"Troubles amount to a ‘cancer’ at Boston Philharmonic" by Kay Lazar Globe Staff November 05, 2018
The students said they could no longer keep quiet. Days after one of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra’s top artistic advisers was arrested on child pornography charges, a dozen young musicians filed into a conference room at the Philharmonic’s headquarters and sought answers about the future of the organization.
They were angry, and worried. The orchestra’s leadership, the student players said, had seemed to brush aside the arrest, ignoring the tsunami of emotions triggered in the organization’s youth orchestra.
The tense Oct. 5 conversation turned to sexually suggestive messages sent to students by a man who had served as an associate conductor with the youth orchestra, according to interviews with several students, their notes, and audio of the meeting that was recorded by one attendee and later provided to the Globe.
Two hours into the session, the philharmonic orchestra’s managing director Elisabeth Christensen acknowledged that she had miscalculated the depth of the student anguish, according to the recording. Christensen said she had gone into recent meetings with unsettled students “thinking that I was treating a broken ankle.” But she now realized “the patient had cancer.”
Six years after conductor Benjamin Zander founded the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, the widely admired arts institution and its parent organization are in turmoil. Two of Zander’s closest advisers — David St. George and Benjamin Vickers — have been pushed out. St. George, who provided Zander with musical critiques in rehearsals, was fired after his arrest and Vickers, as associate conductor, was released for sending students inappropriate messages. A third employee has been placed on leave and is under investigation for inappropriate behavior, and some students are quitting in disgust.
At the heart of the controversy is 79-year-old Zander, the maestro with a shock of white hair, a megawatt style, and an illustrious reputation that took a serious hit in 2012. That’s when his four-decade run as teacher and conductor at the New England Conservatory ended, after he was fired for knowingly hiring a convicted sex offender to videotape performances of NEC’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra.
Immediately after his high-profile departure, Zander turned to the Boston Philharmonic and founded another youth orchestra. Now, an independent investigative firm hired by the Philharmonic is scrutinizing operations at that youth orchestra and there’s more soul searching to come.
Zander and St. George declined to be interviewed and Vickers could not be reached for comment. Christensen released a lengthy statement on behalf of the organization.
“We remain shocked and profoundly disturbed by the incidents brought to our attention and have acted expeditiously to address each one,” the statement said in part. “We will continue to do so and to strive to vigorously meet the highest standards of organizational ethics and behavior.
Following a firing, Zander builds another orchestra
The 120-member Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra’s mission is “to provide an environment for musical excellence and leadership development that strengthens communication and deepens the human experience.”
It has garnered renown for the talent of its young players and quality of its performances. And also for this: It’s free. While many of the several dozen other youth orchestras in the country charge tuition to student players, often several thousand dollars each year, Zander’s outfit offers students age 12 to 21 a no-cost, high-level entree into the classical music world. There are performances in Symphony Hall, one of the world’s top concert venues, and summer tours in major cities from Europe to South America.
It sounds like a pedophile recruitment racket underneath all the noise.
About half the members in the youth orchestra are in college, and most of the others are in high school. A handful of musicians are as young as 12 or 13.
The youth orchestra operates as a minor league of sorts, providing a training ground for college students aspiring to a professional music career, while affording younger members the chance to collaborate with older students.
Grooming them, if you will.
Zander, who founded the Boston Philharmonic in 1978, created its youth orchestra in 2012, more than doubling the number of musicians in the arts organization, but two former staffers said the expansion came with little strategy, cost controls, or policies in place to deal with such a dramatic move.
The Globe interviewed 14 current or former members of the youth orchestra, all over age 18, and two former staffers. All but one declined to be identified by name for fear of reprisal in the tight-knit musical community, but several shared notes and e-mails of the Oct 5 meeting. One person recorded it because of the gravity of the situation.
The Sept. 25 arrest of David St. George triggered turmoil in the youth orchestra. St. George, a senior adviser who was well liked by students, helped rehearse certain sections of the youth orchestra.
It began a Wuerl that ended in crucifixion.
St. George was charged in federal court with receiving and possessing in his Arlington home thousands of files of child pornography, including images of sexual assaults of children between 6 and 8 years old. Philharmonic leaders have said they do not have evidence to suggest his behavior involved any of the organization’s musicians or staff. St. George told investigators he had no interest in engaging in sexual acts with children, apart from looking at child porn, according to the criminal complaint. His attorney, William Fick, declined to comment.
(Blog editor hits sour note)
Five youth orchestra members told the Globe they quit after the St. George arrest, saying they were disgusted by the episode and frustrated by other problems they felt administrators had ignored.
“Our trust in this organization has been compromised,” stated a letter to Zander four of the five signed, along with 16 otherstudent leaders from the youth orchestra.
You never get it back.
Just ask the pre$$.
