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  • Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery

    Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery


    Trump warned that he was prepared to take an active role in reviewing exhibits in the Smithsonian museums, especially the African-American Museum. Too many show bad portrayals of their nation, he complained. Think about it: is it possible to show slavery in a positive light?

    Trump’s insistence on purging the Smithsonian of the accurate portrayal of Black history is yet another example of his efforts to minimize and sanitize that history.

    The New York Times wrote that Trump is hostile to an honest confrontation with the past:

    Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.

    The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.

    And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

    CNN described Trump’s determination to compel museums to remove exhibitions of events that show shameful behavior by whites and the government:

    President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”

    In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.

    “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.

    Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

    The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.

    Bunch — who has served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since 2019 and is the first African American to hold the position — has made multiple comments about the importance of educating people about slavery through the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically. He told Smithsonian Magazine that part of the purpose of that museum “was to help a nation understand itself — an impossible task without the full recognition of the horrors of slavery.”

    Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”

    “Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House has asked the Smithsonian to provide a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.

    The Smithsonian declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. A White House official, asked about the attorney review process Trump described, said the president “will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable.”

    Still, Trump’s efforts to target colleges and universities — which he is now comparing to his focus on Smithsonian museums — has been even more aggressive. His administration has moved to strip federal funding from higher education institutions for a variety of reasons, including allegations of antisemitism and failure to comply with certain policy changes. Columbia University recently settled with the Trump administration for more than $220 million dollars and Trump has also been in a protracted battle with Harvard University after his administration froze $2 billion in federal funding.

    The Trump administration’s push to align federal support with his cultural agenda has extended beyond the nation’s capital. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities canceled tens of millions of dollars in federal grants earlier this year, affecting small museums, library initiatives, arts programs and academic research projects across the country.

    Trump has previously praised the Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he toured during his first term as president.

    “I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” Trump said during remarks at the museum in February 2017. Later that month, Trump said the museum “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.”

    Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with the administration’s agenda. He also tasked a former member of his legal team, attorney Lindsey Halligan, with helping to root out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian.

    “Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said.

    The Smithsonian began a review of its own in June, and has repeatedly stressed its commitment to being nonpartisan. The institution told CNN in July that it was committed to an “unbiased presentation of facts and history” and that it would “make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards.”

    The Smithsonian was established in the 1840s by the US with funds from the estate of James Smithson, a British scientist. As a unique trust instrumentality that is supported by federal funds, it is not an executive branch agency, which makes it a complex question whether the Trump administration has the ability to control its exhibits. It is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

    The fact that the Smithsonian is not an “executive branch agency” won’t deter Trump. He has ignored laws and the Constitution when they don’t support his agenda. Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Portrait Gallery is an executive agency. Yet Congress sat silently as Trump forced out their leaders.

    Trump is rapidly assuming control of every federal agency that was designed to be independent.

    No other President has attempted to do that.



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  • Parents of English learners in the dark about their children’s language progress

    Parents of English learners in the dark about their children’s language progress


    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón was always a very involved parent, from the time her children were in Head Start.

    She would volunteer in the classroom and sign up for parent committees throughout elementary and middle school.

    But Carbajal Salmerón didn’t realize that her children, who attend school in Pomona Unified, were still considered English learners after years of school, or how that might affect them. Then one day she received notification that her son had been reclassified as fluent and English proficient when he was in eighth grade.

    Her first question was, “Why hasn’t my daughter reclassified?” 

    Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia Mirón was younger and had never learned to speak Spanish fluently, in part because she had always spoken English with her older brother.

    “I couldn’t understand it,” Carbajal Salmerón said in Spanish. “My son was the first born and he only spoke Spanish when he entered school. But why would my daughter still be an English learner, if she had had a harder time learning Spanish?”

    Courtesy of Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón

    Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón (right) with her children Andrew and Mia Mirón at Mia’s eighth grade graduation.

    Parents of English learners are often unaware of their children’s progress learning the language, according to advocates from the Parent Organization Network, based in Los Angeles.

    The organization is launching a campaign to help parents learn to monitor their children’s progress and advocating for changes in how districts communicate the information to families.

    Students are classified as English learners when they first enroll in school if their parents speak a language other than English at home and they do not score high enough on the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). English learners have to continue to take the test every year, until they show proficiency in English, in addition to meeting other requirements, such as meeting grade level on state standardized tests in English language arts. At that point, they are reclassified as “fluent English proficient.”

    As long as students are classified as English learners, they must take English language development classes in addition to their regular classes. If they are not reclassified before middle and high school, those language classes can take up so much of their schedule that they cannot take as many electives as other students, and they may not be able to access as much academic content in other classes.

    Araceli Simeón, executive director of Parent Organization Network, said that parents often rely on report cards to monitor their children’s academic progress. “If they’re getting A’s and B’s, they don’t look at anything else,” she said.

