California Democrat touts a Republican’s support in ad. The man is registered Democrat

A recent advertisement by Democratic Rep. TJ Cox includes a man who says he’s a Republican supporting Cox in next week’s election. But the man is a registered Democrat, according to public records.

The man, identified in the advertisement as “Manny” from Laton, is Manuel Lopez. He has been a registered Democrat since at least November 2019, according to records with Political Data Inc.

Lopez has registered as a Republican in the past, according to records from the firm.

Lopez in a phone call confirmed he was the one who appeared in the Cox ad. He ended the conversation when asked about his Democratic voter registration.

Cox, D-Fresno, is defending his seat against former Rep. David Valadao, a Republican from Hanford. Cox narrowly defeated Valadao in 2018, and the district has been flooded with advertisements and millions of dollars in spending both by of the campaigns and outside political groups.

The advertisement, called “For Us,” highlights Cox’s work for farmers and on San Joaquin Valley water challenges. It aired on TV and online starting last week in the Fresno market.

The ad has two other people introduce themselves, one man who identifies himself as a farmer and a woman who says she’s from Hanford, before Lopez introduces himself as a Republican.

“We’re sick of politics as usual,” the three say in voiceovers. “But TJ Cox is different.”

Cox’s campaign declined to comment on the ad. Instead, the campaign passed along a statement from Lopez.

“I’m a lifelong Republican,” Lopez said, according to the Cox campaign.

The Cox campaign plans to leave the advertisement up, a spokesman said.

The rest of the ad touts Cox’s record with water and helping people impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

“Water is a big problem here, so TJ went to bat for us, got our fair share of water projects for the Central Valley to help farmers and TJ helped workers hurt by the Coronavirus,” the three people continue in voiceovers, transitioning between each of them. “TJ’s for me, and me, and all of us.”

While Cox has secured funding for water projects in appropriations bills, much of his efforts to pass additional measures for clean drinking water, canal repairs and other infrastructure repairs related to water in the Valley have not become law.

Cox voted for some coronavirus stimulus packages, helping businesses pay workers. The major one, known as the CARES Act, passed in March and delivered $1,200 stimulus payments to most Americans and increased unemployment insurance. But subsequent attempts by both the House and Senate to provide additional help and payments for the past seven months have failed to become law.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/article246777397.html

these poor kids, this is horrible

Only 1 Seattle Public Schools student is receiving special-education services in person right now

Within Seattle Public Schools, only one student with disabilities is currently receiving services in person. Next week, that number will increase to two.

District officials say there are a few reasons why it’s taking a long time to get in-person services delivered to students while the school year proceeds online for most kids. A major reason for the delay: The district chose to set up services at students’ home schools — as opposed to at districtwide hubs — which meant making sure 104 school sites were safe for adult work, said Concie Pedroza, chief of student supports.

Other districts are using different models to get students what they need in person. In Bellevue, which this September enrolled fewer than half of Seattle’s 52,481 students, 150 students were receiving services in person as of Thursday, according to spokesperson Michael May. There, the district is concentrating services at four school sites — not all of which are students’ home schools.

In Lake Washington, 475 students with disabilities were getting assistance in person as of Thursday, said spokesperson Shannon Parthemer. Educators recommended in-person services for 580 students; 105 families declined them. Lake Washington provides these services across 34 school sites.

Focusing on home schools was “the most important thing,” Pedroza, the Seattle schools official, said in a briefing with journalists Thursday.

Late last week, Seattle announced that remote learning would continue at least through January — making any moves at improving its online-era work all the more long-lasting. Sixty-five students are “already in queue” to receive these services, Pedroza said; eight students have successfully gone through the health and safety review the district requires of staff and families before it firms up its decisions.

Many parents of students with disabilities have said that remote learning has been particularly tough on their kids. Students with ADHD, for example, have a harder time focusing on screens for longer, especially without the support they’d get in school. Under federal law, students with disabilities have a specific right to a “free appropriate public education.”

To determine what that is, school staff and families set individualized goals and mandate the type of services students need to get there, such as speech or occupational therapy. Already, Washington families have turned to courts, claiming that those needs have not been met amid the coronavirus pandemic.

One critic of that policy said she did not understand why the district thought it mattered to focus on offering services at a student’s home school.

“I really worry about what’s going on with kids at home — I just cannot imagine that’s the least restrictive environment for them,” said Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education. “What matters is the student receiving appropriate services and hopefully from the teacher that they know. That can happen anywhere.”

Similarly, Janis White, president of the Seattle PTSA, an organization that supports the parents of children with disabilities, said she felt “incredible dismay that we are eight weeks into the school year, and there are many students with disabilities who we’ve known since the spring could not engage in online learning and would need in-person services in order to make progress.”

Seattle’s school-reopening plan, approved in August, prioritized getting some students with disabilities back into school buildings even as the rest of students continued to learn online. The August version of the plan stated that special-education services offered in person would occur in two buildings in each of the city’s regions.

According to the district’s website, members of students’ individualized learning teams were set to meet remotely to determine whether in-person services were necessary. Once the team determines a student needs in-person help, students will receive transportation to get them to their home school sites “in compliance with health guidelines.”

more https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/only-1-seattle-public-schools-student-is-receiving-special-education-services-in-person-right-now/