“As the founder and leader of this youth orchestra your lack of apology and ownership for his affiliation with this group is quite upsetting,” said the letter, referring to St. George. “We hope that this orchestra will proceed along a path of honesty, safety, and personal accountability.”
As the fallout from St. George’s arrest swirled, the philharmonic said they suspended without pay Vickers, a Zander protege, for sending inappropriate messages to students. Two of the students, both over 18, shared with the Globe copies of Facebook messages from Vickers. In one, Vickers repeatedly asked the young man about his sexual preferences and whether he was circumcised. That chain of messages stretches from August through September.
Both young men told the Globe they did not report the incidents to orchestra leaders. Neither felt comfortable telling anyone earlier about the messages.
Vickers resigned in late September.
Students said they pushed for the meeting because they worried problems would be swept under the rug after the St. George arrest.
“We wanted to let the administration know they are being held accountable for their actions,” said Mark Macha, a junior at New England Conservatory who plays trumpet in the Boston Philharmonic’s youth orchestra. “I want the orchestra to continue. I enjoy the music, my colleagues, and the tours are unbelievable.”
Several former student members told the Globe they had been uneasy about reporting problems to administrators because the top leaders, including Vickers and St. George, were all close friends with Zander, and they did not want to be seen as challenging him. They also said there was no process, either a written policy or one explained to them when they entered the orchestra, for reporting concerns.
In response to questions from the Globe, Christensen, the managing director, said the organization just recently introduced and distributed a handbook to staff and issued an organization-wide harassment prevention policy and whistleblower policy, which “clearly outline healthy behavior and procedures for reporting misconduct.”
A charismatic leader and secretive financing
In airing their grievances to orchestra officials, students highlighted Zander’s firing at NEC and suggested the organization proceed with caution.
The students noted in their letter to Zander “how many young children there are in this orchestra” and “your history with the NEC.”
Zander has been open about that history. Following his 2012 firing, he defended his actions, saying the videographer he had hired was convicted of sex crimes nearly 20 years earlier and had not re-offended, but Zander quickly apologized for his lack of judgment. He told the Globe at the time that the episode had humbled and transformed him.
He then channeled his irrepressible energy into creating the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra.
Zander has garnered world renown for his work with the Boston Philharmonic, as a guest conductor, and inspirational speaker. His exuberant 2008 TED talk, about the importance of classical music being accessible and engaging for all listeners, has notched more than 10 million views online.
Zander’s larger-than-life personality is the driving force at the Philharmonic, with few checks or balances on his decisions, according to two former staffers.
His persona, and connection to a philanthropic billionaire, proved to be helpful in raising funds, too. It helped enable the youth orchestra to be tuition-free, which drew in talented students of lesser means.
Starting to sound more and more like I said.
This issue of money and Zander’s system for doling it out to select orchestra members was a separate, gnawing matter raised by students in their Oct. 5 meeting with administrators.
Zander conducts both of the Philharmonic’s orchestras, sits on the board, and is one of the organization’s key sources of cash, contributing over $300,000 in the past year, according to the Philharmonic’s audited financial statements and its October program guide.
Over the last several years, students said, Zander has quietly let certain members of the youth orchestra know they could write him a letter asking for financial aid, which would be provided by a friend of his, Hansjörg Wyss, the billionaire philanthropist known for his donations to environmental and social justice causes.
Yeah, if he is your oligarch he is okay.
Wyss is now the romantic partner of Zander’s ex-wife, Rosamund Zander, who until recently was listed on the Philharmonic’s website as a coach. Rosamund and Zander maintain a working relationship.
In e-mails shared with the Globe, Zander told certain students to think of the money from Wyss as from a “generous uncle,” and advised them to not discuss the payments with other orchestra members.
The kind that used to babysit and want to play with your pee-pee?
“This is not a grant from the [Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra],” he wrote in one e-mail, “it is entirely a private matter.”
Amounts received by students interviewed by the Globe range from $3,000 to $12,000 a school year. Several of the students said they felt uncomfortable with the under-the-radar payments. Some said they wanted to leave after the St. George arrest but were staying in the orchestra simply because they need the Wyss grants.
Wyss, who did not return a phone call seeking comment, is listed in the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra’s latest program guide as donating more than $500,000 since July 2017. He is by far the organization’s single-largest donor.
The second largest donor is Zander himself. The Philharmonic’s audited financial statements note that Wyss, Zander, and one other unnamed donor together provide roughly 45 percent of the organization’s funding.
The way the Boston Philharmonic handles the Wyss grants is unique, according to Rosina Cannizzaro, executive director of the Vermont Youth Orchestra Association and vice chair of the Youth Orchestra Division of the American League of Orchestras.
It’s also rare for a youth orchestra to not have a sexual harassment policy, she said. Such a policy is essential, as events at the Boston Philharmonic make clear. In 20 years working with young musicians, Cannizzaro said, she could not recall another instance of an orchestra adviser being charged with child pornography charges or an adviser resigning for sending inappropriate messages.
