LA teachers on strike for second day
LOS ANGELES -- Teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District walked picket lines again Tuesday as administrators urged them to return to classrooms and for their union to return to the bargaining table.
"It is by no means a normal day in LA Unified," Superintendent Austin Beutner acknowledged as the strike by thousands of members of United Teachers Los Angeles entered its second day.
"The painful truth is we just don't have enough money to do everything UTLA is asking Los Angeles Unified to do," he said.
Monday's walkout was marked by a plunge in attendance, which cost the district about $25 million because funding is based on how many students go to school, he said.
Some charter school teachers joined their public school counterparts on picket lines. Educators with the Accelerated Schools charter network, who are also union members but negotiate their contracts separately -- walked off the job Tuesday to demand better working conditions. The action was the first by charter teachers in California, according to the teachers' union.
Teachers are pressing for higher pay and smaller class sizes in the nation's second-largest system, with 640,000 students. The district says the demands run up against an expected half-billion-dollar deficit this budget year, as well as money obligated for pension payments and health coverage for retired teachers.
Maryland sheriff cites 302 'red flags'
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- A new Maryland law that allows courts to temporarily restrict firearms access for people at risk to themselves or others resulted in more than 300 protective orders, five of which were related to schools, the sheriff of the state's most populous county told lawmakers Tuesday.
Montgomery County Sheriff Darren Popkin told a panel of state lawmakers that 302 orders were sought under the state's "red flag" law in the three months since the law took effect Oct. 1. He said five of them related to schools, and four of those five "were significant threats."
"Because of the confidentiality that's built into this piece of legislation, I can't get into details of any of those, however, I will tell you that they were significant and firearms were seized in each one of those cases, and it was good that these orders were not only sought, but issued and served in each one of those cases," Popkin told the Maryland House Judiciary Committee.
Maryland was one of eight states that passed red-flag legislation last year in the aftermath of the Parkland, Fla., shooting that killed 17 people in February. Five states already had similar laws.
Prosecutors fined for records violation
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A central Missouri prosecutor's office has been ordered to pay $36,000 for failing to provide records to a man doing research for the marijuana activist group Show-Me Cannabis.
The Missouri Court of Appeals Western District on Tuesday upheld a lower court's ruling that the Cole County prosecutor's office broke state law in 2015 by refusing to provide records to Aaron Malin.
Malin said he's "thrilled" by the ruling.
Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce ruled in 2017 that former prosecutor Mark Richardson "knowingly and purposefully" violated Missouri's open-records laws. Malin sought communication between Richardson and a drug task force.
Richardson lost the August Republican primary to Locke Thompson, who is now prosecutor. Thompson said he will "ensure that the fine is paid and that all applicable documents are produced."
Statue base gone; N.C. chancellor out
RALEIGH, N.C. -- Hours after the remnants of a Confederate statue were removed overnight from North Carolina's flagship public university, the state university system's governing board pushed out the official who ordered them gone.
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Carol Folt had said Monday that she would leave at the end of the school year in May, but the board of governors on Tuesday made her departure effective at the end of this month.
The removal of the statue's marble pedestal could increase pressure on the board to give up on plans to restore the monument.
Folt ordered the base for the toppled statue known as "Silent Sam" removed because of continuing unspecified threats since she and university trustees last month proposed a new location away from the heart of the country's oldest public university, she said.
The stone base and attached metal tablets honoring former students who fought for the slaveholding Confederacy were removed in the middle of the night. The statue has been in storage since it was pulled down in August by protesters who consider it a symbol of racism.
Folt's move drew an angry response from board of governors Chairman Harry Smith. The board had given itself until mid-March to come up with a plan for the statue, and Smith said that timeline hasn't changed.
A Section on 01/16/2019