LAUSD for the benefit of private educational profiteers.

Not all administrators are on board with this agenda. The Times quoted Judy Perez, head of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, who said she was concerned about where Deasy’s loyalties will lie. "Broad basically has said a number of times publicly that he wants to dismantle Los Angeles Unified."

Broad has already been heavily involved in manipulation of LAUSD. He had been paying for several of former Superintendent Ramon Cortines’ aids. He also paid $250,000 for consultants to help with Deasy’s transition, according to the LA Times. However, the 4LAKids blog puts that figure at $775,000, including $500,000 to look for inefficiencies in the budget, money that would have been much better spent directly in the classroom. The Gates Foundation will pay for a data specialist (an expensive and unnecessary factotum who will most likely waste time and money obsessing over value-added scores. Both Gates and Broad have funded numerous private charter schools in the district.

Overall, Deasy’s team will cost nearly $1 million to pay six-figure salaries to numerous unnecessary bureaucrats, like Maria Casillas, a retired senior L.A. Unified administrator who runs the right wing nonprofit Families in Schools, who he has resurrected to serve as parent and community liaison for a bloated $170,000 a year. Casillas is also a supported of NCLB and is anti-union.

Mumia Death Sentence Ruled Unconstitutional

(Image by jcrakow)

Mumia Abu-Jamal won a new lease on life Tuesday when the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously decided that his death sentence was unconstitutional, Democracy Now reported this morning. This was the second time the court has agreed with the lower court judge who set aside Abu-Jamal’s death sentence because of biased judicial instructions that encouraged jurors to choose death rather than a life sentence. As a result of the Court’s decision, Abu-Jamal could get a new sentencing hearing. This could result in a life sentence. So far, though, he is still being held on death row.

While this is great news in an otherwise frustrating and depressing case, Abu-Jamal should be immediately released, as his initial conviction was based on trumped up charges by the police and a lynch mob climate created by a racist judge. Abu-Jamal was convicted in 1982 of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. The original judge, Judge Sabo, had publicly declared that he was pro-prosecution, which draws into question the fairness of the trial. He also refused to allow Abu-Jamal to represent himself and prevented his counsel from presenting much of its evidence and excluded blacks from the jury. Furthermore, a stenographer had heard Sabo say, “I’m going to fry the n---r.” It later came out that witnesses had been intimidated into testifying against Abu-Jamal and, in 2001, Arnold Beverley confessed that he was the one who shot Faulkner.

In the Democracy Now report, Mumia’s attorney, Judith Ritter, said that the National Academy of Sciences has discredited much of the forensic evidence that courts have been using for years, including ballistics testimony used to convict Abu-Jamal for the murder of. Based on this, Ritter has called for a new trial. However, Abu-Jamal has been on death row for nearly 30 years, despite considerable evidence that he is innocent and despite the evidence that the judge was biased and the jury had been tampered with. The courts have continually had no problem with these “anomalies” or that someone else has admitted committing the crime. Indeed, one judge said that Abu-Jamal was convicted by a jury, so Judge Sabo’s racism was not relevant.

Abu-Jamal’s conviction was politically motivated and the unwillingness of the courts to reverse the biased conviction is probably due to the fact that he is a former Black Panther and a journalist who sympathetically covered such unpopular movements as the MOVE organization in Philadelphia. The current legal challenge, if effective, will reduce his sentence from death to life in prison. However, if successful, Ritter could get him a new trial in which the evidence absolving him of the crime can finally be heard.