    Districts have to send information to parents of English learners every year about their children’s progress on the ELPAC, but the reports are often sent in the mail, separate from a child’s report card. Even when parents do receive the scores, they do not always understand what they mean or what their children need to do in order to be reclassified.

    In addition, more and more districts are using online portals to share students’ scores on state standardized tests in reading, math and English language proficiency, Simeón said. Often, those portals can be difficult to navigate for parents who don’t speak English or aren’t as comfortable with technology. 

    “If you don’t know how to navigate that, then essentially years go by without you receiving a note about your child’s progress on the test,” Simeón said.

    Last year, staff from Parent Organization Network trained more than 80 parents in three districts – Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and Pomona Unified.

    In one of those trainings, Carbajal Salmerón learned for the first time about the process for students to be reclassified.

    “For the first time, someone explained to me the exam that they have to take once a year and that they have to learn how to write, listen, speak and read. The teachers had never told me that my daughter had a 3 in reading, for example, or a 2 in writing. No one had ever told me that,” said Carbajal Salmerón.

    Maribel Bautista is another parent who took the training. She has 14-year-old triplets in Long Beach Unified. All three were classified as English learners when they entered kindergarten because the family speaks Spanish at home. When Bautista would receive reports on how her triplets were doing in English, she assumed it was in English language arts, rather than learning the language itself. 

    When Bautista took training with Parent Organization Network and began to analyze the reports she had received, she realized that one of her triplets was reclassified in second grade and another in third, but one had never been reclassified, and he was in eighth grade.

    “I think the most important thing is explaining to parents what the classification of English learner means, why their kids are being placed there, and what steps they need to take to pass the exam before they go to middle school,” Bautista said in Spanish. “It’s about communication.”

    Courtesy of Maribel Bautista

    Triplets Nick, Jeson and Kendrick Figueroa attend school in Long Beach Unified.

    Asked what steps they are taking to help parents understand the reclassification process and their children’s progress, the districts where Parent Organization Network trained parents responded in different ways.

    The superintendent of Pomona Unified, Darren Knowles, said that collaborating with Parent Organization Network “led to a complete overhaul of the documents that we use to inform parents about the reclassification process.”

    Knowles said over the last four years, Pomona Unified redesigned a resource page for parents about reclassification criteria in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. The district also conducts regular presentations and training for parents about what students need in order to reclassify. In addition, he said the district is printing ELPAC score reports to give to families during parent-teacher conferences. Recently, he said the district sent out information about ELPAC scores to parents and offered in-person meetings if they wanted to review their children’s progress. He said 92 parents from 18 different schools requested an in-person meeting.

    Spokespersons from Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified shared fewer details. “Our families have various opportunities including notification and consultation letters,” said the LAUSD statement. “The District also offers over a dozen meetings throughout the year where families can deep dive into their student’s educational journey. In addition, families are welcome to call and set up a school visit with the English learner designee or school principal.”

    “Long Beach Unified is dedicated to ensuring parents of English language learners receive student progress and reclassification information,” said Long Beach Unified School District spokesperson Evelyn Somoza. “Parents of students who have not yet been reclassified receive information on their student’s English language proficiency at the start of every school year through U.S. mail and our online portal. Parents receive phone calls and emails when test scores from assessments completed during the school year become available.”

    Both Bautista and Carbajal Salmerón attended universities in Mexico and want their children to go to college, too. They want their children to be able to enroll in the college preparatory classes they need in high school, which can be hard for students if they are still classified as English learners.

    After understanding the process, they began to push for more help for their children and encourage them to work on their English reading and writing skills to improve their scores on the ELPAC. 

    Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia took a summer school intensive English class, began to attend English classes on Saturdays, and started focusing on improving her reading.

    Finally, in the first semester of ninth grade, she was reclassified, allowing her to stop taking English language development classes and freeing up her schedule to take more electives.

    Now a sophomore, Mia hopes to go to college to study ethnic studies. She credits her eighth grade English language development teacher, who spoke with her and other English learners and explained to them that they had to pass the English proficiency test in order to be reclassified as fluent. 

    “She was a teacher that really wanted everybody in the class to reclassify, and she put in the energy and time to really create a connection with every single one of us,” Mia said. “I feel like personally it’s all in the teacher. If they motivate you and make you see that you personally are capable of doing and achieving and reclassifying, it’s the greatest compliment ever.”





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  • Oakland Unified wrestles with lead in water. Most California schools are in the dark

    Oakland Unified wrestles with lead in water. Most California schools are in the dark


    Oakland students rally for lead-free drinking water in their schools in front of city hall Monday, Sept. 30, 2024.