It has been a season of discord in the organization, but you wouldn’t know it to hear the orchestra play.
At the recent spirited opening of its 40th season. Zander sprinted up the stairway and the professional orchestra delivered a command performance. The youth orchestra, minus the players who have left, is slated to open its season Nov. 25.....
Yes, the SHOW MUST GO ON!
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Did you see who was in the crowd?
"If it’s fall, it must be time for a swanky private bash at Gillette Stadium — hosted, naturally, by Patriots owner Robert Kraft. And Tuesday was apparently the night. So, who’s the megastar said to be on tap to entertain Kraft’s nearest and dearest? Word is, none other than Sir Paul McCartney. The timing couldn’t be better. After all, Macca is on tour behind his latest album, “Egypt Station,” and just last week he headlined Austin City Limits, playing a killer set for 60,000 fans. The party at Gillette promised to be a more intimate affair, if past Kraft bashes are any indication. The 2016 party, headlined by The Rolling Stones, drew just 150 (very) special friends, including former secretary of state John Kerry, Celtics owners Wyc Grousbeck and Steve Pagliuca, Davio’s owner Steve DiFillippo, and a whole slew of Kraft family members. And last October, Elton John entertained the VIPs at the invite-only fete. Like the Patriots going to the Super Bowl, this fab fete has become a Kraft tradition."
"Most of the city was glued to the Sox-Yankees game Tuesday night, but a few lucky souls at Gillette Stadium found their attentions understandably divided. After all, Patriots owner Robert Kraft invited none other than Sir Paul McCartney to headline his exclusive fall bash -- and when the former Beatle starts cranking out hits, it can be hard to concentrate on anything else. On the set list at the swanky private party: “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Love Me Do,” “Lady Madonna,” “Hey Jude,” and a very timely “Back in the USSR.” Macca, now touring behind his new album “Egypt Station,” didn’t ignore his work with Wings, rolling out 1973’s “Band on the Run” for partygoers, but we hear the musical high point was the show’s finale, a blistering rendition of “Carry That Weight” from “Abbey Road.” Attendees at Kraft’s annual shindig included “Friends” creator Kevin Bright, Davio’s owner Steve DiFillippo, Big Night Entertainment guru Ed Kane, Boston Celtics lead owner Wyc Grousbeck, Fidelity Investments CEO Abigail Johnson, Highland Capital Partners’ Bob Davis, Attorney General Maura Healey, Putnam CEO Bob Reynolds, and Michael Rubin, co-owner of the Philadelphia 76ers. McCartney, who was seen speeding through Gillette in a golfcart on the way to the bash, is just the latest megastar to headline the Foxborough bash. Last year, Elton John held court, and in 2016, The Rolling Stones entertained 150 of Kraft’s special friends and business associates."
"Neri Oxman is an MIT professor, an architect, and a designer. She is the head of the Mediated Matter group at MIT’s Media Lab, and who will appear at HUBweek 2018 on Friday as part of a panel discussing the future of cities, energy, and mobility, briefly became tabloid fodder earlier this year after Brad Pitt visited Oxman at MIT. Oxman, however, told The New York Times in an article published Saturday that she and Pitt are not an item, and that she is actually dating hedge funder William A. Ackman. Oxman did tell the Times that she considers Pitt “the last of the Mohicans in post-Netflix Hollywood,” and that she would love to work with him on a project in the future. “He brings together the timely and the timeless,” Oxman told the Times, “which is what cinema is all about.” Oxman also admitted to having a bit of fun with paparazzi when they began staking out the Media Lab. Instead of carrying a trendy handbag, she conspicuously carried copies of the Feynman Lectures, a well-regarded series of physics textbooks, and the Golden Record, a vinyl album that was taken to the moon in the 1970s to serve as an audio time capsule of Earth for extraterrestrials....."
I'm starting to think that whole event was a Hollywood production along with the ubiquitous aliens on my TV screen.
HUBweek opens with Change Maker Conference at City Hall Plaza
I'm so sick of $elf-$erving promotion passing itself of as a new$paper (no offense).
Red Sox at the center of Boston’s fantastic fortnight
Yeah, go team.
"Procter & Gamble to put high-profile land in Fort Point on the market" by Jon Chesto Globe Staff October 09, 2018
Gillette parent Procter & Gamble is looking to cash in on the hot real estate market in the neighborhood around its razor factory in Fort Point.
Emboldened by the success of two relatively small land transactions, P&G has decided to put up a for-sale sign on a 6.5-acre section of the giant parking lot the company owns along A Street. Until now, P&G officials have generally expressed a reluctance to sell large chunks of the company’s 40-acre South Boston campus.
GE plans to move into the renovated brick buildings on Necco Court from nearby temporary offices by the end of next year.
Actually, they may not even though they say they are still.
The corporate executives could soon have new neighbors. P&G spokeswoman Kara Buckley said it’s possible the 6.5 acres next door to GE’s future home base could be used for a range of uses such as offices, labs, shops, housing, and open space.
