I remember how it was -- JR
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Loudoun County School System Flooded by FOIA Requests Seeking to Crack Sexual Assault Scandal Wide Open
After making national news throughout this year, Loudoun County Public Schools in Loudoun County, Virginia, are being kept busy these days.
Parents and activists have filed over 500 Freedom of Information Act requests in 2021, according to Loudoun Now. The Freedom of Information Act allows for people to request public records for the sake of transparency, which includes communication between school administrators.
Most of these requests are to obtain information ranging from sexual assault cases to more politically driven issues.
According to Loudoun Now, roughly 40 percent of these requests came from six activists at the conservative group Fight for Schools.
As a result, the school system is now having more people handle the requests and is even asking some parents to pay a hefty fee to pay for the labor it takes to dig through documents.
“LCPS is not seeking further resources at this time but has begun billing VFIOA requesters because it cannot handle the current volume free of charge,” the district’s Public Information Officer Wayde Byard said, the outlet reported.
One such instance involved parent Michelle Mege, who was told it would cost $36,000 in order to give her all of the communications data in which the terms “sexual assault” or “rape” were used when she filed a request on Oct. 18, The Daily Caller reported.
“Retrieving these documents would take a half hour’s work by the supervisor of information technology at a cost of $36.08,” Byard said to Mege in an email, according to the outlet.
“Review of these documents — at the rate of 200 per hour — is estimated to take 500 hours. This work would be performed by the public information officer at the rate of $72.15 per hour. Loudoun County Public Schools estimates it would cost $36,111.68 to fulfill this request.”
The request stems from the fact that a 15-year-old male was the center of two sexual assault cases at different schools in the county, and parents are concerned that this instance and others may have been covered up, The Washington Examiner reported.
Government entities are required to release the requested information after a formal FOIA request, although there are a few exemptions.
However, Byard is correct that Loudoun County Public Schools can make people pay in order to provide all the resources desired.
“The Office may require a person seeking public records to pay for the records. FOIA allows the Office to charge for the actual costs of responding to FOIA requests,” the Commonwealth of Virginia website states.
“This would include items such as staff time spent searching for the requested records, copying costs or any other costs directly related to supplying the requested records. It cannot include general overhead costs.”
Still, concerned parents should still continue to make FOIA requests and try to obtain information through the process.
Bureaucratic ignorance thrives when the public does not hold their officials accountable, and that starts at the local level.
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15-year-old graduates with bachelor's degree from University of Nevada, Las Vegas
A boy from California has graduated from college with honors at the impressive age of 15.
This month, Jack Rico earned his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, with a grade point average of 3.78.
According to the school’s Facebook page, Jack is "one of UNLV’s youngest grads."
"Just being alongside of him on this journey has been so amazing," mom Ru Andrade told Fox News. "I know he gets a lot of attention for his brain, but he’s the sweetest kid — never been in trouble once. He has a sister who has autism who he is amazing with."
"Obviously, we are so proud of him because this is what he wanted," she added. "But also proud of the human he is. That’s the coolest thing about him."
Andrade said she homeschooled Jack for four years, and by age 11, she struggled to teach him information he didn’t already know. "I had given everything I had, and he was smarter than me," she said.
Andrade had learned Fullerton College offered a K-12 bridge program. Jack passed the placement exam and instead of attending high school, he was enrolled in college-level classes. Within two years, he earned four associate degrees, one in each concentration of history, social behavior, art and human expression and social science.
In June 2020, Jack began classes at UNLV to complete his bachelor’s. He graduated on Dec. 14 of this year.
Andrade said Jack plans to achieve his master’s degree, but is taking the semester off to enjoy time with his cousins and friends and play video games.
Jack is unsure what he will major in, though does have his sights set on learning how to code and becoming fluent in Spanish.
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Australia: Suspected fraud cases prompt calls for research integrity watchdog
Australia’s top scientists have called for a research integrity watchdog to oversee investigations into allegations of research misconduct at publicly funded institutions, declaring the age of self-regulation is over.
The Australian Academy of Science is in discussions with the government over its proposal for a national oversight body to work with any institution that has used public funds to conduct research, including universities, think tanks and the private sector, following a spate of academic research scandals.
It would have statutory authority to handle allegations of serious research misconduct such as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, leaving issues that fell below that threshold to the governing institutions, and hear appeals if the institutions were deemed not to have dealt with matters fairly or in a timely manner.
The academy’s secretary of science policy, Ian Chubb, a former chief scientist and vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, said he was not suggesting universities were in the business of concealing research misconduct, but the rising number of Inspectors-General and Ombudsmen reflected a general distrust for self-regulation and growing support for independent oversight.
“The era of self-regulation is further in the past than you might like to believe,” Professor Chubb said. “We’re proposing that there be an Australian system for investigating research misconduct that has some real substance to it.”
The academy has engaged Universities Australia, which represents Australia’s 39 universities and has given in principle support to the proposal.
“Universities Australia is actively interested in how the quality and integrity of Australian research can be secured and improved,” chief executive Catriona Jackson said.
Australia and New Zealand are unusual among Western nations for not having an office of research integrity, a version of which exists in the UK, Japan, China, Canada, the United States and 23 European countries.
The proposal for a national oversight body follows a string of allegations regarding image manipulation in scientific papers that have embroiled UNSW, the University of Sydney and Macquarie University and the referral of one of Australia’s top cancer scientists to Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission.
But scientists have been trying to promote an office of research integrity for years. In late 2017, it was discussed at a meeting that involved representatives from the Australia Research Council, the National Health and Medical Research Council, the Chief Scientist and the office of Health Minister Greg Hunt. People with close knowledge of the meeting said although major research bodies supported the proposal, it was actively opposed by Universities Australia and later shelved.
Professor Chubb said the current model was developed after fellows of the academy raised the issue in May last year. Cases would have to be triaged so the office would only handle the most serious matters, and it was expected to cost around $5 million, though it was uncertain how many cases would emerge.
Among those who raised their concerns was University of Melbourne scientist Peter Brooks, who was commissioned by UNSW in 2013 to investigate a complaint of research misconduct against a senior researcher.
“The terms of reference were incredibly tight, so we couldn’t deviate from those,” Professor Brooks said.
Professor Brooks concluded the professor had committed misdemeanours that fell short of research misconduct, but unearthed other issues during his investigation that the university chose to refer to separate committees, none of which were allowed to make findings about a pattern of behaviour.
“It was a very, very disappointing and unfortunate situation,” Professor Brooks said.
Each of the five committees cleared the professor of research misconduct, finding the breaches were the result of genuine error or honest oversight. UNSW said in a statement the findings were later considered together by a further external independent panel and still found not to constitute research misconduct.
Professor Brooks, who has conducted several investigations into academic misconduct, said the tertiary education system was so reliant on overseas students and research funding that universities could ill afford to lose senior researchers.
At the same time, there were financial and career incentives to researchers who publish prolifically or publish in journals that are classified as high impact. This created conditions for academics to perform sloppy or even fraudulent research. Other scientists then read the papers and spend years trying to reproduce the experiments or develop them further.
“The opportunity costs are enormous because that costs money that could have been used for legitimate research,” Professor Brooks said. “And often they’ve been funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, so it’s a really serious issue
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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