    Monica Velez

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    Oakland student Hannah Lau said she only discovered there were elevated lead levels in her school’s drinking water this year through her teacher. There wasn’t an announcement from the principal, nor was there an assembly to notify students.

    “I was really shocked and scared,” the 13-year-old said. “How long have we been drinking this water? Is it really bad? Is it in my body? How poisoned am I?”

    The Oakland Unified School District is one of the few districts in California that has continued to test lead levels in drinking water years after it was no longer required by state law. In 2017, an extension to the existing law (AB-746), also known as the California Safe Drinking Water Act, required districts to sample water from at least five faucets in every school and report the findings to the state by July 1, 2019.  State funding for lead testing ended after the deadline.

    The law resulted in school districts getting a snapshot of lead contamination in their drinking water at that time. But because of the one-time requirement that districts test only a small sample of faucets, and exemptions for charter and private schools, there are no statewide records that offer an accurate representation of lead presence in California schools currently.

    Seven years after the law went into effect, school districts and communities, including Oakland, are still grappling with how to keep lead out of drinking water.

    “We know there’s lead in the plumbing, and even if it is a low value (of lead concentration), we know it’s persistent,” said Elin Betanzo, a national drinking water expert and founder of Safe Water Engineering. “If a kid is drinking water every day at school, that lead is always there. That lead can get into any glass. The studies show that the low-level exposures have a disproportionately high impact on the brain.”

    An EdSource analysis of school district data of lead concentrations in Oakland Unified water in 2019 and 2024 shows many inconsistencies. In some cases, the same water fixtures that were tested both years yielded completely different results, with lead concentrations below the state’s threshold of 15 parts per billion (ppb) in 2019, and in 2024, some fixtures reached triple digits. 

    “We know that this happens,” Betanzo said. “We have extensive records of data that if you sample the same tap at a school you can get a low value that would appear safe one day and could get an extremely high, concerning level the next day.”

    Lincoln Elementary School, between downtown Oakland and Lake Merritt, had some of the highest levels of lead in Oakland Unified after the district tested there earlier this year. 

    A drinking fountain at Lincoln with the highest lead concentration tested at 930 ppb in June. That same fountain was tested in 2019 at 2.1 ppb, which is under the state and district threshold for safe water. The Safe Drinking Water Act only required faucets that tested above 15 ppb to be fixed. However, Oakland Unified adopted a stricter policy in 2018 that says if levels are higher than 5 ppb, the issue requires remediation.

    California’s lead action level was set at 15 ppb following the recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency’s lead and copper rule. On Oct. 8, less than a month before the Nov. 5 election, that limit was lowered to 10 ppb by the Biden administration to ensure that drinking water is safe throughout the country. Some states, but not California, had already adopted lower limits prior to the change.

    Without the district’s follow-up testing in 2024, Oakland Unified officials wouldn’t have discovered the faucet that was once deemed safe is dangerous. It’s not an isolated incident. Another drinking fountain at Lincoln tested 3.3 ppb in 2019 and in June tested at 410 ppb. 

    “This happened in my children’s elementary school,” Betanzo said. “So it does happen. It is normal. We know all about it. And yet the requirements that states have put together for school drinking water don’t acknowledge the science of this.”

    The release of lead in water is sporadic, and testing results from the same fixtures are often inconsistent, Betanzo said. 

    “Schools have been doing these one-time samples, and if they get a low sample (value), they say, ‘Hey, the water is safe,’” Betanzo said. “And that’s not true. We have lead throughout our plumbing,” referring to school districts in general.

    In schools, water doesn’t run for long periods on weekends and during breaks, Betanzo said, and it doesn’t allow the corrosion control that is more common in houses. There needs to be a constant turnover of water for corrosion control to work, she said. 

    Faucets with elevated lead levels have been taken out of service, according to Oakland Unified spokesperson John Sasaki. Often, the faucets are fixed by replacing filters and are retested before they are back in service. 

    “With regard to inconsistencies between lead levels found in 2019 … and now, our estimation is that because most of our schools are relatively old, and the features including the plumbing are old, there has been degradation of some aspects of the systems since 2018, which has led to the elevated levels we have recently found,” Sasaki said in an emailed statement.

    The inconsistencies in lead samplings aren’t unique to Lincoln. Similar examples occurred in Edna Brewer Middle School, Cleveland Elementary, Crocker Highlands Elementary, Horace Mann Elementary, Bella Vista Elementary, and Fruitvale Elementary. The lead levels recorded in 2019 were all either under 5 ppb or 15 ppb at all of these schools and higher in 2024.

    “It’s terrifying at a personal level,” Oakland parent Nate Landry said. “It’s terrifying at a collective level.”