“We see this as a great opportunity for the neighborhood,” Buckley said.
Despite the real estate moves, Gillette’s main operations aren’t going anywhere. Gillette has been making blades at the property for more than a century, and Buckley said the company expects it will continue to play an important role for P&G into the future.....
I use them, and they suck.
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Time for GE investors to get a reality check:
"General Electric might end up skipping the expensive second phase of its headquarters project, especially with a new CEO in charge. Those tax breaks for the new building? GE could still land millions. GE’s agreement with Boston ensures some property tax breaks for an acre of land in Fort Point where a proposed 12-story tower would go up — regardless of whether anything gets built there. The agreement hinges on employment levels, not construction. And GE doesn’t need to hit a job target until 2025. Until then, it’s scheduled to get a reduced amount that grows each year, during a “stabilization period.”
Yeah, "Culp’s appointment adds a new level of uncertainty for the tower plan, but he can still get some tax relief from the city without digging one shovelful of dirt."
What they can do instead is put a new sign out front that is as big as a billboard -- after the community input, of course.
Related: The Culprit at GE
All that tax loot going out the door and not into the rainy day fund because "we" spend too much:
"Believe it or not, most people in Massachusetts are actually below the state average when it comes to the size of their paychecks — like “Lake Wobegon” in reverse. That may sound paradoxical, but it’s still true. As of 2016, roughly 64 percent of households in Massachusetts were earning less than the average statewide income of $102,000, and inequality is what makes this possible. Over time, as the richest families in the state have pulled away from the rest, they have artificially raised the average income without the fortunes of typical citizens getting any better. It’s as if Jeff Bezos walked into your local pizza joint. Suddenly, the average income of the patrons would shoot into the billions, but no one would really benefit....."
That reminds me, time to go get some pizza over at Jack in the Box!
"In the red-hot race to fill biotech jobs, benefits abound" by Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff October 11, 2018
As many Americans struggle to make ends meet, despite the strong economy, the Massachusetts biotechnology sector is growing so fast that employers are offering increasingly generous — and almost unheard of — benefits to attract and keep workers.
Perks like 100 percent company-paid health insurance. Money to pay off student loans. Unlimited vacation time. Up to 12 weeks of paid bereavement leave. Free catered lunches and nitro cold brew coffee every day. Boxing classes, massages, and sneakers in corporate colors — all on the house.
This is what happens when one of the world’s most robust life sciences sectors creates more jobs than it can fill.
To a large extent, such lucrative perks reflect simple supply and demand.
The life sciences sector in Massachusetts has expanded at about twice the overall rate of the state and US economies since 2014, according to a recent report by the nonprofit Massachusetts Biotechnology Education Foundation. Employment in the field last year surpassed 70,000 in the state for the first time.
As the workforce balloons, the demand for qualified scientists, administrators, and other workers is outpacing the supply. Indeed, biotech employees are such a hot commodity that they are jumping from one firm to another more often than they did just a few years ago because job offers pour in.....
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Related:
"Bain Capital, the Boston-based private equity firm cofounded by Mitt Romney, has agreed to buy a majority stake in Waltham’s Rocket Software in a deal with an enterprise value of $2 billion. Terms of the investment in the business software company were not disclosed. Rocket, which has about 1,500 employees and had revenue of about $450 million last year, is currently owned by Court Square Capital Partners of New York. Rocket was founded in 1990. It will continue to be run by chief executive Andy Youniss. About a third of its employees are in Waltham. Bain Capital has a long history of investing in tech companies, including BMC Software, SunGuard Data Systems, and Symantec. The firm, founded in 1984 by Romney and other partners at consulting firm Bain & Co., oversees $105 billion in assets. Steve Pagliuca, co-chair of Bain Capital and co-owner of the Boston Celtics, is the head of the firm’s investing in technology, media, telecommunications, and financial services."
Also see:
"Private equity players including Bain Capital, Hellman & Friedman, Clayton, Dubiliar & Rice, and TPG are considering bids for the Watertown company, the people said. Hedge fund Elliott Management Corp., which owns 9 percent of athenahealth, is also weighing a bid, they said....."
It's in their sights, anyway.
"Boston’s booming economy brings unequal prosperity, report says" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff October 10, 2018
The city’s advantages — low incarceration rates, universal health care, high minimum wage — are sometimes outweighed by its disadvantages, namely high housing costs, segregated neighborhoods, and a transit system in need of upgrading.
“There’s a lot of places in the country where economic mobility is down, income inequality is up, and the economy is in bad shape, and that’s just not the case here,” said Luc Schuster, a coauthor of the report. “We’re really operating from a position of strength, but we need to do a better job of making sure the benefits of that economic strength are really felt across the board. When you talk to folks in the city, there’s way too many people who are having trouble paying the rent, affording child care, saving for college.”
