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About The skanner. (Portland, Or.) 1975-2014 | View Entire Issue (April 25, 2012)
Bids/Classifieds To place your ad, email Advertising deadlines 12:00 Noon Monday Hours: Monday - Friday 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. Parents Wire Kids to Prove Their Teachers’ Classroom Abuse Employment continued from page 6 graduating from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas in December with a business degree. His family has warned him for years about the job market, so he has been building his resume by working part time on the Las Vegas Strip as a food runner and doing a marketing internship with a local airline. Bawden said his friends who have grad- uated are either unemployed or working along the Vegas Strip in service jobs that In addition, U.S. workers increasingly may need to consider their position in a global economy, where they must com- pete with educated foreign-born residents for jobs. Longer-term government projec- tions also may fail to consider “degree inflation,” a growing ubiquity of bache- lor’s degrees that could make them more commonplace in lower-wage jobs but inadequate for higher-wage ones. That future may be now for Kelman Edwards Jr., 24, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who is waiting to see the returns on his col- lege education. After earning a biol- ogy degree last May, the only job he could find was as a construc- tion worker for five months before he quit to focus on finding a job in his academic field. He applied for positions in laboratories but was told they were looking for people with specialized certifications. “I thought that me having a biology degree was a gold ticket for me getting into places, but every other job wants you to have previous history in the field,” he said. Edwards, who has about $5,500 in student debt, recently met with a career counselor at Middle Tennessee State Uni- versity. The counselor’s main advice: Pur- sue further education. “Everyone is always telling you, `Go to college,’” Edwards said. “But when you graduate, it’s kind of an empty cliff.” By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations don’t require degrees. “There are so few jobs and it’s a small city,” he said. “It’s all about who you know.” Any job gains are going mostly to work- ers at the top and bottom of the wage scale, at the expense of middle-income jobs commonly held by bachelor’s degree holders. By some studies, up to 95 percent of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations such as bank tellers, the type of job not expected to return in a more high-tech age. David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, said a bachelor’s degree can have benefits that aren’t fully reflected in the government’s labor data. He said even for lower-skilled jobs such as waitress or cashier, employ- ers tend to value bachelor’s degree-hold- ers more highly than high-school graduates, paying them more for the same work and offering promotions. advertising@theskanner.com Associated Press writers Manuel Valdes in Seattle; Travis Loller in Nashville, Tenn.; Cristina Silva in Las Vegas; and Sandra Chereb in Carson City, Nev., con- tributed to this report. REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS KITSAP TRANSIT Kitsap Transit solicits Letter of Interest, Statement of Qualifications and Performance Data from consulting firms qualified in the area(s) of UBC compliant commer- cial improvements, Architecture, Marine Architecture, Construction Management, Marine Construction Man- agement, Civil design, Geotechnical, Electrical, Environ- mental, Structural, Traffic and Value Engineering, to assist with the development of Transit Capital Facilities, on an on-call basis. Qualified firms will be on a short-list for multi-disciplinary and/or specialized area(s) for one year with an option to extend for one year. This solicitation is to determine qual- ifications for potential projects and is not to be construed as an offer or an acceptance. No request for services is implied nor guaranteed. Specific projects will be negoti- ated based upon scope and budget. PLEASE SUBMIT a Statement of Qualifications with a letter indicating main area of interest and in-house pro- fessional expertise and a SF 330 (Part II) indicating examples of former work applicable to a suburban/rural transit agency to Cathy Whitehead, Capital Development Dept., 60 Washington Ave., Ste. 200, Bremerton, Wash- ington 98337, (360) 824-4941. Submissions shall be lim- ited to 10 pages total excluding the SF330, cover and dividers. The deadline for submittals: 4:00 p.m., FRIDAY, May 18, 2012 4-25-12 By