Racial Discrimination Alleged In Pittsburgh Hiring Decision
Staff members of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission claim they have found evidence the Pittsburgh school board engaged in racial discrimination in selecting the district’s superintendent.
A community group had filed a complaint over the 1992 hiring decision. It alleged that the board chose Louise Brennan, a white woman serving as the deputy superintendent, over a more qualified outside candidate, Loretta C. Webb, a deputy superintendent in the Fairfax County, Va., system, who is black.
Commission investigators have told lawyers for the district and the advocacy group that they have sufficient evidence to proceed with such a case.
Robert J. Stefanko, a lawyer for the district, said earlier this month that he would challenge the investigators’ findings. He said the advocacy group had no legal standing to challenge the hiring decision, and added that the commission’s other findings were based on superficial evidence.
Safe Havens
Detroit schools have opened the first of 80 planned after-school tutorial and recreation programs aimed at keeping students safe and off the streets.
More than 20 programs were launched last month in elementary, middle, and high schools around the city and will be open as late as 9 P.M., school officials said.
Another 60 programs will open in the next three months. Activities such as tutoring, sports, and performing arts then will be available to all the city’s roughly 170,000 public school students.
The district and the city’s recreation department will share the costs of the programs.
Pass With Care
Police officers are riding school buses in Canyon County, Idaho, under a crackdown on reckless drivers.
The practice began after a 7-year-old girl narrowly avoided being hit by a truck as she exited a school bus last month in Greenleaf.
In the incident, a large truck passed the bus on the right, even though the bus had activated its stop sign and flashing lights, said Vern Carpenter, an owner of the Brown Bus Company, which operates buses for the Valley View district.
As a result, police officers have been assigned to buses to keep an eye out for unsafe drivers. The officers maintain radio contact with patrol cars stationed along the bus route.
“It is an attempt to give people a wake-up call,” said Vaughn Heinrich, the superintendent of the Valley View district, about 25 miles west of Boise. “We tried to draw some attention to it before a real serious situation developed.”
