February 20, 2014

What do teachers think: Susan Weigand

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Susan Weigand, 2nd grade teacher at Hugh Cole Elementary School in Bristol-Warren, punctuates nearly every sentence with “I could go-on about my students all day.” Her dedication to her young students was evident throughout her sit down with RI Future.

“Where is the safety net for the children that come to kindergarten ill prepared for what they have to do,” she said. (Read the first part of this three-part series here on Jen Saarinen)

But there was a stark contrast between her excitement for her students recent policy changes. She said that changes in policy and budget have affected her teaching style and her students.

“Work I’m asking students to do is significantly more challenging,” she said. “In that comes the question of whether or not it’s developmentally appropriate. There are several situations where it’s not, I’m being told to ask my students things beyond what they’re capable of doing.”

Weigand said that budgets for teachers aren’t what they once were either. There was a time where teachers could buy supplies that weren’t provided for them by the district. Those times are long gone.

“We don’t really get a budget,” Weigand said. “The district provides us with certain supplies but there’s no discretionary fund for teachers to buy things for their classroom. When I was first hired in this district 16 or 17 years ago, we had a budget to go purchasing for our classroom.”

Budget cuts affect those on the elementary school level differently than others. Weigand explained the uniqueness of the situation. “The difference is we teach everything and we teach multiple levels, so if I’m doing science activity about states of matter I have to have different levels of books because each of my kids are at different levels –well my district doesn’t provide that.”

During her time as a teacher, Weigand has noticed major changes within her field. The greatest change she has seen is the shift away from viewing students as young adults.

“We have somehow forgotten that these are small children sitting in our rooms,” she said. “I think we have forgotten these are little people – 6, 7, 8 – we very much have forgotten these are little kids and we treat them like tiny adults. Where does that creative thinking of being able to come up with the answers themselves come into play?”

February 20, 2014February 21, 2014

For Lilia Abbatematteo, foreclosure crisis is still an issue

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What follows is Lilia Abbatematteo’s story about her foreclosure in her own words.

Back in December, I attended a Fannie Mae event hosted at the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless. I attended this event because on September 6th 2013 my house was foreclosed on and Fannie Mae became the owner of the home I have lived in for over 40 years.

On the date of my auction, my friends and supporters from Direct Action for Rights & Equality (DARE) and the Tenant and Homeowner Association (THA) helped me protest the auction, and we informed all three potential investors who showed up that day that it would be a bad idea to buy the property because it would mean displacing residents (my family) who want to stay and get the home back. On the day of the protest, this felt like a victory, but since then, things have been really hard.

I have received letters saying that I could be evicted. The Fannie Mae event was supposed to be for people who have not yet been foreclosed on, but I decided to go anyway, to see if anyone would help me. Ever since the day of the foreclosure auction I have been worrying. What am I going to do? How can I buy my house back? What will my children be left with if we don’t have this house?
My husband and I live at 129 Chapin Avenue with our four grown children, plus our three grandchildren.

This is a house I inherited from my parents, Portuguese immigrants who came to this country and worked hard for years. My mom always worked two jobs and my father worked 12 hour days. In fact, the house was completely paid off by 1984. In 2002 I co-signed a second mortgage with my mother and her then live-in partner, to help out a troubled family member. Through the years the mortgage was transferred between various banks. It ended up with Chase Bank for a while, but my name was no longer on the loan. This was traumatizing and made it impossible to get a modification after my mother’s death. I’ve tried to resolve the issue through phone call after phone call after phone call. I’ve even paid a law firm to get help. But the bank always refused to work with me.

I’ve worked my whole life, and even when we fell behind on the mortgage, I was working. In 2008 my son-in-law decided to self-deport back to Guatemala. He made this decision because the constant stress and fear of worrying that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was going to come and take him away was too much. For this reason, my daughter and her kids moved back in with us. At the same time, in 2008 I took at 7% pay cut at work, and have not seen a pay raise in seven years. These changes combined really started to strain our budget and that’s why we fell behind on our mortgage.

My next-door neighbor (also a member of DARE and the THA) came along with me to the Fannie Mae event last week for support. We drove to Pawtucket and found a parking spot. I brought with me a letter I wrote asking that Fannie Mae look into the possibility of selling the home back to me. We walked into the brick building and went to the second floor where Fannie Mae apparently has an office – I had no idea!