The study analyzed data from various sources. Some of the findings show improvement. Boston no longer has the highest rate of income inequality of any city in the nation, for instance, probably due in part to increases in the state’s minimum wage, according to the report, but some of the seemingly positive findings are less rosy than they appear.
Boston’s rate of economic mobility is second only to San Francisco’s and is tied with the rate in Minneapolis, but it’s harder to get ahead than it used to be. People born in Massachusetts in 1940 had a 91 percent chance of earning more than their parents by the time they were 30. Those born in 1980, however, had a 55 percent chance of doing so.
The middle class is also shrinking.....
They say housing costs are playing a huge role in driving people out.
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Want to know if you’re in the middle class?
And here I thought Bo$ton was supposed to be a role model for workers.
I can't afford to go to the museum so it will have to be the diner instead.
Then it is back to the apartment:
"Modular building growing in popularity in housing-starved Boston area" by Tim Logan Globe Staff October 29, 2018
SAINT-BENOIT-LABRE, Quebec — While worries about quality and occasional pushback from construction unions have long helped keep the building method from being widely adopted here, those concerns are easing. The relentless pressure of increasing costs has more builders warming up to the idea of factory-built apartments, saying they could be a key factor in addressing the Boston area’s housing crunch.
“Modular’s time has finally arrived,” said architect Arthur Klipfel, president of Oaktree Development, which is planning a modular building on Austin Street in Newton.
It’s definitely getting attention. Major investors have pumped more than $1 billion into Katerra, a Silicon Valley startup with a factory in Phoenix and plans to expand into the Northeast. A local startup, with strong ties to developers WinnCompanies and Suffolk Construction, is exploring off-site construction as a way to boost affordable housing in Boston, and developers hoping to make the most of the region’s housing market while it’s still hot are looking for any advantage they can find, even if that takes them to a factory in Quebec.
Construction experts, however, are quick to point out that modular building is not much cheaper than traditional on-site methods. Materials cost the same, or perhaps more when you count the double walls and floors that come from stacking units alongside each other. Labor in a rural factory may be less expensive than union workers in Boston, but those savings are eaten up by the added costs of trucking full-size apartments six hours through the Maine woods to the Boston area and renting the massive cranes needed to lift them into place.
Not to mention the oversized carbon footprint of such an operation, 'eh?
It is, though, a faster way to build homes. RCM — a leading supplier of so-called modular, multifamily housing in New England and Eastern Canada — can pump out 14 apartments a week and stack that many on-site in two days. Even with extra design work beforehand, and connecting utilities once the units are in place, building modular can shave a few months off a project that would typically take two years.
“When you’re saving time, you’re saving money,” said Jonathan Miller, vice president of development at LBC Boston, which is building a 171-unit modular project in Quincy Center. “That’s really where you end up benefiting.”
It also means a lot of front-end work on design and architecture, to make sure everything fits together. Once the units are built and trucked to the project site, there’s no going back, even if, say, a vent connection is in the wrong place.
“You’ve got to sweat the details,” said John Tocci, the chief executive of Tocci Construction, which is building the Graphic, a 125-unit modular building in Charlestown. “If you make the wrong decision, you’ve made the wrong decision 300 times.”
I've been here 12 years and read how many papers?
There are some who would like to bring this style of construction to Massachusetts in a bigger way. Talk of a plant here has percolated in construction circles for years, with various developers and builders studying sites and costs. Some of those talks have involved construction unions, such as the New England Regional Council of Carpenters, which considers a local plant a way to train incoming workers, while producing housing on a mass scale.
The challenge is volume. During the lean years of the recession, RCM kept busy building mining-camp dorms until the housing business came back, and they’ve branched out to do hotels, college dorms, and assisted-living facilities.
So you can have a Space of your own.
These days, though, the Canadian plant — in business for 18 years — is booked solid well into 2019, with a lot of apartments scheduled to roll off the assembly line and get placed on a truck. Many of them will be headed to Boston.....
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So what would you think of having Emma Watson for a neighbor?
Otherwise, head on over to the YMCA and grab a bunk.
Or go sleep in the park:
"New hopes for Ramsay Park in Roxbury after $2.4 million face lift" by Jeremy C. Fox Globe Correspondent August 24, 2018
On Friday morning, beaming children ran, yelled, and soaked their T-shirts in a water feature at Roxbury’s Ramsay Park. Giggling moppets packed themselves in twos, threes, and fours onto wide, disc-shaped swings and spun on tiny seats shaped like flowers.
Their cheerful, innocent antics could hardly be more different from the activities for which the park has long been known. For decades, people have openly sold and used drugs in the park, neighborhood residents and workers said, and drank beers and small bottles of liquor that they left to litter areas intended for play.
In 2004, 23-year-old basketball coach William “Biggie” Gaines was fatally shot here in front of his players. In March 2012, police found a 60-year-old man stabbed in the neck here.
