A2 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 6 , 2019
CALIFORNIASUV going wrong way
kills 4 on motorcyclesThe California Highway Patrol
said a woman driving the wrong
way crashed her SUV head-on
into two motorcycles over the
weekend, killing the four people
on the motorcycles.
The agency in a statement
Monday said the collision
happened at 2 a.m. Sunday as the
two men and women on the
motorcycles were traveling on
Highway 65 in Tulare County in
the state’s Central Valley.
Officer Marc McWilliams
identified the SUV driver as
24-year-old Jazmin Paramo. She
was charged with driving under
the influence.
Paramo was flown to a
hospital for treatment of injuries
described as moderate to major.
McWilliams did not identify
the victims but said they were
from Porterville.
It was not clear Monday
morning whether Paramo had a
lawyer who could comment on
her behalf.
— Associated PressALASKA4 believed to be on
plane in deadly crashFour people are believed to
have been aboard a plane that
crashed in Alaska with no
survivors.
Clint Johnson, chief of the
National Transportation Safety
Board’s Alaska office, said
reports indicate four people were
aboard when the Piper PA-
crashed Sunday outside
Girdwood. Johnson said NTSB
investigators were heading to the
crash site with state troopers on
Monday.
Alaska State Troopers in a web
posting said the crash happened
near Eagle Glacier south of
Anchorage. The crash was at
about the 5,000-foot elevation on
Goat Mountain.
Johnson said the plane
crashed under unknown
circumstances after takeoff from
Girdwood.
Troopers said an Alaska
National Guard helicopter
responded, and the crew
confirmed the crash.
—Associated Pressline.
“We felt we had more than
enough to charge based on her
testimony and corroboration
from her brother,” Freeman said.
“I don’t like buying sex from
minors, and I don’t think most
other people do either.”
The charges are the latest legal
problem for Kelly, who remains
jailed in New York after pleading
not guilty last week in federal
court to charges that he sexually
abused women and girls who
attended his concerts there. He is
accused of using his fame to
recruit young women and girls
into illegal sexual activity.
Kelly, 52, is also charged
separately in Chicago with
engaging in child pornography.
— Associated Presssignature and a phone number.
When the girl called the number,
she was invited to Kelly’s hotel.
There she was offered $200 to
take off her clothes and dance,
Freeman said.
“According to Victim, the
defendant was rubbing her
body” and fondling himself, a
criminal complaint said. “Victim
stated that the defendant
touched all over her body.”
The complaint said the girl
attended Kelly’s concert “as a
guest who did not have to pay,”
and told her brother what had
happened in Kelly’s hotel room.
The charges are felonies, each
punishable by up to five years in
prison. Freeman said his office
investigated after getting
information from a Chicago tipMINNESOTA
R. Kelly charged with
soliciting a 17-year-old
A Minnesota prosecutor
charged singer R. Kelly on
Monday with prostitution and
solicitation related to an
allegation that he invited a
17-year-old girl to his hotel room
in 2001 and paid her $200 to
dance naked with him.
Hennepin County Attorney
Mike Freeman said the R&B
singer, whose full name is Robert
Sylvester Kelly, is accused of
soliciting the girl after meeting
her at a concert in Minneapolis.
Freeman said the girl was
trying to get an autograph from
Kelly, and that he gave her his
HAPPENING TODAYFor the latest updates all day, visit washingtonpost.com.All day | Secretary of State Mike Pompeo meets with the leaders of
Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. For developments, visit
washingtonpost.com/world.
10 a.m. | The Labor Department issues job openings for June, which are
estimated at 7.293 million. Visit washingtonpost.com/business for details.
Noon | The Cygnus cargo spacecraft departs the space station to deploy
small satellites. For developments, visit washingtonpost.com/science.
2:15 p.m. | President Trump discusses Medicare at a retirement
community in Sumter County, Fla. Visit washingtonpost.com/politics for
details.
CORRECTION A July 17 Metro article about a
therapeutic retreat for military
veterans and their families cited
an outdated figure for the average
number of veterans who die by
suicide every day. As of 2016, the
figure is 20, not 22, according to
data compiled by the Department
of Veterans Affairs.Washington Post
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[email protected].BY LAURA MECKLERHalf of teachers say they have
seriously considered leaving the
profession, and most said they
would strike if given the opportu-
nity, according to a survey re-
leased Monday.
The poll found widespread
teacher complaints about low
pay and poor funding for their
schools, and nearly half said they
felt unvalued by their communi-
ties. Most said they would not
want one of their own children to
follow them into teaching.
