| Subcribe via RSS

Another High School Sex Scandal

April 13th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Education, Legal

Cited: Daily News

Horndog TeachersIn early December, 2 romance language instructors were caught by a school janitor in an empty Brooklyn high school room in a state of undress.  The classrooms were empty because the students at James Madison High School in Midwood were watching a talent show in the auditorium.  According to sources, Alini Brito and Cindy Mauro were busy at this time speaking the international language of love.

The janitor stumbled on French teacher Mauro, 34, and Brito, 30, a married Spanish instructor, and tattled to school officials on Nov. 20.  Both tenured teachers were removed from the classroom and sent to the Education Department “rubber rooms” while they’re investigated for misconduct, sources said.

The episode is the talk of the school. Students even set up a Facebook group to discuss the shenanigans – and it already has more than 500 fans.

“Now you guys wished we installed cameras in our classrooms after all hmm?” wrote one student.

Janitor Robert Colantuoni refused to comment Tuesday. “I can’t talk about it, I’m sorry,” he said.

Brito’s husband, reached by phone, said he was unaware of the accusations, but denied them.

“The school district has not informed my wife of these allegations and they are untrue,” he said.

Students said both teachers were popular.

“[Ms. Mauro] was pretty fun,” said junior Eddie Ramirez, 18.

“She dressed like a teenage girl – she’d wear low-cut tops, shorts, three-quarter length jeans. She was kinda sexy.

“You could see that she was the kind of person who would flirt.”

Students said Mauro dyed some of her hair pink over the summer and has an array of sexy tattoos: a sun on her lower back, a flower on her leg, and a star on her foot.  Brito opted for more demure attire.

“She’s pretty,” said one 17-year-old who took French with her.

“Mrs. Brito was good-looking. Oh, yeah!”

A 16-year-old sophomore said Brito was a teacher students would come to with problems.

Have you been charged with a crime? Are you confused?  A Freehold NJ criminal attorney will answer all of your questions to your satisfaction, especially when you may have already received conflicting information. After speaking with an attorney, you will have the information you need to confidently take the next step in your case.  And if you are eligible for expungement, they can even provide a New Jersey expungement attorney to assist you.

“She usually dresses elegant, looks smart,” he said. “She’s good-looking. And she was friendly, not flirty, just friendly.”

Students said gossip about the romp was flying through the school, where staff members were trying to keep a lid on it.

“The teachers don’t even want you to bring it up because they say they’ll get in trouble if we’re talking about it in class,” Eddie Ramirez said.

“They just say, ‘Let it go.’”

Teachers and administrators at James Madison would not comment yesterday, but the Education Department confirmed the probe.

“There was an incident in the evening when there was a school performance,” department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said.

The two teachers were reassigned pending the outcome of an Education Department investigation.

The teachers, now called the “Horndog High” teachers, might want to dust off their resumes.  Both Alini Brito and Cindy Mauro are to be charged professional misconduct according to the city’s Office of Special Investigations.  This news comes three months after they were busted naked together in an empty classroom.  Department of Education officials said March 30 the allegations have now been substantiated.

The two tenured teachers were yanked from their classrooms and immediately sent to the so-called “rubber room” pending the outcome of an investigation.

“They face disciplinary action,” spokeswoman Margie Feinberg told the News, though she wouldn’t provide details about the incidents.

James Madison High School has became known as “Horndog High” after the scandal was exposed by the Daily News in December.  Students even set up a Facebook group to discuss the shenanigans which took place Nov. 20 while they were watching an after-school talent show in the auditorium.

According to sources, it now appears that a third teacher, Allison Musacchio, a social studies teacher, may have had an inappropriate relationship with a male student and is also under investigation.

————————————————————–

My Take: It is one thing to have a fling in an office, but in a classroom?  Teachers should know better!  Teachers know that anyone can walk into a classroom at any time.  Yes, I know that might add to the excitement and enjoyment, but when that someone is a child, no!  I always thought that teachers stayed in the classroom to clean the chalkboards for the next lesson.  In this case, I don’t think they were even thinking about Whiteboards.

I hope those teachers have a good criminal lawyer Englewood CO, because they are going to need it.  The reason being, they might be charged with contributing to the latency of minors.  And losing their jobs will be the least of their concerns.  Do teachers sign contracts before they start teaching in a school?  If they do, they may want to hire a West Palm Beach FL contract attorney.  But I doubt that it will save their jobs.

Brito may even be looking for Wellington FL divorce attorney, especially now that her husband knows about the affair.  Cheating on her husband doesn’t show much for her morals, does it?  Teachers are supposed to set an example for their students.  What kind of example have these teachers set for their students?  If this had been a car accident, they would just contacted Denver car accident lawyer and that would be the end of it.  But this was no car accident, it was worse.

