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WEST PALM BEACH — The founder of the Joseph Littles-Nguzo Saba charter school said the school’s F grade this year was a fluke that will not be repeated next year.

And in order to help ensure better scores for next year, the county’s only school with an African-centered curriculum will be doing something new: targeting students who are more likely give the school good academic results.

Joseph Littles caters to K-8 students deemed at risk because of their poverty, behavioral troubles or academic struggles. It was the only school in the district to receive the dreaded F grade when school grades for elementary and middle schools were released at the end of June.

We always took pride in being a turnaround school, founder Amefika Geuka said during a news conference today . He said his student population is made up largely of students who aren’t faring well in traditional public schools.

But now, because we have an F, we no longer have the luxury to ignore the implications of bringing in difficult students, Geuka said. We need to increase the number of students who do not bring a multitude of problems.

Geuka blamed the school’s grade dropping from a C to an F this year in part on a large influx of new students . This year, the school recorded 230 students in a November count, compared to 111 students in November 2009.

The increased enrollment brought bigger revenues, something the financially struggling charter school desperately needed to stay open.

But it also meant that most of the newly enrolled students were coming from traditional district schools where they had fared poorly and academically, Geuka said. He said the charter school’s staff was faced with a tough challenge to turn around those students in only one school year.

Delores Smart, principal at Joseph Littles this past school year but now the school’s testing coordinator, said she’s still analyzing FCAT data but believes the school would have maintained a C or higher if it hadn’t been for the influx of new students .

This fall, Joseph Littles is again hoping to increase its enrollment, up double or more from the 2010-2011 school year. But they want to make sure they don’t earn an F again.

We’ve urged recruiters to recruit from intact families, Geuka said, saying that students from stable two-parent households often have better school achievement.

Geuka also blamed the school’s poor grade on the fact that the school has had to move locations several times in recent years.

Joseph Littles, which opened more than a decade ago, spent most of last year at the old Inlet Grove High School location owned by the Palm Beach County School District. It moved in June to the old Roosevelt Full Service Center off Tamarind Avenue in West Palm Beach. The charter school has traditionally been a D-graded school, with the exception of the C last year and the F this year.

School board member Chuck Shaw, a former charter school principal, said he’s concerned that the school received an F this year. He said he hasn’t gotten a chance to look closely at the scores, but that there should be an exploration of whether the program of the school is adequate to meet the needs of the students.

School board vice chair Debra Robinson said she doesn’t put a whole lot of weight in school grades.

Getting an F does not look good, but they also take students the so-called regular public schools have failed to engage in education, Robinson said. They’re starting oftentimes in a large deficit position.

Robinson said she can understand why Joseph Littles would focus its recruiting efforts on less troubled students. It’s part of trying to survive as a school, she said.

Robinson said she does not want to see Joseph Littles shut down.

If we start slamming the door closed on people who are putting their blood, sweat and tears into helping the neediest, who will help that group of children? she said.

“A child in or near water can get into trouble in a matter of seconds,” said Meri-K Appy, president of Safe Kids USA. “Safe Kids promotes ‘Lock, Look, and Learn,’ to help remind parents and caregivers that layers of protection help keep children safe, such as using barriers, fences, and anti-entrapment devices for home pools and spas, actively supervising your children, learning how to swim and enrolling your children in swimming, and knowing basic water rescue skills, such as CPR.”

Although 90 percent of parents say they supervise their children while swimming, many acknowledge that they engage in other distracting activities at the same time – talking, eating, reading or taking care of another child. In fact, a parent or caregiver claimed to be supervising the child in nearly 9 out of 10 drowning-related deaths.

While there is no substitute for active supervision, learning how to swim is an important skill for both parents and children to learn. In fact, new studies indicate that teaching children to swim between the ages of 6 and 12 months old is a great way to build their confidence in the water while at the same time teaching them water safety skills.

Seven-time Olympic medalist Amanda Beard, who is hoping to compete in the 100- and 200-meter breast stroke events in the 2012 Olympics, is a firm believer in teaching children to swim at a young age. “I hear parents say all the time that their 3- or 4-year-old toddlers haven’t learned to swim because they are too young. By this age, your child can be a very good swimmer. In addition, your child will learn about water safety skills and what they should do if they fall in the pool. These lessons are literally saving lives.”