The annual survey was con-
ducted by PDK International, an
association of teachers, adminis-
trators and other education pro-
fessionals, which has measured
public attitudes toward schools
for 51 years. This year’s version
surveyed teachers as well as
parents and members of the
public.
It found that nearly two-thirds
of all adults supported teaching
Bible studies in public schools, a
trend taking hold in parts of the
country. It also found, as in years
past, that Americans rate their
local schools far higher than the
nation’s schools in general. Re-
spondents’ views of their chil-
dren’s schools improved a bit,
while opinions about schools in
their wider communities and
across the country fell.
The survey of 565 public
school teachers, sampled to be
representative of the nation’s
teaching force, suggests that the
discontent that drove teacher
strikes in big cities such as Los
Angeles and Denver as well as
rural areas of West Virginia and
Oklahoma is commonplace.
Six in 10 teachers said they are
unfairly paid, and more than half
said they have seriously consid-
ered leaving the profession.
There was strong support for
the idea of striking, with 55 per-
cent of teachers saying they
would walk off the job for higher
pay. There was also support for
strikes seeking systemic change:
58 percent said they would strike
to achieve higher funding for
school programs; 52 percent for
more say in school standards,
testing and curriculum; and
42 percent for more say in teach-
ing conditions.
Teacher strikes helped make
2018 the biggest year for job
actions since 1986, with about
485,200 workers involved in
teacher strikes last year.
The unrest stems in part from
state cuts that have squeezed
school budgets and teacher pay.An analysis last year from the
Economic Policy Institute found
that until the mid-1990s, teach-
ers were paid nearly as much as
other educated workers, but in
2017, they made 18.7 percent less.
The new poll found that na-
tionally, 6 in 10 teachers think
they are underpaid, with those in
the South and the Midwest most
likely to say so. Among educators
who have considered leaving the
profession, the most common
reasons were inadequate pay and
benefits, followed by stress, pres-
sure or burnout.
Asked how much they feel
valued by their communities,
close to half of teachers said “just
some” or even less.
At the same time, the broader
survey of parents found support
for teacher strikes, and in larger
numbers than the teachers regis-
tered. For instance, 74 percent of
parents said they would support
teachers who went on strike for
higher pay, 19 percentage points
higher than the portion of educa-
tors who would vote for such a
strike. Even larger gaps emerged
when parents were asked about
potential strikes motivated by
other demands.
Randi Weingarten, president
of the American Federation of
Teachers, said the results rein-
forced arguments made by her
union.
“Parents and educators agree
public schools need far more
investment to meet the needs of
kids,” said Weingarten, whose
federation is the nation’s second-
largest teachers union.
Joshua Starr, chief executive of
PDK International, said low
teacher morale is to be expected
given the pressures that educa-
tors face.
“It’s shocking in some ways,
but anybody who’s been follow-
ing public education in the last
20 years and the demonization of
teachers, the continued low pay,
the working conditions, the re-
lentless focus on standardized
testing as the only measure of
success, would naturally con-
clude we would reap what we
sowed,” he said.
On another controversial is-
sue, nearly 2 in 3 teachers said
discipline in their schools is not
sufficiently robust. This comes as
civil rights advocates and others
argue that children of color are
disciplined too frequently. The
advocates admonish schools for
punishing black and Latino stu-
dents more harshly than white
students for the same offenses.
The poll did not ask aboutracial disparities in discipline,
which are well-documented.
The survey found broad sup-
port for “zero tolerance” policies.
About 7 in 10 parents, teachers
and other adults favored the
policy when it was described as
punishment for certain viola-
tions of drug and weapons pol-
icies. But when asked about a
typical situation — a student
accidentally brings a folding
knife to school in a backpack —
more than half opposed an auto-
matic suspension or expulsion.
Whites were less likely to support
automatic punishments in this
case than nonwhites were.
The survey also found sub-
stantial support for the recent
trend of including Bible studies
in public high schools. Fifty-eight
percent of adults said it should be
offered as an elective, with an
additional 6 percent saying it
should be required for all stu-
dents.
Support was particularly high
among evangelical Christians, at
82 percent, and among Republi-
cans (78 percent) and rural
Americans (72 percent).
Support was a bit higher for
including classes on comparative
religion as an elective. There was
also strong support for teaching
civics.
Among teachers, support for
Bible studies as an elective or a
required class totaled 58 percent,
and it was even higher among
parents, at 68 percent.
Driven by an organized evan-
gelical effort, 10 state legislatures
have considered laws in the past
year encouraging public schools
to teach the Christian Bible as an
important work of literature and
influence on history. Bible class-
es have withstood court scrutiny
in the past and are popular in
many schools, though critics say
there is enormous potential for
teachers to violate the First
Amendment by promoting a reli-
gious message.
