Latest news with #BoardofEducation
Japan Today
a day ago
- General
- Japan Today
Understanding teacher transfers in Japan from a parent's perspective
By Kerri King When we first moved to Japan and enrolled our child in elementary school, I had no idea about 教職員人事異動 (kyoshokuin jinji ido), the nationwide system of teacher transfers. I expected to get to know the teaching staff over many years and maybe even see the same faces until graduation, as is common back in New Zealand. So, when my child's beloved teacher (along with what felt like half the faculty) suddenly disappeared at the end of the school year, I was confused and, honestly, a little emotional. I've since learned that this isn't unusual at all. It's part of a long-standing system in Japan where teachers are regularly rotated between schools. For foreign parents who are used to seeing the same staff year after year, this can be a surprising and sometimes difficult adjustment. What Are Teacher Transfers & Why Do They Happen? Image: iStock: paylessimages In Japan, public school teachers are employed by the local Board of Education rather than individual schools. This means that teachers aren't permanently attached to one school but are seen as part of the wider prefectural system. Every few years (typically every three to five), they're reassigned to a different school within the region or city. Unlike in some other countries, these transfers don't usually happen because a teacher has performed poorly or done something wrong. Instead, they're part of a planned rotation system designed to support teacher growth and benefit the school system as a whole. The idea behind the transfers is to help teachers develop professionally and keep things fair across schools. By changing schools and grade levels, teachers gain new experiences, stay motivated and bring fresh ideas to different classrooms. For students, it means being exposed to a variety of teaching styles. Although there's some debate about how effective the system always is in practice, it's a normal part of school life in Japan. How Teacher Transfers Happen Image: iStock: Fast&Slow One of the most difficult parts of teacher transfers in Japan, especially for parents, is the timing. Unlike in many other countries where staffing updates are shared well in advance, Japanese schools tend to announce teacher changes just days before the school year ends in March. Even the teachers themselves often don't find out about their new assignments until late in the school year. Once the transfers are confirmed, a short notice or letter is usually sent home with students. On the last day of school, during the shuryo-shiki (closing ceremony), there's often a farewell segment where teachers who are leaving give short speeches and are presented with flowers. Click here to read more. External Link © Savvy Tokyo
Scoop
5 days ago
- Health
- Scoop
Pacific News In Brief For 17 July
Samoa - dengue A dengue fever outbreak in Samoa has claimed the life of a second child. The Sāmoa Observer reports Faith Melchior, 8, died in hospital on Monday night. She is the second child to die from dengue in Sāmoa this year - 12-year-old Misiafa Lene died in April. Fiji, Cook Islands, Kiribati, Tonga, French Polynesia and American Sāmoa have also declared outbreaks. Tuvalu and Nauru are on alert for the disease. Pacific - trade A meeting of trade ministers from the Pacific Island Forum's African, Caribbean and Pacific States is underway in Suva. New Zealand's Nicola Grigg said it is a timely opportunity to discuss the importance of the rules-based trading system, with the World Trade Organisation at its core. She said the structure is vital for small Pacific island nations, including New Zealand. Vanuatu/France - cable France is committing around US$20 to new undersea technology linking Vanuatu and New Caledonia, which will better prepare the Pacific for natural disasters. SMART will be the world's first Science Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications submarine cable. French Ambassador to Vanuatu Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer said the cable will be fitted with sensors to measure sea temperature and seismic activity. He said it will help monitor climate change and - crucially - provide early warnings for tsunamis. The Vanutu Daily Post reported that the cable is expected to be in operation sometime next year. It will link Port Vila with Lifou Island in New Caledonia's Loyalty Islands group, traversing the seismically active New Hebrides Trench. Vanuatu - election Vanuatu's Electoral Commission says the verification of ballot boxes for the recent Provincial and By-Elections should be completed later today. According to the Vanuatu Daily Post, once that is done, the Commission can officially announce final results. The election was held on 8 July and attracted good voter turnout. The Commission has thanked all who participated - describing the election process as smooth and peaceful. Political parties have already begun lobbying to form new provincial governments. Fiji - HIV Fiji's HIV prevention taskforce says the country's law enforcement is actively hindering public health efforts. The United Nations reports a massive surge in HIV cases last year - numbers are up 284 percent. Around half of all cases were caused by intravenous drug use. Taskforce chair Dr Jason Mitchell told Pasifika TV there is a concerning lack of cooperation between the health sector and police. Northern Marianas - cuts Schools in the Northern Marianas are bracing for a possible fiscal cliff, according to the Board of Education. Governor Arnold Palacios is planning substantial cuts to the education budget allocation. The government is proposing a US$40 million dollar grant but the Public School System has requested just over 49 million dollars. Board of Education has testified that if the government's proposal is implemented they could be forced to declare a state of emergency in education.