As part of Safe Kids USA’s work to promote the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Safety Act, Safe Kids USA was awarded a grant from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in September 2010. The law, which has fundamentally changed the way pools and spas are used and maintained in the U.S., was named in honor of Virginia Graeme Baker, the 7-year old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker, who drowned in 2002 when the powerful suction of a drain entrapped her underwater.

To help keep your kids safe in or around the water, Safe Kids recommends these Lock, Look, and Learn reminders for parents.

Lock

• If you have a pool or spa, or if your child visits a home that has a pool or spa, it should be surrounded on all four sides by a fence at least 4-feet high with self-closing and self-latching gates. Studies estimate that this type of isolation fencing could prevent 50 to 90 percent of child drownings in residential pools.
• Make sure all pools and spas have compliant anti-entrapment drain covers and back up devices to ensure safer places for children to swim.
• When not in use, all pools, including portable inflatable pools and spas, should be covered and secured. Ladders to above ground pools and spas should be locked or removed.

Look

• Always actively supervise children in and around water. Designate someone to be the “Water Watcher” – a responsible adult who is in charge of watching children while they are in or near water. The Water Watcher should not be distracted by phone calls, text messages, reading or talking to others. Caregivers can work as a team, taking turns with another adult to stay alert to watch the children.
• Watch children even if they know how to swim – knowing how to swim does not prevent drowning.
• If a child is missing, check the water first.

Learn

• Know how to swim and enroll your kids in swimming lessons.
• Learn CPR and know how to use rescue equipment – these are important skills to know if there is an emergency.
• Learn how to choose the right life jacket depending on the water activity, your child’s size, and weight. Don’t rely on inflatable swimming toys such as “water wings” and noodles; these toys should never be used in place of U.S. Coast Guard approved life jackets. Children who can’t swim well or can’t swim at all should be within your arm’s reach.
• Teach children water safety rules such as never swim alone, always wear a life jacket while boating, and never swim or play near pool or spa drains.

About Safe Kids USA

Safe Kids USA is a member of Safe Kids Worldwide, which is a global network of organizations whose mission is to prevent unintentional childhood injury, the leading cause of death and disability to children ages 1 to 14. More than 600 coalitions and chapters across the U.S. and nineteen member countries across the globe bring together health and safety experts, educators, corporations, foundations, governments and volunteers to educate and protect families. Founded in 1987 as the National SAFE KIDS Campaign by Children’s National Medical Center with support from Johnson & Johnson, Safe Kids Worldwide is a non-profit organization located in Washington, D.C.

DURBAN, South Africa — The three cities vying for the 2018 Winter Olympics are making their final pitches in a contest between a third-time Asian bid from South Korea and two European challengers.  

The German bid from Munich was due to make the first presentation to the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday, followed by Annecy, France, and Pyeongchang, South Korea.  

After close defeats for the 2010 and 2014 Games, Pyeongchang is the early favorite. Munich, hoping to become the first city to host both a Summer and Winter Olympics, is the main challenger.  

Each had 45 minutes to present its case, followed by 15 minutes for questions and answers.  

The IOC will vote by secret ballot, with the winner expected to be announced after 11 a.m. EDT.  

City Council looks to provide $53 million The Notebook blog
After a day of discussion, City Council approved a property tax increase, increase in parking fees, and transfer of $10 million to schools, but did not approve Mayor Nutter’s proposed soda tax.

Corbett nominates Pedro Ramos to the School Reform Commission The Inquirer
The former school board president and Democrat will fill the seat vacated by Ambassador David Girard-diCarlo.

For undocumented students, new bill’s like a DREAM Daily News
Rep. Tony Payton introduced in the Pennsylvania house a bill to allow undocumented students who were brought to the U.S. as children to pay in-state tuition.

Rally to save accelerated schools The Notebook blog
Youth United for Change organized a rally on Wednesday to save the 13 accelerated schools slated to close.

House leader expected to endorse compromise school choice bill next week Pennsylvania Independent
The compromise bill combines elements of vouchers and the EITC.

Ten-Year Extension of Penn Alexander School Pact announced UC Review
The SRC approved an extension of the pact between University of Pennsylvania and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Elementary School.

