Another 22 Bite the Dust at H-L

This from Page One:

We’ve written quite a bit over the past year about the Herald-Leader and shenanigans going on. Here’s a refreshers:

Herald-Leader Treats Employees Badly
CWA Takes Herald-Leader to Task
Lexington Newspaper Guild Update
Update: Newspaper Guild Ratifies Contract
McClatchy Lays Off 1,400 Employees

Today the Herald-Leader announced it is laying off 22 employees in Lexington, including nine employees represented by the Newspaper Guild-CWA.

But its parent company, McClatchy, is rolling in the dough...

1607-2007 Jamestown laid groundwork for America to come

JAMESTOWN, Va. - If you're looking for America's cozy creation narrative - pious settlers, friendly Indians and "the first Thanksgiving," all blessedly lacking the stain of our original sin, slavery - then go visit that rock where the Pilgrims landed.

But if you want the whole story of the white man in America - the full-tilt frenzy of near-starvation and cannibalism, salvation through entrepreneurial enterprise, importing slavery, overrunning Indians and the nation's first step toward representative democracy - then come to Jamestown.

For it's here, on a swampy peninsula between the James and York rivers of southeastern Virginia, that the first permanent English settlement in North America was established on May 14, 1607. The initial 1-acre, triangular fort was built 13 years before the Mayflower landed in Massachusetts, bearing its solemn flock of families in search of religious freedom.

"Jamestown is much more typical of American society in the intervening 400 years, as opposed to Plymouth, which was an eccentric experiment but not really what America would be about," said James Kelly, the director of museums for the Virginia Historical Society. "It (Jamestown) never had any idealistic pretensions."

This from the McClatchy Newspapers. Photo by Adrin Snider/Newport News Daily Press/MCT.

Allegations of wrongdoing plague Bush reading program

When the Kansas City public schools lost federal money for their new reading program, Robert Slavin was plenty distressed.

Slavin, who'd designed the program used in Kansas City, had seen the pattern all too often: Local officials try to get government grants to help pay for his scripted Success for All reading program, only to realize that it's fallen out of bureaucratic favor in Washington.

"There have been many of these decisions - this is only the latest," said Slavin, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Fueled by a growing list of such complaints, the House Education and Labor Committee is looking into whether the Bush administration steered contracts to its favorite vendors, shutting out Slavin and other competitors.

This from the McClatchy Newspapers.

Change proposed in funding for migrant education

Persistent flaws and possible fraud undermine migrant education funding, the Bush administration believes.

So now, the Education Department wants to change how school districts get their federal aid. The move could alarm some teachers, but also could help school districts in states such as California, Texas and Florida, home to more than half of all migrant students.

"A problem was identified," said Alex Goniprow, a supervisory specialist in the federal Office of Migrant Education, "and the states and us have moved very aggressively to face up to it."
On Friday, the Education Department proposed potentially far-ranging migrant education revisions.

Some jobs would no longer count as migrant farm work. Some states would lose money because of student eligibility errors. Other states could gain money. Educators would do more double-checking. All the revisions are supposed to improve the distribution of some $386 million a year in migrant education funds.

From McClatchy Newspapers.