After a $2.4 million renovation that was driven by local activism, city officials and neighbors hope the 5.5-acre park on Washington Street near Melnea Cass Boulevard will continue to attract children and families rather than trouble.
Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in an interview Friday after a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the park that keeping it busy with appropriate activities will drive away those who would use the space to get intoxicated or engage in criminal acts.
Walsh said the city has made a long-term commitment to the safety and usability of the park, and said police and other city workers will monitor it for criminal activity and cleanliness.
“We still have to come in and make sure that we don’t see needles here and we don’t see people drinking here,” he said. “So we’re going to be keeping an eye on that. . . . .”
And on children like Ellora Hankwitz, 7, of Roxbury.
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Meanwhile, over at HUBweek they talked about how changes in immigration policy could affect the Boston economy as well as childhood education:
"HUBweek hackathon: Changing mindsets about early childhood education" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff October 09, 2018
The early education workforce has a perception problem.
People who work with young children — 40 percent of whom are women of color — are seen as unskilled, undereducated, underpaid baby sitters, said Anne Douglass, executive director of the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts Boston, at a Tuesday HUBweek hackathon event dedicated to changing that mindset.
This negative image is so widespread that it can even be found in the syndicated “Ask Amy” advice column that runs in The Boston Globe, she said.
This perception needs to change if we’re going to improve early education and child care, Douglass said, because the true experts on the subject — the people who teach young children — often aren’t included in the conversation because they aren’t viewed as skilled, smart leaders who can create change.
As long as they aren't you know.
With that, Douglass turned the problem over to the attendees, who included parents, early childhood educators, pediatricians, and graduate students, to brainstorm solutions in small groups. Among the ideas discussed were public awareness campaigns to highlight the tools that many early educators use, and encouraging them to get involved in their communities. Others suggested expanding annual training requirements to include on-site coaching, reaching out to the business community to expand child-care offerings, and getting the burgeoning educational technology sector involved.
Meaghan Parker, the mother of an 18-month-old girl and a librarian in Lexington, noted that her profession also suffers from perception problems — women with “hair in buns, cardigans, and cats” whose sole duty is to check out books — and suggested that getting early educators into politics would help give them a voice.
“If you can manage a roomful of toddlers,” she said, “you can do anything.”
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First thing you have to do is feed them:
"Once Upon a Farm, the organic baby food line co-founded by actress Jennifer Garner, snagged a $20 million investment from Cavu Venture Partners as it plans hard growth for the soft-food company. The investment will help it build distribution and develop new products, said chief executive John Foraker, who previously led natural mac-and-cheese maker Annie’s Inc. Once Upon a Farm makes cold-pressed baby food, applesauce, and smoothies packaged in refrigerated pouches."
"A New Hampshire school district is contemplating hiring a collection agency to manage $32,000 in unpaid lunch bills. WMUR-TV reports Claremont School Board officials have sent letters to families who owe money to no avail. Officials say some parents owe hundreds of dollars. Interim Superintendent Keith Pfeifer says the district understands the "fiscal needs" of some families. However, Pfeifer says $32,000 is a "significant issue." The district will forgive those who owe less than $20. Officials say they won't deny any student lunch. Some parents disagree with the idea of the district using a collection agency to handle debts. The school board plans to discuss the matter at a meeting Sunday."
Otherwise, the kids get cranky and may fight:
"Students settle suit alleging excessive force at school" Associated Press October 09, 2018
A Pittsburgh-area school accused of creating a culture of verbal abuse and excessive force that allowed resource officers to shock students with stun guns and body slam them reached a settlement Tuesday in a civil rights lawsuit.
Attorneys for the five black former students and their parents, who filed the lawsuit in August 2017, said a federal judge still has to approve the settlement petition. The lawsuit alleges white school administrators had engaged in discriminatory behavior against the black students, some of whom say they were also discriminated against because they have emotional and behavioral issues. It alleges false criminal charges were filed against several students to cover up alleged physical abuse and excessive force.
More the rule than exception these days, be it the Church, private schools, the symphony, or Saudis.
The former students will split more than $500,000 if the settlement is approved. It was unclear what the individual settlement amounts would be.
The attorneys said the settlement comes with a commitment from a new high school principal and a new superintendent to end violence toward students.
‘‘All children-regardless of race, gender, or disability are entitled to an education free of violence and abuse. Not only fundamental constitutional rights but common sense underlies that promise,’’ attorney Timothy O’Brien wrote in a statement.
Unless you want them to be conditioned to future society.
Then it's a plan, man.
The lawsuit filed against the school district, the Churchill Borough, Dynasty Security, former principal Kevin Murray, former superintendent Alan Johnson, and former school resource officer Stephen Shaulis, cites five different incidents, at least four of which were partially captured on the school’s security cameras.
A video from 2009 shows Shaulis shoving a student into a locker without apparent physical provocation, then shocking the student with a stun gun and arresting him.