Germantown High School’s Class of 2011 Chestnut Hill Patch

Parents Forced to Wait Outside As Students Walk Down Aisle at GHS Graduation Mt. Airy Patch

VIDEO: Students Say Goodbye to Saul Roxborough-Manayunk Patch

Bill would shift cyber school funding Daily American

Letters: School district employees feel the heat Daily News

Please if we missed anything today or if you have any suggestions of publications, email lists, or other places for us to check for news.

UPDATE: Report is now online

I didnt think there would be any question about this, but the APS board and interim Superintendent Erroll Davis felt it necessary to hold a press conference today to declare that system employees who cheated on state tests will lose their jobs.

“Anyone who cheated or was responsible will not work in front of children in Atlanta again, said Davis, flanked by the majority of the APS Board of Education.

According to the AJC:

Board members said they expect immediate action once all the information is available, but board chairman Brenda Muhammad said the board will look ahead, committed to making sure this never, ever happens again.

Although the board has a lot to discuss and has not seen the report yet, Muhammad said it is focused on moving forward. That “doesn’t mean beating up Beverly Hall,” she said.

Gov. Nathan Deal warned Tuesday morning “there will be consequences” for educators who cheated in Atlanta Public Schools.

In a news conference at the state Capitol, Deal said that three district attorneys, interim Superintendent Erroll Davis and the state educator licensing board are receiving full copies of a detailed report submitted by special investigators that lays out a decade of organized, systemic cheating in the Atlanta district.

Deal did not release the report, instead providing the media with a two-page summary.  He said the report names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed. The investigators said they confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 Atlanta schools they examined.

“The report’s findings are troubling, but I am encouraged this investigation will bring closure to problems that existed in the Atlanta public schools,” Deal said. “I am confident that brighter days lie ahead.”

Deal cut questions from the media off after 10 minutes and would not allow the two special investigators present, former Attorney General Mike Bowers and former DeKalb County District Attorney Bob Wilson, to answer any questions.

Deal said the state Attorney General’s office is considering whether Deal’s office should release the full report.

Deal said he could not discuss any district employees the report accuses of wrongdoing or talk about what criminal charges might apply. Asked whether former Superintendent Beverly Hall, who stepped down at the end of her contract Thursday, should be penalized, he said “that is not a determination for me to make.”

“What do you do?” Joyce inquired. I told him about Shakespeare and Company. The name, and mine too, seemed to amuse him, and a charming smile came to his lips. (From Shakespeare Company, by Sylvia Beach)

James Joyce and Sylvia Beach both liked to play with words. The name of her Paris bookstore, like T.S. Eliot’s “Shakespeherian Rag,” threw together the erudite and the everyday, bringing the bard down an affectionate peg or two (“my associate, Bill Shakespeare,” she calls him in one of her letters). Another of her coinages was “Bloomsday,” the spritely phrase she invented to commemorate June 16, 1904. It was the date on which James Joyce first stepped out with Nora Barnacle, and also, of course, the date on which Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus stepped out in the pages of Ulysses (1922).

Joyce’s Irish epic, published just in time for his fortieth birthday, had Parisian roots as well as Dublin ones. “After years of wandering,” Beach told the Radiophonique Institut in 1927, Joyce “had come to France to finish his book, ULYSSES.” Paris was the spiritual home of the Irish artist in exile. Oscar Wilde, who died here in 1900, had established the standard. And Joyce, though not so direct a victim of the English courts, was a victim of English censorship, and sometimes he liked to adopt the Wildean pose. “‘Melancholy Jesus,’ Adrienne and I used to call him,” says Beach, and on his first visit to Shakespeare and Company, “he inspected my two photographs of Oscar Wilde.” In Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus declares that Wildean paradox could no longer sustain Irish art, but the image of the suffering Wilde held its fascination for Joyce.

Wilde had been eviscerated in London, but it was at home in Dublin that Joyce sustained the emotional wounds that drove his art. Occasionally these were renewed by new barbs. The contrarian G.B. Shaw, elder statesman of Irish letters, responded to Beach’s invitation to buy a copy of Ulysses with a flamboyant refusal. He detailed—in gleeful prose—the sordidness of the book, and suggested to Beach that she misunderstood what kind of novels the Irish reading public would pay for. But while Shaw counted on Dublin to be philistine, in Paris, as in Zurich and Trieste, Joyce found a home he could write in. “Mr. Joyce…has many friends in Paris,” Beach wrote to Harriet Weaver in 1922: “The French writers…have received him with open arms and have the greatest admiration for him.” A 1924 article noted that the author of Dubliners and Portrait was a local celebrity whose draw was more than literary: “Mr. Joyce, with his strikingly good-looking face,” confessed Morrill Cody, “has indeed attracted many people to the shop.”

