News Day

Jeffry Martin (Photo by Charles Hallman, Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, 2011)

Jeffry Martin said he expects absolutely no action from police or the City of St. Paul on the Chris Lollie case. “They [the police] think they’re 100% justified,” he explained. So there will be “no change in policy, no discipline of police.” Continue reading →

Ferguson police shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager. St. Paul police tased and arrested Chris Lollie, a black dad who was waiting for his kids in a public space near their preschool. Beverly Hills police stopped, cuffed and arrested Charles Belk, a film producer and business executive, as he walked to his car, because he “fit the description” of a bank robber — “tall, bald head black male.”

After the YouTube and Facebook posting, after the protests, what happens? Continue reading →

Nicaragua is not sending waves of refugees to the United States. Instead, Nicaragua, along with Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama and Belize, is receiving waves of refugees coming from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. What’s going on here? Continue reading →

From Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

Picture this: a silver bullet solution for the Achievement Gap, a single thing that schools can do to get all children reading by third-grade and college-ready by the end of high school. Continue reading →

Used with permission, Creative Commons 2.0

St. Paul kids need you. With 38,000 students heading back to school, the St. Paul Public Schools Foundation is partnering with more than 20 community locations and all of the city’s libraries to offer everything from homework help to targeted math tutoring. Last year, they fielded 1600 tutors working with more than 6,500 kids. This year’s big plans include a medley of training sessions for tutors in September and October, as well as welcoming back hundreds of experienced and enthusiastic volunteers. Continue reading →

We’re working more and often getting paid less, which makes Labor Day this year:

(a) more important

(b) more ironic

(c) a great day to shop the sales. Continue reading →

For decades, my dad complained that people didn’t understand how little of the food dollar goes to the farmers who grow the food. Every time the farmer’s price went up — for milk or corn or pigs — the grocery store price went up by even more. When the farmer’s price went down, the grocery store price usually didn’t follow in that direction. Continue reading →

Does helping high school students learn have to mean making life and learning more difficult for first-graders? That’s the question many St. Paul parents are asking, as St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) makes plans for later high school start times, beginning in 2015/16. Continue reading →

Think that the number of students in school is declining? Think again — according to the report of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the total number of U.S. public school students has risen slowly but steadily, from 44,840,000 in 1995 to an estimated 49, 751,000 this September. Continue reading →

Andy Griffith, the television sheriff of the fictional town of Mayberry, grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in the real town of Mount Airy, North Carolina. Last week, just after I visited Mayberry/Mount Airy, I listened to a PRI program about Baltimore’s new curfew, described as “one of the toughest in the country.” As I drove across the country, the radio also brought stories about the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the protests, and then the police killing of Kajieme Powell.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about the differences between Mayberry’s sheriff and today’s far less community-oriented law enforcement. Continue reading →