Latest news with #EVHS
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Española high school sought students' immigration status as part of standardized test
The entrance to Española Valley High School in an undated photo. Local teachers' union officials said administrators at this high school asked teachers to collect information about students' immigration data. (Photo courtesy EVHS) A teacher at an Española high school recently sounded the alarm after a principal requested teachers fill out a database of student information, including citizenship status, as part of an abruptly announced standardized test. The 11th grade teacher called a representative with the National Education Association teachers' union, which sent a cease-and-desist notice to the district superintendent and also told its members not to comply with the information collection, a union spokesperson told Source New Mexico. The spokesperson also said the school where this occurred is Española Valley High School. 'It came to our attention that a request was made to our educators in Española to determine the immigration status of students in order to, supposedly, register them for a standardized test,' National Education of New Mexico President Mary Parr-Sanchez said in an email. 'The request fell outside the scope of our Collective Bargaining Agreement, and our members were informed that they need not to comply.' The teacher, who declined to comment to Source New Mexico, posted April 21 on an educators' forum on Reddit that administrators were seeking student citizenship status as part of the rollout of WorkKeys, a job skills assessment run by the same company that does the annual ACT exam for high schoolers preparing for college. 'It is a test that no one at the school has ever administered before and from the way admin explained it, it sound[s] like our new superintendent kind of just sprung it on us out of the blue,' the teacher posted. '(It's worth noting that we have only 5 weeks of school left, so to introduce an entirely new assessment so late in the year seems highly odd.)' The request for citizenship status in the Española school occurs amid widespread fears among Hispanic and immigrant communities about federal raids and how citizenship status databases could be used to aid in mass deportation. The Legislature this session passed legislation, which the governor signed, aiming to prevent citizenship status data collected locally from being sent to federal immigration authorities. NM advocates call for statewide immigrant data protections amid fear of mass deportation 'Especially given the political climate, this seems like data that is highly improper to request from students,' the teacher wrote. Española Superintendent Eric Spencer told Source in an email Friday that he got an email from the NEA 'regarding their concern related to testing.' He said his staff has made contact with union leadership and is working with them on the issue. 'The district takes all matters of student confidentiality seriously,' he said. Spencer did not return emails and calls seeking further comment this week. Members of the Española School Board also did not return phone calls seeking comment. According to the union, the emailed letter from the union cited the 1982 Plyler v. Doe U.S. Supreme Court case that guarantees the right to a free, public education for all children, regardless of their immigration status. 'Children, regardless of their immigration or citizenship status, should be free from worry that the educators and administrators tasked with their instruction, safety and well-being would ever seek to cause them harm,' Parr-Sanchez said in a statement to Source NM. NM immigration, civil rights groups back enhanced digital privacy protections Following the back-and-forth with the union, the superintendent has 'responded to our cease and desist letter and informed us that the behavior has stopped,' NEA-NM spokesperson Adell Medovoy told Source. The union declined to provide the letter, calling it 'internal communications,' she said. The union is unaware whether the request for citizenship status went to other schools in the district, 'although we are on the alert,' Medovoy said. A lawyer for the union involved in the cease-and-desist actions, Todd Wertheim, told Source in a brief phone conversation Monday that it was possible a second letter would be necessary soon, though he did not elaborate and did not respond to follow-up phone calls. Also unclear is why administrators would have tied the ACT's WorkKeys standardized assessment to a request for student immigration status. The company describes the assessment as a way to determine job-readiness for certain industries, evaluating students' on 'a range of hard and soft skills relevant to any occupation, at any level, and across industries.' Juan Elizondo, a spokesperson for the ACT, told Source in an email Tuesday that his company has no clue why anyone taking the exam would be asked for immigration status. 'We cannot speak to why any examinee would be asked about immigration status in connection with an ACT exam,' he said. 'This is not a requirement for taking our exams and is not information we collect or use in any way.'
Telegraph
25-03-2025
- Telegraph
Net zero subsidy scheme for electric vehicle chargers triggers wave of fraud
A taxpayer-funded subsidy scheme for electric vehicle chargers has been hit by a wave of fraud. The Department for Transport (DfT) paid out tens of thousands of pounds to fraudsters who pretended to have installed chargers outside their homes, a report has revealed. Part of the Government's net zero drive, the electric vehicle homecharge scheme (EVHS) allowed members of the public to claim up to £500 towards the cost of a charger. But an investigation revealed that the 'photo evidence' submitted with some claims was actually 'generic images from online sources'. Dozens of fraudulent claims were discovered from people sending the same image as 'proof' for multiple applications. Civil servants were instructed to use artificial intelligence tools to verify that photos sent to the scheme were legitimate, and had not just been copied from the internet. A review of work by government fraud experts said that 'key fraud risks were identified'. They included 'installers submitting generic images from online sources' and 'duplicate images presented as evidence of different installations to claim additional funds'. The department was able to recover tens of thousands of pounds of fraudulent claims with its AI tool, which the report said saved 100 years' worth of manual verification work. The original EV charging scheme has since been shut down, but the Government still offers a £350 subsidy for some claimants installing chargers at their homes. The latest fraud report said that the DfT would now apply its AI tools to other schemes that require photo verification in the hunt for more fraud. The NAO has advised the Civil Service to do more with AI and data analytics tools so that fraud can be identified before government money is given away. Net zero schemes are a hotbed of fraud Net zero subsidy schemes have become a hotbed of fraud, with the NAO warning last year that 'environmental benefits can be purposefully overstated and negative impacts understated' when claimants apply for government funding. Scammers have also pretended to help claimants apply for green subsidies to steal their financial information. In total, fraud and error in the public sector is estimated to cost the taxpayer up to £81 billion each year through a combination of deliberate criminal activity and Civil Service mistakes, although the figure during the pandemic was much higher. The Telegraph previously revealed that an official investigation into £160 million of Covid loan fraud cases had so far secured just 12 convictions since the pandemic and would never recover its costs. Georgia Gould, a Cabinet Office minister, said on Monday that the Government was 'taking comprehensive action to protect public money and ensure it delivers the services we all rely on'. She added: 'When criminals target the public sector, they don't just steal money – they undermine vital services that our communities depend upon and fuel organised crime networks that threaten our national security.'
