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Groton Daily Independent
Friday, April 20, 2018 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 280 ~ 25 of 43
Parents and communities already have been making plans for child care, with some stay-at-home parents stepping up to watch children so other parents can work, she said. Local parent-teacher associations also are putting together food boxes for kids who rely on free breakfast and lunch at school.
“There’s been a lot of mobilization by the community to prepare,” Simek said.
Teachers themselves could face consequences in this right-to-work state, where unions do not collectively bargain with school districts and representation is not mandatory. The Arizona Education Association has warned its 20,000 members about a 1971 Arizona attorney general opinion saying a statewide strike would be illegal under common law and participants could lose their teaching credentials.
The logistics of a walkout will vary by district. The state’s largest, Mesa Public Schools in suburban Phoe- nix, would close and hourly staffers would not be paid, Superintendent Michael Cowan has said.
The Dysart School District west of Phoenix would “make every effort” to avoid closing schools,” but they would have to shut down if too few staff members show up, Superintendent Gail Pletnick has told parents. Sara Bresnahan, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix Elementary School District, said a walkout is “uncharted
territory” but its schools would try to stay open for as many students as possible. “Some kids will be coming to school and really need a place to be,” she said. Karvelis wouldn’t say how long the walkouts could last.
“I don’t want to put any limitations on it right now,” Karvelis said.
Nancy Maglio, a teacher at Magee Middle School in southern Arizona’s Tucson Unified School District, said teachers are motivated to walk out and demand funding because of what it means for their students. “None of us went to school, none of us spent money on tuition, on books, none of us spend our time
and our energy to not care,” she said. “We went into a field where caring is mandatory.”
While Maglio voted in support of the walkout, it wasn’t without conflicted feelings.
“I am eagerly anticipating the walkout, but I’m not eagerly anticipating leaving my students,” she said.
2 black men arrested at Starbucks get an apology from police By ERRIN HAINES WHACK, AP National Writer
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Rashon Nelson initially brushed it off when the Starbucks manager told him he couldn’t use the restroom because he wasn’t a paying customer.
He thought nothing of it when he and his childhood friend and business partner, Donte Robinson, were approached at their table and were asked if they needed help. The 23-year-old entrepreneurs declined, explaining they were just waiting for a business meeting.
A few minutes later, they hardly noticed when the police came into the coffee shop — until officers started walking in their direction.
“That’s when we knew she called the police on us,” Nelson told The Associated Press in the first interview by the two black men since video of their April 12 trespassing arrests touched off a furor around the U.S. over racial profiling or what has been dubbed “retail racism” or “shopping while black.”
Nelson and Robinson were led away in handcuffs from the shop in the city’s well-to-do Rittenhouse Square neighborhood in an incident recorded on a white customer’s cellphone.
In the week since, the men have met with Starbucks’ apologetic CEO and have started pushing for lasting change at the coffee shop chain, including new policies on discrimination and ejecting customers. “We do want to make sure it doesn’t happen to anybody again,” Robinson said. “What if it wasn’t us sitting there? What if it was the kid that didn’t know somebody that knew somebody? Do they make it to
jail? Do they die? What happens?”
On Thursday, they also got an apology from Philadelphia police Commissioner Richard Ross, a black man
who at first staunchly defended his officers’ handling of the encounter.
“I should have said the officers acted within the scope of the law, and not that they didn’t do anything
wrong,” Ross said. “Words are very important.”
At a news conference, a somber Ross said he “failed miserably” in addressing the arrests. He said that
the issue of race is not lost on him and that he shouldn’t be the person making things worse.