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Politically well-connected firm gets Paterson insurance broker contract
PATERSON — A politically-connected insurance company received a lucrative broker's contract on June 11 from the city Board of Education, which rejected the superintendent's recommendation that the district continue using its current firm. The school board's resolution picking Fairview Insurance of Verona as the district's broker for employee health benefits does not say how much the company will make from the contract. That's because Fairview's fees will be paid by the health care network working for the school board, and not by the district itself. Officials speaking off the record estimated that Fairview will make more than $700,000 from the contract. The school board's selection of Fairview comes two years after the city's education commissioners dropped the firm from a different insurance set in motion what political insiders say was a concerted effort by Fairview's powerful allies to run candidates for the school board aligned with them. The four school board members who voted in favor of the Fairview contract on Wednesday night — Hector Nieves, Joel Ramirez, Mohammed Rashid and Kenneth Rosado — all were supported in their 2023 and 2024 election campaigns by the insurance company's allies. In 2023, for example, the Fairview-connected super PAC, America's Future First, put out five campaign mailings backing Nieves and Ramirez. Fairview's most recent pay-to-play report on the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission website says the firm received $2.8 million in public contracts in 2024 and made $137,424 in political contributions. The firm's gross income from government-related work was far higher than $2.8 million because many of the contracts are like the new one with Paterson schools, with the fees paid by a private third party, not the public entity. In 2024, Fairview had more than 50 contracts with various public entities, including the city of Paterson, the Passaic County Board of Social Services, the Passaic Valley Water Commission, the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission, Passaic County Workforce Development, the Passaic Board of Education, the county of Passaic, and the Passaic Housing Authority. Among the political contributions the firm made last year were $2,600 to the Friends of Andre Sayegh, Paterson's mayor, and $2,600 to Friends of John Bartlett, a Passaic County commissioner. So far in 2025, Fairview has donated $5,500 to Assemblyman Al Abdelaziz's election fund and $10,000 to the Passaic County Democratic Committee. Fairview's chief executive, John F.X. Graham, has been a member of the Democratic National Committee and has served as a superdelegate at the party's national presidential convention. He also served as a campaign adviser or campaign finance committee member to two governors, Jon Corzine and Phil Murphy; two U.S. senators, Cory Booker and Bob Menendez; and three House members, including Bill Pascrell Jr. One of Fairview's insurance consultants is Keith Furlong, a spokesman for Passaic County government and a close associate of John Currie, who is the powerful former state Democratic Party chairman and current head of the party in Passaic County. Furlong also has worked on election campaigns for numerous Democrats in Passaic County, including Sayegh. Before picking Fairview, Nieves, Ramirez, Rashid and Rosado voted down Superintendent Laurie Newell's recommendation that the district continue using CBIZ Benefits and Insurance Services as its health coverage broker. In contrast to Fairview, CBIZ's pay-to-play report for 2024 says the company made no political contributions last year. Newell's suggestion to keep CBIZ was based on score sheets and an evaluation report compiled by a committee of three district administrators. That committee reviewed contract proposals by Fairview, CBIZ, and two other insurance firms — Brown & Brown and Connor Strong and Buckelew. Those documents have not yet been released to the public by the district. Ramirez raised questions about the use of artificial intelligence by district officials in the scoring of the firms' proposals. Assistant Superintendent Luis Rojas told Ramirez that the original scoring ranking CBIZ first was done without AI. Rojas said he used AI to double-check the scoring. Nieves, Ramirez, Rashid and Rosado gave no explanation during the board meeting for why they were voting for Fairview. Ramirez, Rashid and Rosado did not respond to messages from Paterson Press on June 12 asking about their votes. Nieves said he backed Fairview because of his concerns over the use of AI in ranking the vendors. Two board members, Corey Teague and Valerie Freeman, voted against the Fairview contract. Teague told Paterson Press that he thought CBIZ was doing a good job and should continue working for the district. Freeman said she doesn't think the board has the ability to pick a different vendor after rejecting the firm recommended by the superintendent. Board member Kenneth Simmons abstained in the Fairview vote. He said he thinks his colleagues 'overstepped' their authority when they picked Fairview minutes after voting down the CBIZ contract. Fairview is scheduled to start work for the district on July 1, the same date when Aetna becomes Paterson Public Schools' new health care network provider. Charles Ferrer, vice president of the Paterson teachers' union, told the school board during the meeting that many employees have expressed concerns about the medical coverage changes. The union president, John McEntee Jr., noted the timing of the change in an interview on June 12. 'This is a lot to digest on June 12,' McEntee said. 'My number one concern is to make sure my members know exactly who to contact if they have any issues on July 1.' Employees said the health insurance broker, not the school district's human services department, handles complaints when workers are having problems with such things as getting a medical provider referral approved. This article originally appeared on Politically well-connected firm gets Paterson insurance contract
Yahoo
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The Supreme Court Just Gave Trump a Free Template to Win by Losing
