Lawmakers in Iowa worry court ruling could affect open enrollments
DES MOINES, Iowa — Some Iowa lawmakers are worried that a U.S. Supreme Court ruling could be used by some school districts to reject open enrollment requests to avoid losing money.
The court ruled in June that race cannot be a primary reason for enrollment and transfers between schools or districts. In Iowa, schools must take steps to integrate students.
Six Iowa school districts have desegregation plans that use race as the primary factor for enrollment and transfers between schools. The intent of the plans is to discourage “white flight” and increase minority enrollment in mostly white schools.
Under proposed changes to state rules, those six districts would have to write new diversity plans and redefine “minority” to describe more than a student’s race. Lawmakers said they fear districts would use the rules to redefine “minority” and control open enrollment based on income, language or other factors.
Only districts that already have plans, whose minority enrollments are more than 20 percentage points over the state average of 14 percent, are immediately affected.
State education officials told lawmakers last Monday that they have had requests from other districts to revise the proposals, which are set to begin next month. That would leave the door open to districts applying to have diversity plans should their minority numbers grow.
Lawmakers have supported open enrollment, under which $5,000 in state aid per student goes to the school they attend.
About 24,251 Iowa students open enroll to another district.
“This could potentially allow a significant increase in the number of districts denying open enrollment to students because of their definition of minority students,” said state Rep. Philip Wise, D-Keokuk.
State Sen. Jeff Angelo, R-Creston, said open enrollment is “a gigantic policy decision that deserves a lot of debate” and said there could be “huge implications to having districts define what a minority student is.”
Social workers slam Chicago sex trade study
CHICAGO — Researchers have concluded in a not-yet-published study of the economics of prostitution in Chicago that the women were forced to service police officers, worked more on holidays and varied pricing based on race.
University of Chicago professor and “Freakonomics” author Steven D. Levitt and sociology professor Sudhir Venkatesh of Columbia University are the authors of the two-year study of street-level prostitution in Chicago’s Roseland, Washington Park and Pullman neighborhoods.
The study has been seen by Chicago aid workers, some of whom dispute its findings.
“It’s a classic example of an economist trying to tackle a very complicated problem just by looking at numbers,” Samir Goswami, associate director of policy at the Chicago Homeless Coalition, told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s flawed because the numbers do not explain the social situation these women are in. It’s not just a business transaction.”
A draft report of the study was presented last week at an economics conference in New Orleans.
Prostitutes taking part in the study — who were paid $150 a week — reported that about 3 percent of the sex acts they performed were “freebies” given to Chicago police officers to avoid arrest.
Police spokeswoman Monique Bond did not respond to requests for comment.
The study found full-time prostitutes made, on average, less than $20,000 a year. If they had a pimp, the women made a little more, even after giving up a 25 percent cut of their earnings. The women reported being beaten about once a month on average.
According to the study, Fridays were the sex trade’s busiest days; Mondays the slowest.
The study also found white and Hispanic men were charged more, while blacks and repeat customers paid less. Seasonal spikes in demand drove up prices — the study found prices increased 30 percent in Washington Park over the July 4 week — and brought more women into the market.
Levitt and Venkatesh are refusing to comment on the study, and asked its findings not be published because it was still preliminary and incomplete.
Cleveland sues 21 banks over foreclosure crisis
CLEVELAND — The city of Cleveland, an epicenter of the nation’s home foreclosure crisis, has sued 21 banks, claiming subprime lending in inner-city neighborhoods has created a public nuisance that hurt property values and city tax collections.
The lawsuit, filed last Thursday in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, seeks to recover hundreds of millions in damages, including lost taxes from devalued property and money spent demolishing and boarding up thousands of abandoned houses.
“To me, this is no different than organized crime or drugs,” Mayor Frank Jackson told The Plain Dealer. “It has the same effect as drug activity in neighborhoods. It’s a form of organized crime that happens to be legal in many respects.”
Last Tuesday, Baltimore sued Wells Fargo, alleging the bank intentionally sold high-interest mortgages more to blacks than to whites in violation of federal law.
Cleveland based its legal challenge on a state law that relates to public nuisances.
Jackson and city Law Director Robert Triozzi said Cleveland should have been excluded from the frenzy of selling mortgage-backed securities to investors. The practice, known as securitization, became popular during the housing boom earlier this decade.