One in 2010 shows a behavioral specialist lifting a student up against a locker and slamming him into the ground, breaking the student’s wrist. The student was charged with aggravated assault and disorderly conduct, the lawsuit said, but charges were withdrawn after a district attorney reviewed the video.
Wanted to see how the kid would behave when confronted by a bully.
In 2017, Shaulis was accused of punching and knocking out the tooth of a 14-year-old freshman accused of stealing a cellphone. Another video surfaced shortly after of Shaulis body-slamming a 15-year-old student in 2015 and shocking him with a stun gun.
An audio recording was also released of former principal Kevin Murray allegedly threatening to punch a 14-year-old special education student in the face and ‘‘knock your . . . teeth down your throat.’’
New school district superintendent James Harris said Shaulis is no longer working at the school, but said he did not know his employment status. Phone messages left with the Churchill Borough Police Department and an attorney who represented Shaulis were not returned Tuesday. The district attorney’s office declined to charge Murray, who resigned shortly before the lawsuit was filed.
The tapes sparked outrage among parents over the district’s reliance on resource officers, and they confronted school board members and held protests. Both the attorneys for the students and Harris credited the community reaction for changes at the district.
Harris, who was hired in August, said the district has tried to change the atmosphere and the relationship between students and school resource officers— police officers assigned to work at the district’s high school and alternative school.
‘‘There has been a huge difference at the high school and a big part of that is the change in leadership, the new principal,’’ he said. ‘‘Our disciplinary referrals are way down as a result.’’
Harris said school resource officers are no longer used to handle disciplinary matters like calling a teacher a name or using inappropriate language, which before landed students in front of judges instead of in parent-teacher conferences. He said the officers are only called in when the principal decides they’re needed or in cases of outside intruders or school safety threats — none of which has been necessary so far this school year.
When is the staged school shooting?
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Related:
"It’s almost impossible to drive down the interstate, walk through an airport, or surf the Web without seeing advertisements for a master of business administration degree. And there’s good reason: At many colleges and universities, the traditional graduate business degree has fallen on hard times. So schools are recruiting potential students everywhere....."
For, you know:
"Probe at Choate Rosemary Hall unearths more sexual misconduct allegations" by Danny McDonald Globe Staff October 13, 2018
An investigation at Choate Rosemary Hall has unearthed several new reports of sexual misconduct, including allegations against three people formerly associated with the elite Connecticut boarding school who were not previously named.
According to a letter sent to the school’s community on Friday, Day Pitney, the law firm in charge of the investigation, corroborated multiple first-hand reports that Robert Inglehart, who was a faculty member at Choate from 1957 to 1964, used an outbreak of measles “as a pretext for fondling students in a dormitory.”
Additionally, the firm corroborated a first-hand report that Bette Spencer, the wife of a former faculty member, “engaged in sexual abuse, including kissing and fondling, with a student in the late 1960s.”
(Blog editor shakes head.
Where are we if the women become the perps?)
Investigators also found that Carl Johnson, a faculty member at the school from 1969 to 2001, allegedly kissed and fondled a student who had recently graduated when that student visited the campus in the mid-1980s, according to the letter. Day Pitney’s review also found that Johnson “engaged in sexually abusive conduct over a number of years with a different Choate student who graduated in the late 1970s during and after that student’s time at Choate.”
In April 2017, a report named a dozen former Choate educators who allegedly sexually abused or assaulted students at the school since the 1960s.
After that report, the school retained Stan Twardy, a former US attorney for Connecticut, and his firm, Day Pitney, “for the purpose of investigating any additional reports of adult sexual misconduct brought to the school’s attention,” according to the letter.
Twardy presented his findings to Choate’s Board of Trustees on Friday, the letter said.
In addition, to the allegations against Inglehart, Spencer, and Johnson, Day Pitney also received new reports of misconduct concerning former faculty who were named in the 2017 report.
The firm received three first-hand reports that John Joseph, a faculty member from 1944 to 1977, sexually abused a child of a former faculty member in the late 1950s and “gave inappropriate massages to students,” according to Friday’s letter.
William Maillet, who worked on the Choate faculty from 1961 to 1983, allegedly sexually abused the child of a faculty member in the late 1970s and early 1980s, that he kissed a student, and that he gave inappropriate massages to students, according to the letter.
Day Pitney also corroborated a report that Kenneth Mills, who was the husband of a faculty member who lived in Choate housing from 1975 to 1983, allegedly kissed and fondled a student in the late 1970s.
Separate from the Day Pitney probe, the school also received “credible allegations of abuse by former faculty member Sarah Pont.”
“Counsel for the school was able to corroborate, through conversations with former dormitory prefects and others, that Ms. Pont engaged in sexually abusive conduct with a student over a series of months during the 1989-90 year,” read Friday’s letter.
Choate, after learning of the allegations in May 2017, contacted the school that was employing Pont and she was fired, according to the letter.
