Board President Brought To Tears Over Layoffs, Belleville High Schools

As reported on the Fox 2 news last night and the Post Dispatch

Roughest of all for him was the layoff process. A number of the younger teachers were regarded as the district's brightest; yet, under state law, they were first to go.

"Last in, first out, where if you are the last person hired, you're the first one fired. It's not based on any evaluation on how good a teacher is," Jones said. "It's not based on whether a teacher can get their students to achieve. It's based entirely on when they were hired. That's real problem for me."

"These are some great young teachers and paraprofessionals that we let go tonight. It's a loss to the kids of the district," Highsmith lamented.

Post:

The teachers all have less than three years of service in the district and have yet to achieve tenure.

Reading for March 30th

Monday we will continue our talk on education and then we will move on to social classes within the urban environment and the increasingly growing divide between the rich and the poor in this world. You will read two different articles on this topic with different points-of-view. The first one is due for Wednesday and is Cox and Alm's Rich and Poor (part I for our purposes) It's on the supplementary reading section in a pdf. The bad news is that it will need to be printed out most likely, and it isn't the cleanest looking piece. The good news is that it is already largely highlighted by me when I had to read it for class (a long time ago)--so you've got that going for you.

STL new urbanism - New Town St. Charles

Recent article from the post highlights the bankruptcy of Whitaker Builders and the subsequent homes that are going up for auction. Most notable include those within the New Town St. Charles development--which many consider the best example of "new urbanism" within the region. As the developer states: "No cul-de-sacs," Busse said. "We're mixing all income levels, and 90 percent of residents will be within a five-minute walk of a neighborhood center."

New Town is an interesting site with mixed housing designs, amenities, and an almost Truman Show-like feel to it which I guess is good or bad depending on what you want. Regardless, it presents an interesting contrast to the traditional suburban model.

Black Populations Fall in Major Cities

Front page of USA TODAY

2010 Census data released so far this show that 20 of 25 cities that have at least 250,000 people and a 20% black population either lost more blacks or gained fewer in the past decade than during the 1990s. The declines happened in some traditional black strongholds: Chicago, Oakland, Atlanta, Cleveland and St. Louis.

The loss is fueled by three distinct trends:

• Blacks — many in the middle or upper-middle class — leaving cities for the suburbs.

• Blacks leaving Northern cities for thriving centers in the South.

• The aging of the African-American population, whose growth rate has dropped from more than 16% in the 1990s to about 10% since 2000.

"In the Northern cities, a lot of young blacks who might have grown up in cities are leaving maybe the entire region," says William Frey, demographer at the Brookings Institution who analyzed the data. "They're going to the Sun Belt and particularly the South. The ones who stay in the area want to move to the suburbs."

Atlanta's loss of blacks tripled since 2000 to almost 30,000. The percentage of blacks in the city shrank to 53% from 61%. But in Atlanta's vast metropolitan area, the black population soared 40% to 1.7 million, a clear indication that many spread out to suburban counties. The Atlanta region has the second-largest black population after New York.

Reading for Wed. March 23

Read the supplementary reading link titled: Education.
The piece is on the Washington D.C. public school system reforms from a few years ago. This topic also figured prominently in the break-out movie this past year titled "Waiting for Superman". For you future teachers in the class this should be an interesting piece. The film definitely takes a side, but it's up to you as to whether or not it is justified.

Presentation Schedule

In no particular order this is how it has worked out at random. If you would like to change your slot--see if you can trade with a fellow student.

Presentation Schedule:

April 27^th:

Andrew

Julia

Kelcie

May 2^nd:

Chris

Kristin

Lindsey

May 4^th:

Tiffany

Kate K.

Scott

Wendy

Nicole

Derek

May 9^th:

Kathleen C.

Kathleen R.

Christian

Karen

Nikolas

Katie M.

Ivory Coast Refugee's

More than 450,000 people have fled their homes because of the crisis in Ivory Coast, the UN refugee agency says....

Some 370,000 people have fled their homes in Abidjan, while a further 77,000 have crossed into neighbouring Liberia, according to the UNHCR.

It said the "unfolding tragedy" in Ivory Coast had been overlooked while international attention has been focused on North Africa.

"We're seeing a lot of desolate scenes like dead bodies still littering the streets of [Abidjan district] Abobo where's there's been a lot of violence for weeks," UNHCR spokeswoman Fatoumata Lejeune-Kaba told the BBC.

Migrants end Greek hunger strike after government offer

From the BBC on European Immigration (a subject from the last lecture)

Nearly 300 migrant workers in Greece have ended a six-week hunger strike after the government offered a deal over residence permits.

Greece has become the main transit point for illegal migration into the European Union. In the first six months of 2010, it reported 45,000 illegal border crossings into its territory.

St. Louis Homeless development

The Million-Dollar Murray article references St. Louis. If you want to read up on what has happened since the Murray article (2006) go here.

I think I have your essay questions

I'll most likely select two of the four listed below.

1.) Compare and Contrast the urban ecology paradigm against the urban political economy paradigm for analyzing a metro area. How are they different and what was/is the rationale behind them? Are they still relevant?

2.) It can be argued that Rome’s decline was set in motion by the beginning of the Empire. Discuss this idea (specifically in terms of complexity and systems) in looking at the Period from 27BC to 476AD? How did Rome fall?

3.) Explain the rise of suburbanization in America (what caused it?). What sort of impact did this have on metro areas, populations, living styles, and transportation. What the long-term outlook is.

4.) Is gentrification a dirty word? It is probably impossible to have a broad discussion about the metro environment without it. What is lost or gained with it? Is it a good thing? A necessary evil? Or just evil? Or something else entirely? Explain what you know about the term, why and how it happens, and your views over it.