It seemed like we were the first ones there, at 9 am on the dot. Someone asked us to fill out some initial paperwork, and told us someone would be with us shortly. A woman named Kate, from Fannie Mae came out and talked to us. She asked if I had ever received a “Know Your Options” package from Fannie Mae in the mail. I had not. I told her a bit of the complicated story of my house, and she said in order for Fannie Mae to investigate my case, I needed to write a narrative of all my communication with Fannie Mae and about the house, with a date, a name, and the topic of conversation when we’d talked. The trouble with this request is that I haven’t kept detailed records of all the people I’ve talked to over the past few years, especially not over the phone! I’ve made so many phone calls! In the end, I felt like Kate was trying her best to be nice to me, but I’m worried that she won’t be able to help me. When my neighbor and I left the event an hour later – we saw only one other person there!

I told my neighbor that I think the reason more people weren’t at the event is because once people think their home is up for foreclosure, it’s like the Berlin Wall goes up. It’s the end of the road. It can feel like there is no hope. Still, even though I’m skeptical that this narrative will help, I’ve done my best to write out a very detailed narrative that tells the story of my house and what’s going on with it – to the best of my ability.

Sometimes I feel like there’s no hope. My dream is that Fannie Mae will come to the table and offer me the possibility of setting up a rent-to-own scheme. My children were raised here and my grandchildren are being raised here. My granddaughter says, “I don’t want to move.” This is heart-wrenching. I like my neighborhood. From the diversity of ethnicities, to the fruit trees and grape vines planted by my father in our backyard, this home is my world. If Fannie Mae evicts us, where will we go?

February 20, 2014

Colorado pot economy producing new revenue, new research and new residents

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Colorado expects to make $133 million in new revenue this year because of legalized marijuana. This is twice what the state anticipated when it became, along with Washington, the first state in the nation to tax and regulate the giant underground pot economy. Between legal and medicinal marijuana, Colorado expects more than $800 million in sales alone this year.

For comparison, Rhode Island faces a similar-sized budget deficit this year ($149 million) as Colorado expects to reap in new revenue, and the state legislature here is considering legislation that would make us the third state to profit from pot. Rep. Edith Ajello and Senator Josh Miller are sponsoring the bill and they wrote an op/ed about why here.

News of how the marijuana industry is proving to have a very positive effect on Colorado’s economy is starting to sweep the nation. Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported on a 5-year-old who stopped having hundreds of seizures a week when she experimented with a tincture made from marijuana plants grown specifically to prevent seizures.

From the AP, which says the science is still unproven but “more than 100 families have relocated” to Colorado to try the special strand of marijuana grown to accentuate the chemical naturally found in the plant that reduces seizures:

The doctors were out of ideas to help 5-year-old Charlotte Figi.

Suffering from a rare genetic disorder, she had as many as 300 grand mal seizures a week, used a wheelchair, went into repeated cardiac arrest and could barely speak. As a last resort, her mother began calling medical marijuana shops.

Two years later, Charlotte is largely seizure-free and able to walk, talk and feed herself after taking oil infused with a special pot strain. Her recovery has inspired both a name for the strain of marijuana she takes that is bred not to make users high — Charlotte’s Web — and an influx of families with seizure-stricken children to Colorado from states that ban the drug.

The New Hampshire state legislature is also considering legalizing marijuana and the Oregon legislature is debating putting the question to the voters as a ballot initiative.

February 20, 2014

Tonight: ‘Inequality for All’ at URI

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‘Inequality for All’ is coming to the University of Rhode Island tonight.

Well, just the blockbuster Robert Reich movie about the phenomenon on rampant income inequality in America. The phenomenon itself has been here for some time now, says Danielle Dirroco, the executive director of URI’s grad school labor union, host of the tonight’s event.

“Wealth inequality is the issue of our time, and we know this all too well here at URI,” she said. “As tuition creeps higher and higher, the opportunity for Rhode Islanders to gain access to a higher education is compromised and our capacity to creatively address our economic woes is undermined. To make any positive change, we have to begin by educating ourselves. Graduate Assistants United is thrilled to put the University of Rhode Island on the map for this nationwide campus event.”

The event starts at 6pm and there will be a special live webcast with Reich in which we can ask him a bunch of Rhode Island-specific questions. Here’s the Facebook event and below is the full press release from the URI Grad School Union:

Graduate Assistants United, URI’s Graduate Employee Labor Union, will be providing its community with the opportunity to view and discuss this award-winning documentary about income inequality in our nation and the way it has shaped our economy and democracy. This event is held in conjunction with a national campus-based event that will include over 150 universities across the country. The University of Rhode Island will be the only university participating in this exciting event in state of Rhode Island.