On Friday, the Supreme Court held that federal courts lack authority to issue universal injunctions. The decision in Trump v. CASA deprives the judiciary of a vital tool in checking the most egregious abuses of executive power. But it also does something more pernicious, creating a blueprint for the Trump administration to win by losing. Universal injunctions are an extraordinary and controversial remedy because they cover everyone harmed or threatened by a defendant's conduct, not just the individual plaintiffs. But sometimes extraordinary lawlessness requires an extraordinary remedy. That core truth animates the centuries-old English tradition of equity, which developed as a system to do justice when courts of law weren't up to the task. In the United States, equity has evolved to address ingenious and diabolical attempts by government officials to evade their legal obligations. From the early 20th century through the Civil Rights era and beyond, equity provided new, meaningful relief when the existing legal order came up short. To take just one of many examples, Southern school boards resisting desegregation often forced Black plaintiffs to bring individual lawsuits, but piecemeal litigation barely made a dent in massive resistance until equity stepped in. A new class action device—an equitable innovation—allowed Black families to harness their collective power and sue on behalf of all aggrieved people to realize the promise of Brown v. Board of Education. This past still echoes through the current political moment as the Trump administration invents ever more devious ways to skirt the law. One might think its sheer brazenness, the way it almost relishes violating the law, would lead courts to intervene more aggressively. But often the administration's goal is not to win in court. The point is instead to inflict maximal pain and chaos that courts, especially after CASA, are largely powerless to undo. Consider several examples. The Trump administration has tried to prevent Harvard University from enrolling any international students. A federal judge quickly blocked that effort, calling the administration's arguments 'absurd.' But the loss doesn't really matter. The administration's saber rattling has driven numerous institutions, including Columbia University, to the bargaining table as President Donald Trump has threatened to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants. And on the same day that the Supreme Court decided CASA, the Department of Justice succeeded in demanding that the president of the University of Virginia resign. The administration didn't even need to file a lawsuit to make UVA bend to its will. What a court ultimately might have said about the legality of that effort is now irrelevant. Think about federal employees whom the administration illegally fired or threatened to fire. Even if some of them ultimately win in court, the administration will have succeeded in driving many others into retirement or other jobs. The cultivated chaos has proved far more powerful than any adverse judicial decision ever will. Some of the most devastatingly successful efforts made headlines for months as the Trump administration simply ignored certain migrants' due process rights and even federal court orders. Although a handful of wrongfully deported immigrants might be returned to the United States in the hope that their rights and the rule of law can be vindicated, the vast majority will not, no matter what any court says. And perhaps the clearest example of how the Trump administration can win by losing comes from the executive orders that seek to punish disfavored law firms. Every firm that has actually challenged those executive orders has scored a quick legal victory, and, tellingly, the Trump administration has not bothered to appeal those losses. Yet most firms have bent the knee, agreeing to settlements with Trump and collectively agreeing to provide billions of dollars' worth of pro bono legal services to causes he supports. The executive orders' blatant illegality is beside the point. Trump has exacted his pound of flesh, forcing some of the world's most powerful law firms to apologize for crossing him and sending a chilling message to anyone else who would do the same. By rejecting every use of universal injunctions, the Supreme Court in CASA tacitly blessed this lawlessness. Universal injunctions had been a potent weapon against Trump's indifference to the rule of law because they essentially flipped the presumption about who should receive the benefit of the doubt. Normally, when a plaintiff challenges a governmental action as unlawful, the government gets that benefit. It may continue to enforce its policy while the suit plays out, especially as to people who aren't involved with the litigation. But when the government acts in bad faith by disregarding clear legal obligations—rewriting the 14th Amendment, jawboning universities and law firms, ignoring due process—it should lose that presumption. Universal injunctions gave ordinary people the benefit of the existing legal rules. The government could still attempt to justify its actions in court, but it didn't get the time and space to sow chaos and demand submission while court cases dragged on. A couple of months ago, the Supreme Court seemed to recognize that we as a country had found ourselves in uncharted territory. It had gotten wise to the Trump administration's deliberate evasions of court orders as the government tried to deport people with hardly any notice or even a semblance of due process. Over Easter weekend, the court intervened with extraordinary speed to prevent one group of Venezuelan migrants from being rendered to El Salvador. Justice Samuel Alito dissented, arguing that the court's haste ignored all the usual deliberate procedures when, in his view, there was no good reason to do so. It turned out that the majority of seven justices was right to worry that the Trump administration was playing fast and loose with the law. A bus of migrants was already on its way to the airport when the Supreme Court intervened. If the justices had adhered to conventional procedures, the migrants would have been gone, perhaps forever. The majority of the court showed both creativity and courage in the face of lawlessness, at least in this one case. That light has dimmed. A court that seemed alive to these threats has surrendered a powerful tool in upholding the rule of law. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's poignant dissent in CASA captures the point. By eliminating universal injunctions, the court 'has gifted the Executive with the prerogative of sometimes disregarding the law' and 'has put both our legal system, and our system of government, in grave jeopardy.'