At today’s Shakespeare and Company on the rue de Bûcherie, the attraction seems no less great, as crowds gather throughout the year to explore the shop’s many nooks, rub elbows with fellow travelers, and perhaps leave with a copy of Joyce’s Ulysses or Beach’s memoirs. This year, Bloomsday celebrants who find themselves in Paris can see David Norris, the Irish politician, activist, and scholar, performing his one-man Joyce show at the Centre Culturel Irlandais. And if they’re near the Arc de Triomphe, they can stop by the James Joyce Pub for a pint of Guinness served up by an Irish staff against the backdrop of a dozen stained-glass windows narrating the plot of Ulysses.

So what shall we do on this Bloomsday in Paris? It is early afternoon on June 16. Let us turn off the Boulevard Edgar Quinet, into the Montparnasse cemetery. There we will find one of Joyce’s most faithful followers, and one who drew his own artistic lessons from the fluidity of Joyce’s prose. His plays turned modernist speech into modernist silence. In the 1930s, Samuel Beckett was Joyce’s most willing and talented pupil. He wrote one of the first critical reflections on Finnegans Wake, and it appeared in a volume published by Shakespeare and Company, “Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress.” Though he shared Joyce’s artistic integrity and Wilde’s knack for turning Irish stage comedy to fresh purposes, Beckett stuck out like a sore thumb among the Irish Parisians. He lacked the personal charms of Joyce and Wilde, and he was immune to the aesthetic temptations of Roman Catholicism—even a decadent, blasphemous, worldly Catholicism of the imagination, like Wilde’s or Joyce’s.

As we venture inside the cemetery walls, pausing to take a map from the porter, we find ourselves in a museum of modernist Paris: the ornate stained-glass temple that houses the famed tragic actor Mounet-Sully; the elegant, intellectual, eminently respectable tomb shared by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beavoir; Baudelaire’s resting-place strewn with fresh roses and letters from admirers; Serge Gainsbourg’s monument covered in the pop ephemera of photographs, cigarette lighters and metro tickets. With all these shrines to personality, one wonders what Beckett’s place in eternity will look like— austere or absurd? Does it, like Wilde’s Art Deco tomb in nearby Père Lachaise, do him poetic justice? Will it be strewn with turnips or carrots, leashes, tattered bootlaces? Perhaps the vaudeville spirit of his best-known plays will be honored, and atop the bones of Samuel and Suzanne Beckett we’ll find the marble forms of two quizzical tramps in trash cans, a final visual one-liner.

Beckett’s grave can be picked out as soon as it comes into view, not by its wit, but by its plainness. Though he may have indulged his characters with humor, for himself there was only an iconoclastic anti-regard. His tomb is a slab without adornment, formed of the most generic grey granite, with just one word— “BECKETT”—carved in chilly capitals on the edge. It declares the Protestant sensibility that made Beckett a different kind of Irishman in Paris, the sort who certainly didn’t expect any pleasure and rebuffed the adulation that later came his way. This austerity was his moral force, the temperament that served him so heroically as a member of the French Resistance. His aversion to the myths, cults, and romances of the Celtic twilight, more uncompromising even than Joyce’s, his refusal not just of the Christian imagination, but of the imagination in general, is shocking in this romantic and consolatory graveyard.

Yeats’s headstone in Drumcliff may counsel a similar stoic restraint, but it gives lyrical expression to the sentiment in the poet’s verse:

Cast a cold Eye On Life, on Death, Horseman, pass by!”

Joyce’s grave in Zurich, surrounded by lush green grass, has all the living charm we could hope for. First, there is the capitulation to death—a regular plot in the ground for Joyce and his family—and then, at a slight remove, a statue of the artist seated, a book in hand and his cane at his side, contemplating matters from a distance, just as though on a walk through the park. But Beckett’s tomb has no adornment at all: no images, no epigraphs, no height, no texture, merely names and dates. No devotee has left behind a tribute on its forbidding surface. Beckett’s silence still echoes through Montparnasse. But on Bloomsday, just as we revel in Joyce, it is also good to pause and consider the influence he meted, and the service he was rendered, by this plainer servant of Irish letters.