Geoff Mulvihill The Associated Press CHERRY HILL, N.J. (AP) — Teachers hurled insults like “bastard,” “tard,” “damn dumb” and “a hippo in a ballerina suit.” A bus driver threatened to slap one child, while a bus monitor told another, “Shut up, you little dog.” They were all special needs students, and their parents all learned about the verbal abuse the same way - by planting audio recorders on them before sending them off to school. In cases around the country, suspicious parents have been taking advantage of con- venient, inexpensive technology to tell them what children, because of their disabilities, are not able to express on their own. It’s a practice that can help expose abuses, but it comes with some dangers. This week, a father in Cherry Hill, N.J., posted on YouTube clips of secretly record- ed audio that caught one adult calling his autistic 10-year-old son “a bastard.” In less than three days, video got 1.2 million views, raising the prominence of the small move- ment. There have been at least nine similar cases across the U.S. since 2003. “If a parent has any reason at all to sug- gest a child is being abused or mistreated, I strongly recommend that they do the same thing,” said Wendy Fournier, president of the National Autism Association. But George Giuliani, executive director of the National Association of Special Educa- tion Teachers and director of special educa- tion at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., says that while the documented mis- treatment of children has been disturbing, secret recordings are a bad idea. They could, he said, violate the privacy rights of other children. “We have to be careful that we’re not sending our children in wired without knowing the legal issues,” Giuliani said. Stuart Chaifetz, the Cherry Hill father, said he began getting reports earlier in the school year that his 10-year-old son, Akian, was being violent. Hitting teachers and throwing chairs were out of character for the boy, who is in a class with four other autistic children and speaks but has serious difficulty expressing him- self. Chaifetz said he talked to school offi- cials and had his son meet with a behaviorist. There was no explanation for the way Akian was acting. “I just knew I had to find out what was happening there,” he said. “My only option was to put a recorder there. I needed to hear what a normal day was like in there.” On the recording, he heard his son being insulted - and crying at one point. He shared the audio with school district officials. The superintendent said in a state- ment that “the individuals who are heard on the recording raising their voices and inap- propriately addressing children no longer work in the district.” Since taking the story public, Chaifetz, who has run unsuccessfully for the school board in Cherry Hill and once went on a hunger strike to protest special-education funding cuts, said he has received thousands of emails. At least a few dozen of those he has had a chance to read have been from parents ask- ing for advice about investigating alleged mistreatment of their children. It’s easy, he tells them. “It was a simple $30 digital audio recorder. I just put it in the kid’s pocket,” he said. “Unless they’re looking for it, they’re not going to find it.” With more parents taking such action, he said, fewer educators may get out of line with the way they treat students who cannot speak up for themselves. Read the rest of this story online at www.theskanner.com COMPUTER NETWORK ENGINEER, SR. CTL Corporation, Portland, OR. Fax Res: 503-526-9135 4-25-12 HUMAN RESOURCES DIRECTOR OREGON HEALTH AUTHORITY OFFICE ASSISTANT/ASSISTANT PROPERTY MANAGER The Housing And Community Services Agency (HACSA) of Lane County is accepting applications for a full-time position as Office Assistant/Assistant Property Manager. Salary range $2,264.94 to $3,171.92/mo plus excellent benefit package. Positing & application may be obtained at www.hacsa.org or at 177 Day Island Rd, Eugene. Completed application packet must be received by 4:00 PM, April 30, 2012. Resumes will not be accepted. EOE/ADA Your Best Source for Local News is also online at www.theskanner.com 4-25-12 The Oregon Health Authority is recruiting for a FT HR Director located in Salem. HR manage- ment experience is required. Benefits include a competitive salary, leave accrual, family health plan and retirement. Please con- sider joining a team committed to providing exceptional services! Online application instructions and a detailed job announce- ment (refer to #OHA12- 0115) are available at www.oregonjobs.org. 1- 800-735-2900 (TTY). OHA IS an AA/EOE. 4-25-12 April 25, 2012 The Seattle Skanner Page 7
