A Georgia man has been charged with murder for allegedly mailing package bombs that killed a federal appellate judge in Alabama and a civil-rights lawyer in Georgia and nearly exploded in the office of the Jacksonville, Fla., chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
An NAACP official in Jacksonville to whom the package bomb was delivered was later the object of death threats for her participation in a new desegregation plan for the Duval County district. (See Education Week, June 13, 1990.)
Following an 11-month investigation, a federal grand jury in Atlanta returned a 70-count indictment against Walter Leroy Moody Jr., a 56-year-old recluse who had been convicted in 1972 for possession of a pipe bomb.
U.S. Justice Department officials have speculated that Mr. Moody’s motive for the bombings was a grudge against Judge Robert S. Vance of the U.S Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, who received the first bomb. Judge Vance was part of a panel that ruled on a civil suit Mr. Moody had filed in connection with a 1983 prosecution for attempted murder. The other bombings, including the Jacksonville one, may have been done to throw authorities off Mr. Moody’s trail, officials said.
A California couple has pleaded guilty to using trickery and blackmail to defraud the New Hope-Solebury, Pa., school district out of more than $2 million.
Marc and Teresa Suckman had been indicted in April for blackmailing the district’s former business manager into paying them money for pens that were never delivered. The couple admitting tricking the district official into improperly accepting a small gift in return for an order of pens, and then threatening her with exposure unless she sent them money using bogus invoices. (See Education Week, May 2, 1990.)
The bookkeeper, Kathryn Hock, pleaded guilty to embezzlement last summer and was sentenced to 16 months in prison.
Mr. Suckman faces 6 years in prison and Ms. Suckman 4 years. Sentencing is set for January.
Despite having put 170 schools on year-round schedules, the Los Angeles Unified School District continues to bus more than 20,000 students from overcrowded neighborhood elementary schools to the suburbs, according to district officials.
A plan adopted by the board last spring added 64 schools to more than 100 already on year-round schedules and let 45 other schools add portable classrooms or increase class size, thereby creating a total of 17,526 new elementary slots in the 625,000-stuistrict. (See Education Week, Feb. 14, 1990.)
But few of the new slots were in the neighborhoods most affected by overcrowding, and another 24,000 students will need to be bused out of local elementary schools and junior and senior high schools within three years if the board does not take drastic steps to create space, school-board members were told last month.
The plan adopted by the board last spring provides for all schools to be a on a year-round, multi-track schedule by 1991. District enrollment growth is projected to be about 15,000 students per year.
