Texas Lawmakers Want a Charter School Network to Stop Paying Its Superintendent Nearly $900K. The School Board Says No.
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The rebuke from lawmakers and charter school leaders came after an investigation from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune revealed that Salvador Cavazos, who oversees fewer than 1,000 students, is among the most well-paid superintendents in the country.
propublica.org/article/salvado…
If you think mask bans are “no big deal” because there’s medical exemptions, please consider the following:
😷 Police are not doctors
😷 Many disabilities are invisible
😷 Disabled people don’t live in a bubble. I need my friends and caregivers to mask to protect me
😷 Everyone should have the right to protect their health, you shouldn’t have to already be sick to be permitted to mask
😷 Criminalizing masks sends a message that maskers are “bad”. It emboldens anti-maskers and increases odds of aggression
The reality is that mask bans are discriminatory, ableist and eugenicist. They push disabled people out of public spaces. They put marginalized and POC at increased risk of police profiling.
There’s no official policy for a medical exemption either, it’s at police discretion.
If you’re stopped and questioned, you will have to prove you’re masking for the “right reasons”
I’m more than willing to admit that if I were stopped by a cop for masking, I would appear nervous, shaky, tachycardic and probably “suspicious”.
Not because I’m doing anything wrong, but because my illnesses do not respond well to stress and the police are stressful.
It’s not right to put the onus on the masker to defend their right to mask. We’re still in a global pandemic. Texas has a measles outbreak. There’s tuberculosis in Kansas. Bird flu is spreading and it’s the worst year for influenza A in over a decade.
Masks are a public health tool. They’re a disability accommodation. They should NOT be criminalized.
For more on mask bans and medical exemptions, I wrote an article on the Nassau County ban here:
disabledginger.com/p/nassau-co…
#nomaskban #uspoli #texas #northcarolina #maskban #disability #uglylaws #publichealth #ableism #eugenics #h5n1 #measles #longcovid #covidisairborne
Defendants of mask bans point to medical exemptions as proof that disabled people have nothing to worry about. They're wrong. A look at why bans are ableist, discriminatory and dangerous.Broadwaybabyto (The Disabled Ginger)
I would just like to say that these signs in the DFW airport bathrooms are peak social engineering, and I do hope Dan Patrick enjoys all the phone calls from people upset about the government photographing their hairy bits.
#egv #texas #fightback #transrightsarehumanrights #socialengineering #trollingtheGOP
“The last time the United States launched a mass deportation effort … U.S. citizens of Hispanic descent were rounded up and sent to Mexico—a place that many had never been before. The mass deportations that Trump is proposing would be devastating for our #economy and dangerous for American Latinos.” texasobserver.org/how-mass-dep…
#Trump #news #politics #Fascism #extremism #Republicans #Texas #USpol #immigration #border #election2024
The Lone Star State is home to millions of undocumented residents and members of mixed-status families critical to the state’s economic success, yet Texas leaders are cheering on Trump anyway.Francesca D’Annunzio (The Texas Observer)
In black-and-white, the raindrops stand out more on these bougainvillea bracts.
fineartamerica.com/featured/bl…
#macro #nature #bloomscrolling #botanical #AYearForArt #buyintoart #artmatters #Art #photography #photo #Texas #Austin #GiftIdeas #WallArt #prints #windycraig #mastoart #FediGiftShop #FediArt #mastodon #MastodonArt
Black and White Bougainvillea Photograph by W Craig PhotographyFine Art America
In case you haven't heard, #Texas schools are set to start using natural language processing tools—computers—to automatically score some standardised tests (STAAR).
But no worries, it also assigns itself a confidence score that might send it to humans to rescore if it's too low (how opaque will that scoring be?).
But surely the STAAR tests can't be that important? "The commissioner can appoint a conservator to oversee campuses and school districts. State law also allows the commissioner to suspend and replace elected school boards with an appointed board of managers. If a campus receives failing grades for five years in a row, the commissioner is required to appoint a board of managers or close that school."
Surely you can appeal?
"For $50, students and their parents can request a rescore if they think the computer or the human got it wrong. The fee is waived if the new score is higher than the initial score. "
texastribune.org/2024/04/09/st…
cc: @pluralistic this shitshow might interest you
The state will save more than $15 million by using technology similar to ChatGPT to give initial scores, reducing the number of human graders needed. The decision caught some educators by surprise.Keaton Peters (The Texas Tribune)
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