    Failures of the Safe Drinking Water Act

    The state’s drinking water law didn’t require districts to do follow-up testing, which is part of the reason schools that haven’t tested lead levels since 2019 have no way of knowing if students and staff are still being exposed to elevated lead levels in drinking water. 

    The law exempted thousands of private and charter schools on private property from testing for lead levels. Not every faucet or drinking fountain was required to be tested. And schools that were built after 2010 were also not required to test lead levels.

    California has more than 10,000 public schools, including about 1,300 charters, and it’s possible thousands of fixtures have yet to be tested for lead. 

    State law required faucets — not valves — to be changed in fountains with lead levels exceeding 15 ppb, said Kurt Souza, an enforcement coordinator for the division of drinking water at the State Water Resources Control Board, which could be why lead levels were inconsistent between 2019 and 2024. Valves are used to control the water flow and are usually placed under the sink.

    “Never change out an old faucet without changing the valves,” Souza advised.

    Critics of the state drinking water act have said the 15 ppb limit for lead in drinking water was too lenient. Some school districts, including Oakland, have set lower limits. 

    According to the EPA’s website, “There is no safe level of lead exposure. In drinking water, the primary source of lead is from pipes, which can present a risk to the health of children and adults.”

    The EPA has also said the 15 ppb level is not a measure of public health protection, Betanzo said. 

    “15 ppb was selected as an engineering metric,” said Betanzo, who formerly worked at the EPA. “It is an indicator of corrosion control effectiveness. So, if a water system looks at the 90th percentile of its sampling results, and it’s greater than 15 parts per billion, it tells them they have an out-of-control corrosion situation that needs to be addressed.”

    Other districts that have tested for lead levels after 2019 include San Francisco Unified, San Diego Unified, Laguna Beach Unified, Castro Valley Unified, Encinitas Union Elementary, La Mesa Spring-Valley, and San Bruno Park Elementary.

    “Did you find every spot that has a high lead? Probably not,” said Souza. “Some schools probably had a hundred faucets and then we only sampled five of them. I thought it was a really good start, and it showed some schools had problems, which then did more samples and, and did more things to it.”

    There’s currently no directive under the state or the federal Environmental Protection Agency to test lead levels in school drinking water, said Wes Stieringer-Sisneros, a senior environmental scientist for the drinking water division at the State Water Resource Control Board. 

    Since the state requirements for lead testing ended, there have been efforts to pass state legislation that would have required follow-up testing, AB-249, but Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill in 2023. The following year, another bill, AB 1851, which would have created a pilot testing program, was introduced but held in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    “It was another blow,” said Colleen Corrigan, health policy associate for Children Now, a statewide research and advocacy organization that co-sponsored both bills. “We hope that Proposition 2 will pass, and we really want to make sure that that distribution of money is equitable and accessible.”

    Voters passed Proposition 2 on Nov. 5, and that will provide, among other things school-related, up to $115 million to remove lead from drinking water in schools.

    How Oakland is getting the lead out

    Although Oakland district officials have made progress in repairing faucets since the most recent testing results in the spring, some people have lost trust and confidence in the district. 

    Shock waves burst through the Oakland community at the start of the school year when educators, parents, and students discovered the district was withholding testing results that showed elevated levels of lead in water in dozens of schools. Some lead testing results were available in April and families didn’t start to receive notices until August.

    “The scope of their (Oakland Unified) failure to communicate pretty crucial public health information was shocking,” parent Landry said. 

    District officials did acknowledge they did not properly communicate with families about elevated lead levels. 

    During a rally in front of Oakland City Hall last month, parents, students, educators and community organizers urged the school board and City Council to do more to get the lead out of school drinking water, even though the district is already doing more than most.

    The Get the Lead Out of OUSD coalition, which includes the Oakland teachers union and other community partners, has a list of demands, the first being instating a new, highly ambitious threshold of lead levels of zero parts per billion. Other demands include testing all water sources at Oakland schools immediately and annually, testing all playgrounds, gardens and outdoor areas, facilitating free blood testing for students, teachers and community members, and completing infrastructure repairs.

    District officials also said they will continue to do more lead testing through the end of the year and promise more transparency.

    “We have instituted improved protocols to ensure we are more transparent and more consistent in our communication with our families and staff,” a statement said. “We will inform you before any testing begins at your school.”

    A priority has been to install more FloWater machines, which are filtered refillable water stations, the statement said. Most schools have at least two, and 60 additional machines were installed this school year. The district plans to install 88 more.

    Lau said she and her classmates were given reusable water bottles and told to only drink from purification water stations or bottled water. If a student forgets to bring a water bottle to school, there are extras, but not always, she said. The last resort is asking a friend for a drink from their water bottle or purchasing bottled water.

    “Please fix this issue,” Lau said. “I don’t want to be drinking lead. I don’t want lead anywhere near me. I want to be safe; I want to grow up safe.”





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