Co-Sponsors include the URI Graduate Student Association, NewportFILM, the URI Department of Campus Equity and Diversity and SE Greenhouse. Refreshments generously provided by Starbucks Coffee Company.

The event will be held at the College of Biotechnology and Life Sciences Ryan Family Auditorium (CBLS 100). RSVP to Graduate Assistants United: uri.gau@gmail.com.

The American economy is in crisis. Enter Robert Reich: Secretary of Labor under Clinton, revered professor, charismatic pundit and author of thirteen books. “Bob” as he’s referred to in the film, is our hero and guide, shining a light on the urgency of this issue. Economic imbalances are now at near historically unprecedented levels. In fact, the two years of widest economic inequality of the last century were 1928 and 2007 – the two years just before the greatest economic crashes of modern times. What is the link between high inequality and economic crashes? What happened to the Middle Class?

As Americans, we’ve been taught that there is a basic bargain at the heart of our society: work hard, play by the rules and you can make a better life for yourself. But over the last 35 years, this bargain has been broken. Middle class incomes have stagnated or dropped over the same period during which the American economy has more than doubled. So where did all that money go? The facts are clear – it went to the top earners. In 1970 the top 1% of earners took home 9% of the nation’s income. Today they take in approximately 23%. The top 1% holds more than 35% of the nation’s overall wealth, while the bottom 50% controls a meager 2.5%. The last time wealth was this concentrated was in 1928, on the eve of the Great Depression.

What’s the big deal, you may ask? Didn’t the wealthy earn it? INEQUALITY FOR ALL is happy to acknowledge that. There is no vilifying of the rich here. The problem is that wide income divisions threaten the health of both our economy and our democracy.

When middle class consumers have to tighten their belts, the whole economy suffers. We saw this in the years before the Great Depression just as we see it today. The middle class represents 70% of spending and is the great stabilizer of our economy. No increase in spending by the rich can make up for it.

This is the moment in history in which we find ourselves: unprecedented income divisions, a wildly fluctuating and unstable economy, and average Americans increasingly frustrated and disillusioned. The debate about income inequality has become part of the national discussion, and this is a good thing. INEQUALITY FOR ALL connects the dots for viewers, showing why dealing with the widening gap between the rich and everyone else isn’t just about moral fairness.

The issues addressed in this film are arguably the most pressing issue of our times. The film alternates between intimate, approachable sequences and intellectually rigorous arguments helping people with no economic background or education better understand the issues at stake. INEQUALITY FOR ALL allows viewers to start with little or no understanding of what it means for the U.S. to be economically imbalanced, and walk away with a comprehensive and significantly deeper sense of the issue and what can be done about it.

For more information about INEQUALITY FOR ALL and to view the trailer, please visit InequalityForAll.com

This event is free to the public. Please RSVP via email to Graduate Assistants United at uri.gau@gmail.com

February 20, 2014

Rhode Island is not yet the solar power state

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The number of jobs in the bustling solar power industry grew by 62 percent last year in Rhode Island – an increase of 130 jobs from 2012. But as Progressive Charlestown points out, we’re still lagging far behind every other state in the northeast in this regard and we were one of the worst state’s in the nation when it comes to adding jobs in the solar power sector of the economy.

Rhode Island ranked 45th in the nation for new jobs in the solar industry, according to a new report by the Solar Foundation. Only Alaska, Wyoming, Mississippi, Nebraska and North and South Dakota ranked worse than Rhode Island.

And Rhode Island did even worse when compared to our Northeast neighbors (though per capita, we ranked higher than both New York and Connecticut).

Why our other northeastern states doing so much better at growing the solar sector of their economies? Here’s what Abel Collins, program director for the local chapter of the Sierra Club, wrote on this blog last week:

Rhode Island solar installers have been forced to look for work in Connecticut and Massachusetts where strong renewable incentive programs have stayed in place. For the sake of the environment and our struggling economy, it’s time to rectify this situation. The good news is that there are already a couple of new programs in place that should help, and there a couple of renewable energy legislative initiatives that could become law this session.

Click here to read about some of the new programs Rhode Island has in place and some of the new legislation that could help even further.

And earlier this week the Providence Journal reported that a Colorado-based company won approval to locate a new solar farm at the Quonset business park. So maybe the solar industry outlook is looking brighter for Rhode Island.