Good morning. It’s Tuesday.
I’m not sure how this is going to hit with some people, but I’ll say it anyway: Education – especially public education – is and always has been inherently political.
The Founding Fathers believed that publicly funded schools needed to be established to prepare the citizens of the newly established United States of America to be active participants in small-d democracy.
They actually felt that the very long-term success of the fragile democracy would depend on the competency of its people, who needed to be able to read and write, and perhaps even figure (from a mathematical standpoint, that is) to be able to keep their government in check and ensure it was fully representing their best interests.
Of course at the time, the term “people” meant white boys.
It did not mean girls, heaven forbid, who were better off learning things like cooking and cleaning and – if they were well off – perhaps needlepoint and dancing and maybe, if they were lucky, painting and some French and Latin.
It also did not mean children of color, (it took Brown v. Board of Education to overturn “separate but equal,” which we know still exists in an unofficial capacity today) or those with special needs.
Without going too much further down the historical rabbit hole and detailing all the many battles in which this country has engaged when it comes to the right way to educate its children, I think I’ve made my point.
But somehow in recent years, it feels like things got turned up a few hundred notches. Or maybe we took a definitive number of steps back? How it is, for example, that we’re still debating the right way to teach history? And why are we so concerned about who uses what bathroom?
All of this is resulting in a distinctly conflicted view of public schools – and, more specifically, teachers – among Americans. People generally like and support their local school, but the vast majority of them do not want to see their own children grow up to enter the noble profession of educating others.
This view is perhaps contributing to the marked teacher shortage across the nation. Or maybe it’s the fact that teachers are, on average, under-compensated. (Yes, this is a personal opinion, but when teachers start earning what, say, the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company makes in a year – heck, even a month – we’ll talk).
According to state estimates, New York will need more than 180,000 new teachers in the next decade, and the some rural and lower-income urban districts are already feeling the pinch.
Now, New York teachers are better compensated than many of their counterparts elsewhere in the US. (I can hear some of you yelling at the computer right now about union benefits and tenure etc.) But the average starting salary – just under $45,000 – while higher than the national average of $38,617, is still pretty darn low.
The average is just over $80,000, better than the average national median of just over $61,000. But remember, the cost of living in this state is notoriously high – especially if you live in New York City.
If you were paying attention to yesterday’s Google Doodle, you know that this is Teacher Appreciation Week, which originated with none other than First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.
I hear that gift cards have replaced apples as the preferred method of thanking your kids’ teacher. Just a thought. I wouldn’t know, of course. I wonder if there’s a Doggie Daycare Appreciation Week. There should be.
It’s going to be a hair cooler today – we won’t get out of the mid-60s, temperature-wise – and we’ll have a mix of sun and clouds. No rain in the forecast, though, which is a blessing.
In the headlines…
President Biden called for a “fair deal” for Hollywood’s striking writers as he hosted a White House screening of the the upcoming streaming series “American Born Chinese” to mark Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
He called the Hollywood film industry “iconic,” and “meaningful,” adding that “we need the writers, and all the workers, and everyone involved to tell the stories of our nation and the stories of all of us.”
“Nights like these are a reminder of stories and the importance of treating storytellers with the dignity, respect and the value they deserve,” Biden said. He drew big cheers for the remarks.
The president’s comments came after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that the administration would not comment on the issue.
Biden and top Republicans and Democrats from Congress are set to sit down today to try to resolve a three-month standoff over the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling and avoid a crippling default before the end of May.
Biden reportedly doesn’t like to eat vegetables, preferring PB&J sandwiches and orange Gatorade, and his poor diet causes a constant battle between him and first lady Jill Biden, who wants him to be healthy ahead of a 2024 presidential campaign.
The internal tug-of-war over Joe Biden’s diet is just one of many public and private steps being taken by close aides and the first lady to keep the 80-year-old president healthy as he prepares to run for a second term.
The Biden administration announced plans for new regulations to require airlines to provide compensation and cover expenses for meals and hotel rooms to stranded passengers when the companies are at fault for travel disruptions.
