CPD IN THE NEWS

NJ.com - 05-06-2015 -  Newark's schools should add more social services and community programming to tackle issues of poverty afflicting local neighborhoods, a group of education advocates said Tuesday.

Dubbed the "community school" model, schools should strive to address needy students' health and emotional needs, teach content beyond what is included in standardized tests and include parental input in the decision making.

NJ Communities United organizer Roberto Cabanas told a packed audience in Kings Family Restaurant & Catering, that the district could work local nonprofit organizations to support a wider range of student needs.

"We need to bring the village inside of the school," he said.

Cabanas was one of four panelists at an education forum organized by activists and the city, including Newark chief education officer Lauren Wells, Evie Frankl of the Center for Popular Democracy and Mary Bennett of the Alliance for Newark Public Schools.

Wells said Newark Public Schools once adopted this approach about five years ago through the Global Village Zone, when the district attempted to turn around seven schools in the city's Central Ward.

At the time, the district announced that the program would implement longer days and provide more professional development and pay for teachers. Under the model, schools were set to turn schools into a place where students would be taught but also be able to go to health clinics.

"A community school is a place, a physical place, but it's also a practice," Wells said. "It is a way about going about doing things."

The program also sought input from teachers and parents when it designed it, Wells said.

"Teachers, specifically, at 18th Avenue School worked with the principal to design what (an) extended day would look like in their school," she said.

Bennett said when she was a principal in the district she tried to better serve students on probation by working with the county probation department to have one probation officer assigned to all the students in her school.

Under the community schools model, the district could streamline cooperation between government and universities, Bennett argued.

"You shouldn't have to spend a year to try and unify the services to support students," she said.

Frankl said districts around the country including in Baltimore, New York City and Lancaster, Pennsylvania are adopting this approach.

"Community schools can happen," she said. "There is no reason why a community school should not be the definition of a public school in the United States of America."

Source: NJ.com

Labor Day has started the sprint to the November election. And with more than 40 percent of U.S. workers struggling on less than $15 an hour, our economy’s tilt toward low-paying jobs has become a top economic issue this year.  

Now, as GOP leaders fret that Donald Trump may drag down Republican incumbents, turning more U.S. Senate races into toss-ups, the Republican majority’s stonewalling of any action to raise the federal minimum wage could cost the party control of Congress.

New polling shows that close to 70 percent of voters in key swing states want an increase in the federal minimum wage—and that 60 percent or more support a $15 minimum wage in six of the seven states polled.

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Even more, the polling shows that candidates’ positions on raising pay could play a pivotal role in this year’s electoral battles for control of the U.S. Senate. The results show that the incumbent Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose critical support—and even their seats—over opposition to raising wages for working people.

In Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire, Democratic challengers Katie McGinty, Russ Feingold and Governor Maggie Hassan strengthened their leads over incumbent Republican Senators Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson and Kelly Ayotte when voters were made aware of the senators’ opposition to raising the minimum wage.  

And in Arizona, Missouri and North Carolina, Democratic challengers Representative Ann Kirkpatrick, Jason Kander and Deborah Ross pulled ahead of Senators John McCain, Roy Blunt and Richard Burr, flipping those contests on their heads, when voters learned of the senators’ track records opposing raises.  

For example, in Arizona—where John McCain has just emerged from his toughest re-election primary ever—a 43-43 tie turns into a 44-38 lead for Kirkpatrick once voters hear about McCain’s opposition to raising pay.

The polling comes as the National Employment Law Project Action Fund, the Center for Popular Democracy Action, the Working Families Organization and other grassroots groups in seven states begin to mobilize voters.

The coalition plans to engage in canvassing, hold candidate forums and wage debate protests, among other actions, to educate and energize voters around candidates’ positions on the raising the minimum wage.

While Donald Trump, who has been all over the map on the minimum wage, has announced he now supports an increase to $10, most Republicans in Congress remain opposed.

Leading Republican pollster Frank Luntz’s firm LuntzGlobal has warned minimum wage opponents, “If you’re fighting against the minimum wage increase, you’re fighting an uphill battle, because most Americans, even most Republicans, are OK with raising the minimum wage.”

