BALTIMORE, MD - Baltimore’s public school district is going on a hiring spree while student enrollment plummets and test scores remain in the basement.
Baltimore City Public Schools inflated its number of employees by nearly 19% over the six years between 2018 and last year, according to Maryland State Department of Education data analyzed by Fox 45’s Project Baltimore, an investigative initiative on the city’s floundering schools.
The school district hired 1,714 more staffers while the number of students plummeted by 4,781 or 6%, the data show.
It wasn’t mostly teachers the district hired, either.
Over those six years, the district hired 992 more teachers, about a 15% increase, but it also hired 721 non-teaching staff such as administrators, a 28% increase, the analysis found. Click here to read more.
TAFT, CALIF - A 10-year-old child reported missing from Taft, California, was found Sunday after, authorities alleged, the child was kidnapped by a 27-year-old man who had been communicating through the popular gaming site Roblox and the messaging platform Discord, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday.
Matthew Macatuno Naval was charged with kidnapping and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor, authorities said.
The child was last seen by family at home Saturday night, and police were dispatched the following morning after the youth was reported missing.
Detectives discovered the communications between the child and a man they identified as Naval and believed he was in the Elk Grove area, just south of Sacramento and more than 250 miles from the child’s home in Taft, police said. Click here to read more.
WACO, Texas. - A psychologist in Texas recounts a near-death experience in 1989 where she journeyed to the afterlife during a coma.
It happened when Ellen Wier was 12 years old.
On a day in September 1989, she was taking a horseback riding lesson when something went wrong.
“The cinch wasn’t tight enough and I fell off. I tried to hang on but the horse kicked me in the right temple,” Ellen explained.
Unconscious, she was taken to a hospital then transferred to the old location.
Ellen was in a coma for five days. And in that time, as her family prayed she’d pull through, she found herself on a journey.
“I remember being on a raft of sorts, a wooden raft, and there were pink clouds everywhere. And I felt very loved and connected. And I remember seeing Jesus in front of me, I recognized Jesus,” she said. “And on my left there was a figure next to him in long brown robes, bald with bare feet who I didn’t recognize, but I felt safe. I felt this protector energy.”
That was just the beginning. Click here to read more.
AUSTIN, TX - In a historic victory for educational freedom, the Texas House of Representatives finally passed a universal school choice bill—marking not just a win for families in the Lone Star State, but a watershed moment for the entire school choice movement.
Once it clears the state senate and Gov. Greg Abbott signs Senate Bill 2 into law, half of America’s children will live in states where they are eligible for educational choice programs, including 15 states with “universal” choice policies for which every K-12 student is eligible. More than one in 10 U.S. students live in Texas.
The Texas House debated the bill for more than 12 hours Wednesday before passing the bill early Thursday morning. Opponents of the legislation attempted to obstruct it by filing more than 170 amendments. The House voted on more than 40 amendments, voting them all down, except for the friendly amendment proposed by House Public Education Committee Chairman Brad Buckley. Click here to read more.
PHILADELPHIA, PA - It takes bravery to be a police officer, but for someone with a fear of heights, it’s probably safe to assume most of the work will be done with feet on solid ground.
For one acrophobic Philadelphia officer however, preventing disaster meant going above and beyond the call of duty, literally.
Officer Eric Robbins was on patrol December 10th, among the two-storey houses on N. 64th Street, when he got a call from neighbors saying someone’s child was out and walking on the pitched-roof of a nearby house.
The child didn’t seem fazed about the 20-30 foot drop awaiting him. Robbins could feel it though, even from the ground floor, as he has a self-professed fear of heights.
“I just knew I had to get him off that roof,” Robbins told ABC 6 gaining entry to the house, released body cam footage shows him charging up the stairs to the second floor, climbing out of the window and grabbing the child. Click here to read more.
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