A class-action lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks justice for the children of Flint, who are suffering the effects of months of drinking lead-contaminated tap water while also not receiving adequate special education services in the city’s public schools, the suit alleges.

“The extensive lead poisoning in Flint has combined with the lack of essential special education resources in the Flint schools to create a tragic crisis,” Gregory Little, a partner at White & Case and a board member of the Education Law Center, told the Detroit News. “By insisting on a positive learning environment for all students, this lawsuit will help all children and families in Flint.”

The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan and the Education Law Center, alleges that the state is violating disability laws by not providing adequate special education services for children in Flint, even as exposure to lead has meant more children in Flint require such services.

Almost 30,000 Flint schoolchildren, from birth to age 19, were exposed to lead in the tap water at home and at school after officials switched the city’s water supply to the corrosive Flint River in April 2014, the suit argues.

“Providing an adequate education to the children of Flint was already an uphill challenge before this crisis hit,” notes the ACLU’s Curt Guyette. “The school district is laboring under the burden of a $10 million deficit. Teachers are doing their best, but some classes have as many as 40 students in them. In a city rife with poverty, children were already being forced to overcome too much.”

“The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Michigan, argues that the public school system in Flint is not meeting its legal obligation to screen lead-exposed children for disabilities or provide services and interventions that could make a difference in their ability to learn and thrive,” reports the Washington Post. “It also alleges that the Michigan Education Department has failed to provide Flint schools […] with the resources and funding they need to provide those services.”

“The lawsuit seeks class-action status, injunctive relief and immediate remedies on behalf of thousands of Flint families[…] It does not seek monetary damages,” according to the Detroit News, which goes on to detail one mother’s experience with the Flint public school system: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/10/19/class-action-lawsuit-seeks-justice-risk-children-flint

Don’t know much about history

Posted October 23, 2016 by Michael Peña in the Busted Pencils Blog

“Is anyone else thinking that we should get over our obsession with job readiness and coding and start teaching civics, history and critical thinking again?”

YES. Thanks for speaking it again Mrs. Rumphius.

Read here and share for this beautiful paragraph:

“In the most elite private schools and liberal arts colleges students do more than math drills, ELA exercises and an hour of code. They learn how to think. They are empowered to express informed opinions. They are empowered to see themselves as agents of change, to think critically and engage in democracy.  But we continue to manage public schools like factories- with economic rather than human, democratic goals. Beneath this reality is an insidious assumption that only our elites should learn how to think and engage critically in the democratic process, and that all everyone else needs is vocational training.”

http://bustedpencils.com/2016/10/dont-know-much-history/

Do guns make college campuses safer? Not at all

Posted on October 28, 2016

by mikethegunguy
The Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University has just issued an important report on guns and college campuses, which is summarized in a Washington Post op-ed or you can download the entire report here.

Basically, the report argues that, Gun-nut Nation’s claims to the contrary, allowing guns on college campuses does not enhance security or safety, but will result in more, not less gun violence in academic environments.

Read the full blog post here: http://mikethegunguy.com/2016/10/23/do-guns-make-college-campuses-safer-not-at-all/

…until next time, keep reading, sharing, discussing, learning!