“I know how frustrated many of you are with the service you get from your U.S. airlines,” Biden said in remarks from the White House announcing his administration’s plan. “That’s why our top priority has been to get American air travelers a better deal.”
“This rule would, for the first time in US history, propose to require airlines to compensate passengers and cover expenses…in cases where the airline has caused a cancellation or significant delay,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Title 42, the rule used to immediately expel migrants, will end this week. U.S. officials expect illegal crossings to increase, placing additional strain on an already overtaxed system.
Biden has struggled to settle on an approach to immigration that satisfies his critics on the right or the left. Sometimes, he embraced his predecessor’s use of aggressive measures aimed at keeping a surge of migrants at bay along the southern border.
The massacre at the Allen Premium Outlets in Texas was the country’s second-deadliest mass shooting this year, indiscriminately wiping out individuals, and nearly one entire family. The gunman appeared to embrace white supremacist ideology.
Investigators trying to learn why a gunman fatally shot at least eight people at a Texas mall are examining a social media profile, rife with hate-filled rants against women and Black people, that they believe belonged to the gunman.
Donald Trump’s infamous words about being able to molest women when you’re a “star” were used against him as a Manhattan jury was asked to hold him legally accountable for raping E. Jean Carroll 25 years ago and defaming her when she spoke out.
Trump’s lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said that there was no reason for his client to appear in court. The rape allegation, he said, was a complete invention.
Gov. Kathy Hochul was in Buffalo to discuss the state’s investment into overhauling mental health care in the state.
The Mental Health Care Plan is part of the fiscal year 2024 budget, and will increase inpatient psychiatric treatment capacity, expand outpatient services, boost insurance coverage and develop transitional housing for people with mental illness.
Hochul said that Jordan Neely’s death in Manhattan a week ago offered a “wake-up call” to government officials on the urgency of the mental health crisis gripping New York and the nation.
Lawyers representing Neely’s family have issued a statement saying that the man who choked Neely to death, Daniel Penny, “acted with indifference” and should go to prison.
“He never attempted to help [Neely] at all,” the attorneys wrote. “You cannot ‘assist’ someone with a chokehold … In short, his actions on the train, and now his words, show why he needs to be in prison.”
Neely’s family urged New York City Mayor Eric Adams to call them. “The family wants you to know that Jordan matters,” attorneys Donte Mills and Lennon Edwards wrote in a joint statement on behalf of Neely’s family, released one week after Neely’s killing.
Neely was reportedly listed on a city roster of people on the streets who desperately needed help.
“Agitators that come from outside our city with Molotov cocktails, we should all be concerned about that,” Adams said of a demonstration last night over Neely’s death. He also said he tried multiple times to talk to Neely’s family, but couldn’t reach them.
The head of the City Council committee tasked with overseeing social services blamed the state government for failing to provide adequate inpatient care to homeless New Yorkers like Neely, who died after a former Marine put him in a chokehold.
Hochul said she does not plan to pursue further changes to New York’s bail laws, an issue that has dominated her first two rounds of budget negotiations as governor.
Under the bail change Hochul won, judges are no longer instructed to use the “lease restrictive means” to ensure a defendant’s return to court, an aspect of the 2019 law judges found confusing. But the fight’s political cost was also significant: A late budget.
Moderates and suburban legislators reaped the biggest headline wins in the budget battle, denying Hochul’s housing plan that called for overriding local zoning — her lone policy out of step with her fellow moderates.
Lawmakers want to change the state’s criminal sentencing guidelines to reverse the impact of the Rockefeller Drug Laws — enacted 50 years ago today — which imposed some of the nation’s harshest prison sentences at the time for certain drug charges.
Donors to political campaigns in New York would be required to disclose their employer under legislation that could advance this week in the state Senate.
Two New York state lawmakers are backing changes to how tickets for attending mixed martial arts events are taxed in order to bring them to parity with boxing matches.