————————————————————–

Related Resources

Need an Attorney

Some people go through their entire life without needing Portland OR injury attorneys.  They are lucky. The rest of us find that at some point we not only need an attorney we need a very good one with experience to help us overcome a seemingly insurmountable problem.  That problem is the personal injury.  A personal injury is a physical, emotional and mental life issue that people may face after a car accident, slip and fall accident, and sometimes face during or after their medical care.  This is when you need Tigard OR personal injury attorneys.

Did You Get Caught?

Have you been caught up in the legal system and need an experienced Manasquan NJ criminal defense lawyer?  Let’s face it, being arrested, whether for juvenile crimes, shoplifting, or simple traffic ticket violations, can be an alarming experience.  Even if you need a Monmouth County fraud lawyer, you need to consult with an attorney to get your questions answered.

Tags: , , , , ,

Church Silent on Priestly Pedophiles During Holy Week

April 7th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Education

Cited: MSNBC

Pope 2Holy Week started this year in the middle of one of the most serious crisis since the Catholic Church has faced in decades.  Pope Benedict the XVI has been silent on the abuse crisis since March 28 with people questioning his handling of pedophile priests and the Vatican acknowledging its “moral credibility” on the line.

Benedict made no mention of the scandal in his Palm Sunday homily. But one of the prayers, recited in Portuguese during Mass, was “for the young and for those charged with educating them and protecting them.”

Other parts of his sermon could be applicable to the crisis he and his church are facing. The pontiff said faith in God helps lead one “toward the courage of not allowing oneself to be intimidated by the petty gossip of dominant opinion.”

He also spoke of how man can sometimes “fall to the lowest, vulgar levels” and “sink into the swamp of sin and dishonesty.”

Palm Sunday commemorates Jesus Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, and is the start of the church’s Holy Week, which includes the Good Friday re-enactment of Christ’s crucifixion and death and his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

This year, the most solemn week on the Catholic Church’s liturgical calendar has been stained by a clerical abuse scandal that has spread across Europe to the pope’s native Germany. The Vatican has been on the defensive amid mounting questions about the pope’s handling of sex abuse cases both when he was archbishop of Munich and when he headed the Vatican’s doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was Munich archbishop when a priest was allowed to resume pastoral work with children even while receiving therapy for pedophilia. He was subsequently convicted of abusing minors. In addition, a case has come to light in which Ratzinger’s deputy at the Congregation told Wisconsin bishops to squash a church trial for a priest alleged to have abused up to 200 deaf boys.

The Vatican insists Ratzinger was unaware of the Munich priest’s move to the pastoral job and has defended its handling of the Wisconsin case.

Benedict has only publicly spoken out about the scandal in Ireland, writing a letter to the Irish faithful last week in which he chastised Irish bishops for leadership shortcomings and errors in judgment for failing to apply church law to stop abusive priests.

‘Making amends’Pope

During his homily Sunday, the pope directed himself to young people, as Palm Sunday is traditionally dedicated to the young. He reminded them that Christian life is a path, or pilgrimage, with Christ — “A walk in the direction that he has chosen and shows us.”

Christ, he said, guides the faithful “toward the courage that doesn’t let us be intimidated by the chatting of dominant opinions, towards patience that supports others.”

On Saturday, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, acknowledged that the way the church responds to the abuse scandal is “crucial for its moral credibility.”

For those who are more interested in looking for event tickets . . . If you are searching for the best sports tickets to your favorite show, or sports tickets to live events in your own area, one online vendor has one of the largest inventories of event tickets available anywhere online.  They make it possible to purchase sports or theater tickets without the worry or hassles some online ticket sites present.

He noted that most of the cases that have come to light recently occurred decades ago.

“But recognizing them, and making amends to the victims, is the price of re-establishing justice and ‘purifying memories’ that will let us look with renewed commitment together with humility and trust in the future,” he said in a statement on Vatican Radio.

His comments indicated that the Vatican is now looking at the scandal as a way to purify itself so that it can emerge renewed and strengthened. He pointed to the action taken by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops after the clerical abuse scandal erupted there in 2002.

The head of the German bishops’ conference has said the Vatican was compiling information from various bishops’ conferences around the world with the possible aim of setting out new guidelines for dealing with the problem.

Separately Sunday, a retired Italian cardinal and one-time candidate for the papacy said in comments published in the Austrian newspaper Die Presse that celibacy for priests should be reconsidered.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, former archbishop of Milan and considered one of the more liberal-leaning princes of the church, was quoted as saying that mandatory chastity for churchmen should be thought over to prevent further abuse cases by clergy and help the church regain lost trust.