Starr suggested that support
for Bible classes may reflect frus-
tration toward schools’ narrow
focus on a few topics: “People
want school to be more than
reading, writing and arithmetic.”
The survey was conducted in
April among 2,389 adults, includ-
ing 1,083 parents of school-age
children and 556 public school
teachers. The margin of error for
the full adult sample is plus or
minus 3.1 percentage points; for
the sample of public school
teachers, it is 6.2 percentage
points.
[email protected]BY CAROL MORELLO
AND KAROUN DEMIRJIANThe Trump administration has
temporarily frozen and ordered a
review of several key foreign aid
funds that Congress has already
approved, in a move that critics
fear could lead to another at-
tempted rollback of foreign aid.
The Office of Management and
Budget sent a letter to the State
Department and the U.S. Agency
for International Development on
Saturday, notifying them of the
action, which took effect one min-
ute before midnight that day.
The OMB asked the agencies for
a balance sheet of foreign aid proj-
ects that have not yet been funded.
Michael P. Duffey, the associate
director for national security pro-
grams at OMB, wrote that no more
money can be obligated from
those funds until three days after
OMB receives the numbers, a
process that could take days if not
weeks.
The letter, viewed by The Wash-
ington Post, lists eight areas that
cover a variety of assistance: inter-
national organizations; peace-
keeping operations and activities;
international narcotics control
and law enforcement; develop-
ment aid; assistance for Europe,
Eurasia and Central Asia; eco-
nomic support funding; foreign
military financing programs; and
global health programs.
An administration official said
the funds targeted for review are
above budgetary limits proposed
by President Trump. They include
big-ticket items such as contribu-
tions to the United Nations and
smaller items such as solar panels
in the Caribbean, schools in Uz-
bekistan and soccer programs in
Central America.
Traditionally, a significant por-
tion of foreign aid funding is obli-
gated toward the end of a fiscal
year, which runs through Sept. 30.
But this year the pot is bigger, in
part because the administration
has cut aid to the Northern Trian-
gle countries of Guatemala, Hon-
duras and El Salvador, and for the
Palestinians.
According to people familiar
with the process, the named funds
could be as little as $2 billion and
as much as $4 billion.
The State Department and
USAID declined to comment, re-
ferring questions to OMB.
“It is incumbent on all federal
agencies to properly use funds
provided by Congress,” said Ra-
chel Semmel, the OMB spokes-
woman. “In an effort to ensure
accountability, OMB has request-
ed the current status of several
foreign assistance accounts to
identify the amount of funding
that is unobligated. On behalf of
American taxpayers, OMB has an
obligation to ensure their money
is being used wisely.”
Trump has proposed steep cuts
in foreign aid in all of his budget
requests, but Congress has re-
stored the funding.
Last year, OMB asked the State
Department and USAID to pro-
vide a similar balance sheet of
unobligated projects just six
weeks before the end of the budget
year. It said money for projects
considered “unnecessary” — po-
tentially as much as $3 billion —
could be returned to the Treasury,
a process known as rescission
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo
argued against the rescission
championed by OMB Director
Mick Mulvaney, and Congress
pushed against what it viewed as a
backdoor attempt to get around its
spending authority, so the admin-
istration dropped the proposal.
The Government Accountability
Office, in a decision last Decem-
ber, rebuked the idea of an at-
tempted rescission so late in the
budget year, saying there must be
enough time for a “prudent obliga-
tion” that could take weeks or even
months. This year, Pompeo was in
Australia when the letter was sent
and Congress was near the begin-
ning of a recess.
No decisions have been made,
and the information requested
from the agencies is purely for the
purpose of review.
A senior Democratic aide said
that it appears the administration
is preparing to circumvent Con-
gress with a rescission package
and that it can expect a fight.
“Irrelevant of what the Trump
administration may wish, Con-
gress still has the power of the
purse and we appropriated these
funds because they are necessary
to protect our interests and na-
tional security,” said the aide, who
like others spoke on the condition
of anonymity to discuss plans un-
der consideration. “We are in
touch with the State Department
and are demanding answers.”
[email protected]
[email protected]Foreign aid
funds are
put on hold
for review
In poll, teachers express frustration,
say they would strike over funding
DIGESTDAVID L. RYAN/POOL/REUTERS
Ethel Kennedy, the 91-year-old widow of Robert F. Kennedy, is
helped to a church in Centerville, Mass., for the funeral of Saoirse
Kennedy Hill, her granddaughter. Hill was found unresponsive at the
Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., last Thursday.Ask about Showcase Home Program Discount!
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