“On behalf of the Board and the entire Choate Rosemary Hall community, we apologize deeply to all survivors who suffered abuse at our school and to their families,” wrote Michael J. Carr, the chairman of the school’s board of trustees, and Alex Curtis, the head of school, in Friday’s letter.
Choate Rosemary Hall is one of several elite private schools that have investigated claims of misconduct following a 2016 Boston Globe Spotlight story that reported on allegations of abuse by about 200 victims at 67 New England private schools.
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I'm sorry, I had a hard time getting that one down and I wouldn't urge expansion of the after-school, summer learning programs, either.
What is going to happen is some father is going to go nuts, and people will then ask why didn't anyone do something.
"A Cambridge elementary school worker was fired after using an “unacceptable” racial slur while supervising students during recess on Friday, according to Cambridge Public Schools. The termination came after a group of fourth- and fifth-graders at Cambridgeport School told the school’s principal that a lunch room aide had “used an unacceptable racial slur and addressed the students in a disrespectful manner during recess,” Cambridge’s superintendent of schools, Kenneth Salim, said in a statement. “After praising the students for knowing when to report such unacceptable behavior, the principal investigated the incident and terminated the employee effective immediately,” Salim said in the statement. School officials did not elaborate on the nature of the incident. However, parent John Summers told the Globe that his fourth-grade daughter came home upset on Friday and said that a lunch aide, who he said is African-American, had called his daughter’s African-American classmate the N-word. “I could hardly believe it,” Summers said. A Cambridge schools spokeswoman declined to comment on the aide’s race, but did say the students reported that the N-word was used. The superintendent’s statement said that Cambridge is actively working to “dismantle systemic oppression in our schools” and is “committed to altering power dynamics and structures in order to elevate underrepresented voices and to recognize and eliminate bias.”
After putting aside the dynamics of intra-black use of the word that I am not qualified to comment on, you can't help notice the incident comes out of the left liberal enclave of Cambridge.
Maybe the kid should go to a charter school instead.
Smith employee who called police on black student didn’t act out of racial bias, report says
NC universities head Margaret Spellings quits amid turmoil
The $eparation package for Spellings paid her more than $500,000, and it was new members appointed by the legislature, several of them brashly conservative former lawmakers themselves, that have sought to disrupt a university system that had been seen as self-satisfied and elitist.
Marisa Kelly formally installed as Suffolk University’s president
Time to lay this post to rest:
"Matthew Shepard, a gay man murdered in 1998, to be interred at National Cathedral" by Michelle Boorstein Washington Post October 11, 2018
When Matthew Shepard died on a cold night 20 years ago, after being beaten with a pistol butt and tied to a split-rail wood fence, his parents cremated rather than buried the 21-year-old, for fear of drawing attention to the resting place of a person who had become a global icon for combating antigay hate.
With the anniversary Friday of their son’s murder, the Shepards have decided to do just that, interring his remains inside the crypt of the prominent Washington National Cathedral, where gay-equality activists say they can be a prominent symbol and even a pilgrimage destination for the movement. Although the cause of LGBT equality has made historic advancements since Shepherd was killed, it remains divisive anew in many parts of a country re-embracing tribalism of all kinds.
The 1998 killing of Shepard, a slight University of Wyoming student, by two young men in a remote area east of Laramie, Wyo., was so horrific that his name is on the federal law against bias crimes directed at LGBT people. It has been the subject of books, movies and the play ‘‘The Laramie Project,’’ which is one of the most-performed theatre pieces in the country.
Savagely beaten and left to die on a cold night, he was found almost 18 hours later by a bicyclist, who thought his limp body was a scarecrow. Shepard died a few days later, on Oct. 12, 1998.
On Oct. 26, his ashes will be placed in a niche in the crypt columbarium, a private, off-limits area on the lower level of the massive Gothic cathedral, which is the seat of the Episcopal Church and a popular spot for high-profile national spiritual events.....
Racist President Woodrow Wilson is also interred there.
Rather than fading, the symbolism of Matthew Shepard’s death has intensified over time. Those at the foundation named for him said its recent growth — and that of other advocacy groups doing similar work — reflects a reversal or stalling in the pursuit of full equality for LGBT people.
‘‘We were hopeful through the Obama administration and with the end of ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,’ and the passage of gay marriage, that maybe we were moving into an era when social and political wars over gender and sexuality were fading, but it didn’t go that way,’’ said Jason Marsden, executive director of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, which advocates in particular for gay youth, including through hate-crimes legislation. Marsden was friends with Shepard in the year or two before he was killed. ‘‘In everything from the alt-right to white supremacist movements, these are reversals.’’
So anyone who opposes their agenda is labeled as such?
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Related:
20 years after slaying, Matthew Shepard is interred at Washington National Cathedral
Also see:
Brockton man faces manslaughter charge in death of teen
They called all cars until they found him.