As recently as March, Benedict has reaffirmed that celibacy is a gift to God as Vatican rejects the suggestion that celibacy is the cause for the abuse.

———————————————————————–

My Take: In my opinion, the Catholic Church is run by power-hungry liars.  Think about it.  The fault is all and everybody knows you get all your mind begins to go.  Not everybody loses their mind when they get old, but most do.  That means that those immediately under him are the ones that are in control.  Please understand, I am not talking about faith, I am talking about the humans who run the church.

I am one of those who does not believe that God or Jesus granted any human being the ability to forgive sin.  God and/or Jesus are the only ones who can forget a sin.  That is between you and God!  I am sure that the Catholic Church has done a lot of good for many people.  But, priests have also done a lot of bad throughout the centuries in the name of the church.

A priest is a human being with faults.  Some will use those faults for the good of others.  Others give in to their faults.  I recently heard about a priest who was addicted to gambling and it took a while to find out.  Why, because he was going to an online casino.  Admittedly, there are online casinos that offer a no deposit casino bonus that make it inviting and easy for anybody to start gambling.  In that same story, the same phrase was also involved in a “cash for junk cars” program to help the poor.  I really don’t see how buy junk cars will help the poor,

———————————————————————–

Other Resources

Simpler Things

Vintage nautical replicas have become good sellers.  In fact, one online vendor started to produce their own products to be competitive in a new Internet world.  They added a few brass bells to their product line and found that, surprisingly, customers really liked them! Now they have bells in all different sizes, in types ranging from dinner bells to hand bells.  They have even added a sophisticated engraving machine so they can engrave bells up to ten inches in diameter.  They also carry hand carved wood propellers in mahogany and edged in brass.  Their WWI replica propeller has been a best seller of aviation gifts for years and has spawned a whole collection of aviation gifts, including propeller bar stools and stretched canvas airplane models.

Insurance Hunting

Looking for a new auto insurance policy? One that suits you better and is more affordable? If so, all you need to do is go online, type in your zip code and you will be given a list of the top auto insurance providers in your area. After that, click on one of the companies and fill out their short questionaire to get your quote. Obtaining car insurance quotes online is quick, efficient, and can save you up to 25% on your car insurance premium.  What better way is there to hunt for insurance and get a free car insurance quote?

Tags: , , ,

The Importance of the US Census

April 7th, 2010 | No Comments | Posted in Education

Cited: Time/Chicago Tribune

Census 2010This year the 23rd census was mailed out.  It started in a remote corner of Alaska and has continued throughout the rest of the country, that includes Puerto Rico and the Island Areas of American Samoa, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and the Virgin Islands with the goal of counting every resident once, and only once, and in the right place.

Although the 2010 Census questionnaire is simple and easy to fill out, the census is a massive, complex operation involving millions of forms and hundreds of thousands of census workers. To mark this milestone in the nation’s history, the Census Bureau presents some of the amazing numbers involved in counting the nation’s estimated 309 million residents.

This year’s U.S. Census is one of the shortest in history and has begun arriving in mailboxes already. Its 10 questions shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete. Some of the questions are less invasive than ones you’d answer while shopping online. Yet, the Census Bureau is expecting only two thirds of U.S. households to return the forms. Why do people make such a fuss over completing something that is required by the Constitution to take place every 10 years? And why has the Census Bureau spent $133 million on a media campaign to increase public awareness of the once-a-decade population count?

Because the answers to these 10 questions help the government produce data used to determine the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives. Not to mention, $400 billion of federal funding is on the line. The Census data helps communities receive this federal funding for hospitals, job training centers, schools, senior centers, bridges, tunnels and emergency services, according to 2010.census.gov.

Census comes from the Latin censere, which does not mean count so much as estimate, and 2,500 years ago in Rome, people were already squirrelly about being estimated. The penalty for refusing to reveal how many people lived in your household, how many slaves, how much livestock, was forfeiting it all and becoming a slave yourself. The Bible tells the story of God getting so mad at King David for ordering a Census that He sent a plague that killed 70,000 people in three days.

David’s plague may have deterred census takers for many years, but when the Founding Fathers invented American democracy, they realized that if you are going to have government by the people, you need to know who and where they are. The founders stuck a Census requirement in the Constitution so that every 10 years, the young, stretchy country would recalculate which states got how many lawmakers. They worried that a state might try to inflate its population to increase its representation, so they cleverly arranged that the first Census would also be used to spread around the costs of the Revolution. In 1790, 650 federal marshals on horseback began going house to house. It cost $45,000 and took a year and a half to count 3.9 million people.

