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1 week ago | 
chicagotribune.com | Jodi S. Cohen |Jennifer Richards
Illinois legislators on Wednesday passed a law to explicitly prevent police from ticketing and fining students for minor misbehavior at school, ending a practice that harmed students across the state. The new law would apply to all public schools, including charters. It will require school districts, beginning in the 2027-28 school year, to report to the state how often they involve police in student matters each year and to separate the data by race, gender and disability.
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2 weeks ago | 
myjournalcourier.com | Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
A short video taken inside a Jacksonville school captured troubling behavior: A teacher gripping a 6-year-old boy with autism by the ankle and dragging him down the hallway on his back. The early-April incident would’ve been upsetting in any school, but it happened at Garrison School, part of a special education district where at one time students were arrested at the highest rate of any district in the country.
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2 weeks ago | 
chicagotribune.com | Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
A short video taken inside an Illinois school captured troubling behavior: A teacher gripping a 6-year-old boy with autism by the ankle and dragging him down the hallway on his back. The early April incident would’ve been upsetting in any school, but it happened at the Garrison School, part of a special education district where at one time students were arrested at the highest rate of any district in the country.
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4 weeks ago | 
businessandamerica.com | Asia Fields |Ashley Clarke |Jodi S. Cohen |Jennifer Richards
Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration laid off nearly half of the Department of Education division that handles civil rights investigations and shifted its focus. The administration halted work on thousands of pending discrimination cases while ordering investigations aligned with its priorities. Some people have spoken out about their cases being in limbo or about not receiving updates. We know there are thousands of other people who are affected.
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1 month ago | 
truthdig.com | Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
This story was originally published by ProPublica. In California, the federal government was deep into an investigation of alleged racial discrimination at a school district where, a parent said, students called a Black peer racial slurs and played whipping sounds from their cellphones during a lesson about slavery. Then the U.S. Department of Education in March suddenly closed the California regional outpost of its Office for Civil Rights and fired all its employees there.
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1 month ago | 
truthout.org | Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox In California, the federal government was deep into an investigation of alleged racial discrimination at a school district where, a parent said, students called a Black peer racial slurs and played whipping sounds from their cellphones during a lesson about slavery.
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2 months ago | 
bostonglobe.com | Callie Ferguson |Erin Rhoda |Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
The US Department of Justice sent a letter that “Maine should be on notice” that the agency was poised to sue. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration even pulled $4.5 million for marine research, but it didn’t touch the 33 other grantees who get similar funding. Then last week, the Social Security Administration briefly became the sixth federal agency to target Maine, canceling contracts that allowed hospitals to automatically report births and funeral homes to report deaths.
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2 months ago | 
portside.org | Jodi S. Cohen |Jennifer Richards
Massive Layoffs at the Department of Education Erode Its Civil Rights Division Published March 12, 2025 With a mass email sharing what it called “difficult news,” the U.S. Department of Education has eroded one of its own key duties, abolishing more than half of the offices that investigate civil rights complaints from students and their families. Civil rights complaints in schools and colleges largely have been investigated through a dozen regional outposts across the country.
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2 months ago | 
flipboard.com | Callie Ferguson |Erin Rhoda |Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
10 hours agoIt appears the tall tale that all cats have nine lives may be true for a California Maine coon named Aggie. The beloved feline was feared dead for two months after the Palisades wildfire in Los Angeles left her family’s home in ashes. But her owner, 82-year-old Katherine Kiefer, held out some …
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Feb 25, 2025 | 
theemancipator.org | Jennifer Richards |Jodi S. Cohen
Overview: This story was first published in ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive their biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Since Donald Trump returned to the presidency, investigations by the agency that handles allegations of civil rights violations in the nation’s schools and colleges have ground to a halt.
