Latest news with #CarrieBuck
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nevada lawmakers tap education rainy day fund to help plug gap; teacher raises renewed
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Money for education is a hot topic again in Carson City as lawmakers made a $126.9 million withdrawal from schools' rainy day fund to help plug a gap created by a decrease in tourism. Additional steps might be necessary after the state per-pupil spending levels are finalized in a budget session scheduled for Thursday. Schools must address a $160 million gap between spending requests and tax revenue. Projected tax revenue has declined since budgets were drawn up at the start of the legislative session in early February. Gov. Joe Lombardo has recommended per-pupil spending of $9,416 in the 2026 fiscal year (July 1-June 30) and $9,486 in 2027. Critics point out that $9,416 is merely $2 more than spending this year. Some are suggesting the state go deeper into the rainy day fund for schools, which is projected to have $746.1 million remaining in July. Per-pupil funding going up $2 next year unless something changes in Nevada budget A final per-pupil funding figure is expected to be delivered by legislative staff on Thursday, taking into account decisions made in today's budget closing session of the Joint Subcommittee on K-12/Higher Education/CIP. Nevada made education funding a priority in the legislative session, but building on that will be difficult in today's economy. Lawmakers voted to continue raises put into place by the 2023 Legislature, but not without some finger-pointing. Republicans on the committee voted against continuing $250 million in spending to fund raises for teachers in the state's public school districts — but didn't have anything for charter school teachers yet. 'Charter schools are public schools,' Republican State Sen. Carrie Buck said. 'These teachers are public teachers. They deserve raises also, so I will be voting no today.' Democratic Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager reminded Republicans of discussions from the 2023 session and the commitments made then to teachers. He called a 'no' vote 'utterly irresponsible,' but five Republicans stood their ground. They didn't have enough votes to stop the existing raises. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro held out hope for charter school teachers. 'While I recognize that today is not the day that we'll be talking about charter school raises, I do think that that conversation should continue for the remainder of this session so that we can come to a good resolution on that,' Cannizzaro said. Lawmakers have been watching as more families leave public school districts to put their kids in charter schools. Lombardo based his budget on no enrollment growth, and during Thursday's hearing, lawmakers were told that student populations have increased in only three counties: Mineral, Nye and Pershing. But as a whole, charter school enrollment is on the rise. Transportation funding for charter schools — about $17 million over two years — was a sticking point in 2023. Today, the committee removed that funding from the per-pupil funding account, instead deciding the money should go to the Charter School Authority through a one-time appropriation from the state general fund. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KLAS.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Eugenics ideas and a Natal Conference don't belong at the University of Texas
Years ago, I took a class at the University of Texas called anthropological genetics. Deborah Bolnick, an anthropologist and geneticist, taught us how humans have constructed and deconstructed our various groups. We learned that the racial categories of the United States Census have shifted several times. We learned that humans have more genetic diversity within a defined racial group than between them. And very critically, we learned about eugenics, the notion that certain 'kinds' of people are better suited to reproduce. We learned how this was a guiding doctrine of Nazi science and the Jim Crow South, and was intertwined with similar dictums such as pronatalism — the idea that the 'right kind' of people should reproduce as much as possible. (You know which kind.) The class gathered three times a week in a sunny room in Painter Hall, a 15-minute walk from the AT&T Hotel & Conference Center — another university-owned venue where later this week a conference on natalism and eugenics will be held. But bafflingly, this week's Natal Conference seeks not to decry eugenics, but to celebrate it. At first glance this may not seem so bad. Survival of the fittest, after all? But the key question to ask here is this: Who gets to decide who the fittest are? And on which criteria? Are people of a certain race inherently better? Which combinations of nucleotides mark the best people? Consider the speaking lineup for this conference. Instead of demographers — scientists who study populations and how they change — the lineup features far-right gadflies and prominent proponents of eugenicist ideas and practices, all with a stated aim to 'improve' future generations, not by investing in communities and the health and well-being of populations, but by developing policies of genetic selection that elevate and encourage the reproduction of white, abled people only. But gadflies, by definition, exist to annoy. Arguing with them yields limited returns. And much to my dismay, UT has welcomed this event to our campus. While I urge university leadership in the strongest possible terms to disavow this embarrassing spectacle and protect our community from people who tweet cheerfully about the "butt rape" of Indigenous Americans, I doubt they will respond. What we can do is this: Learn how horrific this movement is. Read about the nonconsensual sterilization of prisoners in California, which wasn't stopped until 2013. Read about the history of 'Mississippi Appendectomies,' the nonconsensual hysterectomies performed on Black women in teaching hospitals across the South. Learn about Carrie Buck, the young woman who became pregnant by rape and was sterilized by a pro-eugenics physician who treated his patients as if they were cats who needed spaying. Discuss these examples and their lessons with your friends and family. Do what you can with the emotional energy you have to counter this very ugly movement. Horrible things take root in ignorance. While eugenics has never gone away, those who support it are more comfortable and publicly accepted than they have been in decades. It is especially concerning that they find comfort on the campus of our state's most celebrated public university, which has said it cannot discriminate against the viewpoints of anyone wishing to use the AT&T Conference Center. The tacit approval of a race science conference at UT-Austin, alongside the large-scale defunding and muzzling of American science by a far-right regime, marks a very dark chapter of our history. It should worry all of us, not just academics, how quickly we've moved away from science, progress and the embrace of diversity. We won't win every battle in this war. But no one can force us to forget our richly and beautifully diverse backgrounds as Americans, and our values as human beings. Consider this quote from the late Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist and one of the most celebrated and widely-read scholars in modern history: 'I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.' Claire Zagorski is a graduate research assistant and PhD student in translational science at the University of Texas. This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Natal Conference and eugenics don't belong at UT Austin | Opinion
Yahoo
19-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Nevada may expand revenge porn law to cover AI
LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — A proposal at the Nevada Legislature would amend the state's revenge porn law to include computer-generated images. Under current state law, sharing an intimate image of another person without their consent — commonly referred to as revenge porn — constitutes a Category D felony. The tier carries a potential prison sentence of 1-4 years and a fine. The proposal from State Sens. Carrie Buck, John Ellison, Lisa Krasner, Jeff Stone and John Steinbeck, adds 'certain photorealistic images, digital images, electronic images, computer images, computer-generated images and other pictorial representations' to the statute. All five sponsors are Republicans. The state senators also want to expand the existing law to include the sharing of an image 'created in a way that would lead a reasonable person to believe it is an actual depiction of the person depicted.' The proposal did not have a scheduled hearing as of Tuesday. Nevada lawmakers passed the so-called revenge porn law in 2015, making it a crime 'to harass, harm or terrorize another person' when '[that] person electronically disseminates or sells an intimate image, which depicts the other person' without their consent. The 8 News Now Investigators have reported how those charged with the felony often have their cases lowered to lesser crimes with lesser consequences. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