Well, 220 years later, lawmakers are so unpopular, it’s a wonder people fight over the means of getting more of them — except that nowadays about $400 billion per year in federal aid follows the Census numbers, for everything from jobs to bridges to schools, so this really matters.

For those who would rather be working on their hobby . . . Regardless of whether you are new to model trains or are an experienced model railroader, you are sure to find online the help you want when it comes to the supplies you need to set up your models trains.  You can find from model locomotives to model cabooses to scenery.

Of course, there would be more money to spread around if it didn’t cost so much to count us in the first place: about $15 billion, according to some estimates. That includes $338 million for ads in 28 languages, a Census-sponsored NASCAR entry, hiring Marie Osmond to do outreach on QVC, $2.5 million for a Super Bowl ad and spots on Spanish radio and soap operas and Dora the Explorer. The ads are meant to boost the response rate, since any household that doesn’t mail back its form gets visited by a Census worker, another pricey line item. In all, it will work out to about $49 per person, which makes you wonder whether the government should have just sent an e-mail instead of a packet that looks like junk mail. But the Census officials worried about privacy, so the increasingly irrelevant post office, whose volume dropped 13% last year, gets a spring boost.

Why would anyone not want to be counted anyway in? Illegal immigrants fear exposure, despite laws forbidding any court or agency from seeing the information; indiscreet Census workers can be fined up to $250,000. Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann warned that during World War II, Census data was shared with the FBI “at the request of President Roosevelt, and that’s how the Japanese were rounded up … I’m not saying that that’s what the Administration is planning to do,” she said, but nonetheless she vowed that she’ll state how many people are in her household and nothing more. Since participation is mandatory, this puts her in danger of committing a misdemeanor and being subject to a $5,000 fine.

About 72% of U.S. households returned their forms in 2000, according to a March 15 Associated Press story. The states expected to be hardest hit by the 2010 Census are Florida, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, Texas and North Carolina because of the low participation in the 2000 Census, and because “these states have larger-than-average shares of Hispanics and young adults, which are hard-to-count demographics,” according to the Census Bureau.

For the first time, the Bureau is mailing out bilingual English-Spanish census forms to 13 million households.  U.S. residents will receive a postage-paid envelope along with their Census form to return the form to the bureau. If residents fail to complete and return the form, they may receive a follow-up visit from a census taker, which costs the government an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the AP story.

“If the American public comes through in the way everyone is capable of, we’ll have a great census,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said.

“All Census Bureau employees take the oath on nondisclosure and are sworn for life to protect the confidentiality of the data,” according to the Census Bureau website.  Hopefully, this will alleviate the fears of some residents who fear the Census for privacy reasons, the government site explains that it is against the law to disclose or publish names, addresses including GPS coordinates, Social Security numbers and telephone numbers.

————————————————————–

My Take:  Well, I learned something I wish I didn’t know about our government.  Our government actually used the Census to round up the Japanese-Americans at the beginning of World War II.  That is just about as bad as what the US government did to the American Indians.  Anyway, I can understand why some people don’t want to throw one out because of their privacy.

One good point, some people will get a job out of this even if it is only temporary.  At least the government has good payroll solutions.  I just don’t know how they can keep accurate time and attendance records for Census workers unless they are salaried and have to fill a quota to get paid.  With it being tax time, is a good thing that the IRS can’t check the census records.

It being April, I am sure that there are going to be many NY income tax accountants that are very busy.  Tax forms can be so confusing that many people will hire a New York tax preparer to get through all the confusion.  Then again, you’ll find an average person somewhere who is going through light bulbs like crazy because they are staying up all night trying to figure out their taxes.  Of course if they used halogen light bulbs there probably wouldn’t have some problem seeing what they were writing or reading.  Those things are so bright they make my eyes hurt.

But back to the subject of the article, I hope that everybody fills out their Census this year.  I have done mine and it was extremely easy.  It took me less than five minutes to fill out.  Only problem I see is from a genealogy standpoint.  This year’s census asks how many people are living in the house, if any additional were staying there (not named), whether the home was mortgaged, owned, rented or occupied without rent, telephone number and the name, sex, age, date of birth, race of the people living there up to 4 people.  It does not provide additional information about occupation, marital status or parents.

————————————————————–

Other Resources

Remodel Your Garage

The country’s leading supplier of premium grade commercial and industrial coatings and flooring products is available online to everyone.  They specialize in epoxy paint kits, roof coatings, garage floor interlocking tiles and rubber roll out mats. Everything they manufacture and sell is very heavy duty or extra heavy duty so that your garage floor will last.

Tags: , , , ,