State lawmakers are eyeing a ban on the practice of early admission to colleges and universities as the legislative session nears its end, with progressives claiming the practice is racist.
Supporters of a bill that would outlaw early admission as well as legacy admissions say both practices disproportionately help white and wealthy students get into prestigious schools like Columbia, NYU, and Cornell.
Organizations that represent local municipalities around New York are calling for a full assessment of the financial effect of a newly introduced measure meant to expand the state’s wrongful death law.
New York State Police arrested Academy and Emmy award-winning actress Susan Sarandon and former lieutenant gubernatorial candidate Ana Maria Archila, among more than a dozen advocates, at a rally to fight for higher wages for tipped workers.
A group of Democratic lawmakers are launching a bid to bar New York employers from using nondisclosure agreements when reaching civil settlements with workers who may have experienced workplace harassment or discrimination.
Adams’ office is ordering all city government agencies to identify properties they own that can be converted into emergency housing for asylum seekers as the local migrant crisis continues to deepen.
In recent weeks, city officials have approached major landlords, business leaders, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in an effort to find spaces large enough to house substantial numbers of migrants from the southern border.
Rockland County officials pushed back against Adams’ plan to bus 300 or more asylum seekers upstate, saying they’re considering legal action to block the move and would fine any hotel that takes in asylum seekers up to $2,000 per person, per day.
A top official in the Adams administration revealed that the agencies spearheading the city’s response to the migrant crisis have “fully exhausted” traditional options and are now “continuously stretching the bounds” of what they can do.
Small businesses outside Manhattan helped fuel the city’s recovery from the pandemic. Their rents have soared, and people of color are bearing the brunt of the increases.
The New York City Council district map will remain unchanged ahead of the upcoming June 27th primary election, a Manhattan Supreme Court justice ruled.
The Rent Stabilization Association, the Community Housing Improvement Program and a few individual landlords filed a petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider their challenge to New York’s rent stabilization law.
A poison pill inserted in the state budget could prevent New York City’s oldest poverty fighting group from opening a charter school in Harlem.
A Brooklyn NYPD commander is being investigated about whether he let a teen gunman off the hook because the suspect was involved in a youth program the officer supports.
Legendary broadcast journalist and longtime New York City news anchor John Roland died Sunday at 81, his former employer Fox 5 announced.
Opening arguments at limousine company operator Nauman Hussain’s trial in the deadly 2018 limo crash started yesterday with the prosecutor and Hussain’s attorney giving starkly different versions of who is to blame for the disaster.
The plan for the long-awaited overhaul of the Wadsworth Center, the state’s public health lab and research facilities, will cost taxpayers $1.7 billion, adding close to a billion dollars to the previously projected $750 million price tag.
The man accused of threatening staff and barricading himself with his 97-year-old mother in her hospital room at Albany Medical Center Hospital in March now faces a murder charge in his mother’s death.
Clifton Park’s highway superintendent has filed a workplace harassment complaint against the town attorney alleging he called him an obscene name during last week’s public Town Board meeting.
The Times Union is launching a real-time tracker of horse deaths at the Saratoga track following its investigations into the industry. The New York Gaming Commission maintains data on equine deaths, injuries and accidents at race tracks in the state.
Exactly 24 years to the month after the opening of the Albany Pump Station, one of the last survivors of the Capital Region’s 1990s flourishing of brewpubs announced it is being taken over by Common Roots Brewing of South Glens Falls, founded in late 2014.
The Albany Tulip Festival is this weekend.
Former CBS6 Albany meteorologist Craig Gold returned to the airwaves this past weekend and had social media users — and Google-users — in a frenzy.
A new genus of butterfly, with dark, eye-like spots on its distinctive orange wings, has been named after Sauron, the arch-villain of J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic “The Lord of the Rings,” whose gaze lingers malevolently over the lands of Middle-earth.
Here is the full list of winners and finalists for this year’s Pulitzer Prizes. Several news organizations won multiple awards, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and AL.com, a site that covers Alabama.