Time Magazine
02-07-2025
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill' Will Devastate Public Schools
This week, Republican lawmakers are attempting to pass a budget reconciliation bill that pays for unprecedented handouts to the wealthiest Americans on the backs of cuts to programs that benefit most people. Hidden in this budget package before the House is a national private school voucher program funded through tax breaks for the wealthy that threatens to dismantle our system of public schools. According to Senator Ted Cruz, school vouchers are "the Civil Rights Issue of the 21st century.' The Texas Republican argues that vouchers are key to providing educational opportunities for young people. On the contrary, expanding vouchers and eliminating public education will actively harm young people—especially Black, Latino, and Indigenous students. President Donald Trump's so-called 'Big, Beautiful Bill' currently includes a provision hidden in the tax code that offers an unprecedented 100% tax deduction for donations to third party organizations that hand out private school vouchers. The push to create a national private school voucher program is part of a long legacy of efforts to return to the separate and unequal educational landscape of the pre-civil rights era. Since the 1960s, white segregationists pushed for private school vouchers to avoid the desegregation mandates of Brown v. Board of Education and maintain a discriminatory and unequal system of education. We urge lawmakers to drop the private school voucher program from the spending bill and keep it out of the final budget package. We also call on lawmakers to pass legislation that fully funds public schools, such as the Keep Our Pact Act. If the lawmakers fail to do so, it will set us on a dangerous course back toward a pre-civil rights era reality, defined by deliberate racial segregation and extreme disparities in school funding and resourcing. This private school voucher plan to strip millions of children of their opportunity to access free public education directly mirrors Project 2025. The issue with such a policy is that private school vouchers subsidize wealthy families who can already pay for private school, while decimating public schools for everyone else by diverting resources away from public education. Opponents of free and accessible education argue that voucher programs give families more choice. In actuality, school vouchers go toward private schools that choose which children to enroll, reject, or kick out. Public schools cannot choose which students to provide an education to. By law, they cannot discriminate against students based on their gender, race, disability, religion, English fluency, or LGBTQ identity. But by design, private schools selectively allow admission to a small number of students. They also routinely deny students enrollment for other reasons like grades, behavioral record, and ability to pay. The latter of which is particularly significant because research suggests most families can't afford the gap between the voucher and the rest of tuition. Families who can't access elite private schools, whether because they are discriminated against or can't pay the difference in tuition, are often preyed upon by predatory schools that have popped up in states that passed vouchers in recent years. Horror stories abound of strip mall schools where no learning happens, where doors shutter mid-year, and where students don't have teachers. Meanwhile, public schools, which serve 90% of American students and 94% of students of color—are forced to do more with less. Students learn from outdated textbooks and old computers while overworked teachers are tasked with educating children who aren't getting the resources they need. A choice between a private school that can reject or discriminate against your child and an under-resourced public school is hardly a choice at all. The draconian cuts to public education caused by vouchers are even leading to a new wave of school closures, disproportionately impacting schools in Black and Brown neighborhoods, and forcing students to start over in unfamiliar environments, often traveling farther from home and adapting to new teachers and peers. When neighborhood schools close, Black and Brown communities lose community centers, polling places, access to services, and vital civic infrastructure, and in some cases lose their communities altogether. Grassroots organizers in Black and Brown communities across the U.S. are fighting back to save their public schools from closure. They have packed board meetings, lead school walk-outs, and even held hunger strikes. They are on the frontlines of local fights against voucher programs and to support and keep their public schools. The future of our public schools—schools that serve every child for free—are on the line. Instead of gutting our public schools, lawmakers should invest in them and restore the promise of equal education that the civil rights movement fought for.