Farm workers pick vegetables on a farm in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on August 31. Paul Sonn writes that Republican U.S. senators locked in close races could lose their seats over opposition to raising wages.

While Congress has refused to act, over the past three and a half years, more than 50 states, cities and counties, as well as individual companies, have stepped forward to approve minimum wage increases, delivering raises to 17 million workers.  

And 10 million of those workers are in states or cities that have approved phased-in $15 minimum wages, raising pay for more than one in three workers in California and New York and beginning to reverse decades of growing pay inequality.

Historically, raising the minimum wage enjoyed the same bipartisan backing in Congress that it does with voters. But over the past 20 years, increasing polarization in Washington and the growing role of money in politics have led many Republicans to abandon their support.

As a result, the federal minimum wage today remains frozen at just $7.25 an hour. And taxpayers are being forced to pick up the tab, as low-wage workers in the seven states just polled must rely on $150 billion per year in public assistance to make up for their inadequate paychecks.

Candidates’ positions on the minimum wage have made a difference in close U.S. senate races before. Ten years ago, in Missouri and Montana, Democrats Claire McCaskill and Jon Tester successfully used their support for a higher minimum wage to highlight the difference between them and their opponents, Republican Senators Jim Talent and Conrad Burns, who both opposed raising the wage.  

McCaskill and Tester rode the issue to an Election Day victory, helping to break a logjam in Congress and delivering the first federal minimum wage increase in 10 years in 2007.

With the public demanding action to boost pay, the Republican majority and individual candidates this fall face a clear choice: stop standing in the way of a long overdue federal minimum wage increase—or risk their political future.

By Paul K. Sonn

Source

Al Jazeera America – October 24, 2013, by Dexter Mullins and Roxana Saberi -

Latino and immigrant workers are at a disproportionate risk of dying from construction-site accidents in New York, according to a new report conducted by the Center for Popular Democracy.

The report, “Fatal Inequality: Workplace Safety Eludes Construction Workers of Color in New York State,” is based on investigations from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from 2003 to 2011 that analyze fatalities from falls at construction sites.

According to the findings, 60 percent of the 136 fall-related fatalities in New York state were Latinos or immigrants. In New York City, the number was 74 percent. Queens and Brooklyn were the two most dangerous boroughs to work in during the years studied. In Queens 88 percent of those who died were Latinos or immigrants, and in Brooklyn 87 percent of those who fell were Latinos or immigrants.

Latinos comprise only about 35 percent of all construction workers in New York City.

“Latino workers are the most vulnerable workers in the nation, and we’ve been talking about this for a number of years,” Hector Sanchez of the Labor Council for Latin American Advancement told Al Jazeera. “This report is a reminder of what is happening and why Latino workers are the ones who suffer the most from deaths and injuries in the workplace. It’s important to understand what the consequences of this are and why they are happening.”

The vast majority, 86 percent, of the Latino or immigrant workers’ deaths were at sites run by nonunion employers, where workers often are reluctant to report safety violations out of fear of retaliation from contractors. The report also says that Latinos are more likely to work at nonunion sites, which have more safety violations.

A New York state law requires contractors and construction company owners to provide all necessary equipment to keep workers on site safe or be held fully liable if lack of safety measures result in the injury or death of a worker. According to the report, construction and insurance companies are trying to have the law amended so that workplace safety would be the responsibility of the workers.

OSHA, which is tasked with inspecting work sites, has 113 inspectors in New York state. According to the report, if OSHA were to inspect every construction site in the state, it would take the workers 107 years to visit each site once. At 85 percent of sites where a worker fell and died, OSHA found there was a “serious, gravity 10″ violation of workplace safety standards.

The Center for Popular Democracy is pushing for construction companies to do more to improve worker safety and has also called on OSHA to hire and train more inspectors and stiffen penalties for safety violations.

Source

Wuerth, who describes himself as an educator, activist, and writer, was among the teachers who marched with students during the “March for Our Lives” student walkout in March. The notice that was sent about the civil disobedience training that he will teach said that Jennifer Flynn Walker a trainer from Center for Popular Democracy -Director of Mobilization and Advocacy for CPD will also be a trainer and that actions they plan include congressional and senatorial offices.

Read the full article here.