Blind And Deaf Student Left On Bus Alone For 6 Hours

I saw a little bit about this on the news last night and couldn't believe it. A bus driver for a special needs school in my county (Monroe) forgot all about a blind and deaf 20 year old student with the mental capacity of a 3 year old that rode the bus and left her sitting alone for around 6 hours.

Handicapped girl left on bus for hours

By LINDA L. HULL, Times Leader Staff Writer

THE MOTHER of a Monroe County handicapped student who was left on a school bus for more than six hours wants some changes made in school policy and she’d like to see some remorse from the bus driver.

Paula Jo Prince was called by the superintendent of the Monroe County Achievement Center who informed her that Dina, her mentally and physically handicapped foster daughter, was found on a school bus sitting in her seat apparently for an entire day.

Prince said her Dina got on the school bus for Monroe Achievement Center like any normal day. But the blind and deaf 20-year-old reportedly with the mental capacity of a 3-year-old, spent six hours sitting in front of the bus driver’s home.

Dina had a feeding tube removed several years ago, because she had begun to drink from a cup.

Prince said, “She has to drink something every two hours and she is incontinent. This means she had nothing to drink and she had to sit in a cold wet diaper all day.”

Prince added with a tearful voice, “I just hope she doesn’t think I abandoned her, I don’t know what she is thinking. I put her in a warm bath when she got here to warm her up, but she stayed in her room all night except for when I went and held her.”

When questioned as to what she thought Dina was doing in the bus all day, Prince said, “I have talked and talked to Dina in the hopes that she could hear something I was saying. I’ve told her that if we are in a vehicle we stay there, we don’t move around and we don’t go outside, until we get help. I think she just waited for help.”

Prince noted that when Dina was tested for her capabilities, the doctors found that she may be able to see shadows but the testing for her hearing can only be done when she is sedated and the brain stem is stimulated.

Dina came to Paula and her husband, Michael, as a foster child at the age of three weeks. Prince said, “She wasn’t expected to live for two years at that time. She certainly wasn’t expected to walk or sit up, but we worked with her.”

They are also raising a granddaughter that they took in when she was two-weeks-old. She is now a Monroe Central cheerleader at her high school at the age of 14.

Sadly, Prince is now raising these girls on her own since in February 2006, her husband Michael was confined to a nursing facility because of illness.

Prince said she was told by the superintendent that the driver of the bus didn’t realize Dina was still on the bus and it was not until she returned to take the students home that she noticed that Dina was still there.

The superintendent of schools said the incident was an error she will not allow in the future.

However, while Prince is grateful that Dina is OK, she said a lot more has to be done than just having the bus driver quit her job. Prince said, “I don’t want this to happen to any other children. I see no reason for the bus drivers to take home the buses. If this bus had been left at school, someone would probably have seen Dina.

She said she will not allow her daughter to ride the bus anymore and hopes the prosecutor will file charges against the school.

School officials said the bus driver resigned from her position and is sorry for making the mistake.

Prince said she is extremely upset that the bus driver hasn’t even called to check on Dina or apologize to her.

Calls by The Times Leader to the Monroe County Achievement Center and Superintendent Helen Ring were not returned.

Source: The Times Leader

Tags: health, controversy, local, ohio

Army Regrets Soldiers Have But One Life To Give

Talk about insensitive, the Army recently sent out letter addressed to around 75 soldiers that were killed in action asking them to consider reenlistment. This is worse than the "flat daddies".

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

"Army personnel officials are contacting those officers' families now to personally apologize for erroneously sending the letters," the Army said in a brief news release issued Friday night.

Source: Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch - CNN.com

And The Investigations Haven't Even Started Yet

MSNBC is reporting that the White House and the Secret Service made a secret pact to keep the White House visitor logs private during the whole Abramoff debacle.

WASHINGTON - The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn’t reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall. The White House is using it to deal with a legal problem on a separate front, a ruling by a federal judge ordering the production of Secret Service logs identifying visitors to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In a federal appeals court filing three weeks ago, the administration’s lawyers used the memo in a legal argument aimed at overturning the judge’s ruling. The Washington Post is suing for access to the Secret Service logs.

The article goes on to point out how visitor logs were used to track Lewinsky's visits during the Clinton years.

Source: White House pact hid visits amid scandal - Politics - MSNBC.com

OEA Calls For No Child Left Behind To Be Fixed

From the "if your going to pass it you have to fund it" category comes this release from the Ohio Education Association about the No Child Left Behind Act.

For Immediate Release January 5, 2007
Contact: Michele Prater 614-227-3071; cell 614-378-0469

OEA: It’s Time to Keep the Promise of No Child Left Behind

Columbus – On January 8, 2002 President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) with great fanfare, promising to use it to improve public education. Five years later, the federal government has failed to keep its commitments to adequately fund NCLB’s requirements or properly manage its effects on public education, according to the Ohio Education Association.

The OEA strongly supports the stated goals of NCLB: improving student achievement and closing student achievement gaps that persist among rich and poor, ethnic and minority groups and among school districts that have huge variations in resources.

The OEA is a strong advocate of the National Education Association’s Positive Agenda for improving the NCLB Act and addressing its flaws. This Positive Agenda sets clear priorities with specific ways to improve NCLB:

• Achieve flexible, meaningful and research-based accountability systems, designed to improve student learning;
• Promote smaller class sizes to enhance learning and instructional effectiveness, along with the resources to provide these smaller classes;
• Provide quality educators and excellent teaching in every classroom by providing teachers with the resources and technical assistance they need for effective professional development;
• Actively engage parents, families and communities in supporting students, teachers and learning;
• Replace punitive NCLB mandates with positive reforms and support.

“As Congress considers NCLB reauthorization, the voices of Ohio’s educators must be heard. We must improve the law and provide all of our children with the opportunity to receive a high quality public education,” said OEA President Gary L. Allen. “The future of our children is riding on the promises of NCLB. It is time to fulfill those commitments.”

Further information about ESEA/NCLB and reforms needed to make the legislation more successful are available on the NEA web site at www.nea.org/esea.

You can find the OEA's original release by going to this page and following the link at the bottom to download a PDF file. To open it you may have to rename the file and remove the strange symbols where the apostrophe was.

Update Your Bookmarks

I recently purchased the domain name leftofohio.com and set it to direct to the blogspot URL provided by the Blogger service. Today Blogger announced that they would allow users to apply a domain that they owned to a Blogger hosted blog.

Anyway I decided to try it and I think I've got all the kinks worked out. While leftohio.blogspot.com is supposed to redirect here the new address is leftofohio.com.

If some internal links aren't working they should be fixed sometime within the next 48 hours as the changes are applied throughout various domain name servers. As with anything new I also expect the program will have a few early bugs as well.

Pat Robertson: Spreading Fear And Hate In The Name Of God

God Nazi Pat Robertson is back at it again. Apparently while having a conversation with God Robertson was told to send more troops to Iraq (sorry, wrong idiot) warn everyone about a coming terror attack.

VIRGINIA BEACH, Virginia (AP) -- Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September.

Thanks for the heads up God, I guess I'll just spend September through December cooped up in the basement with a Bible and mail all my worldly possessions to you care of Mr. Robertson.

Source: Pat Robertson: God told me of 'mass killing' in 2007 - CNN.com

So Much For That Whole Liberal Media Thing

CNN decided to start the year off with a bang. On "Situation Room" last night a graphic was shown of several Arab men sitting around with the text "Where's Obama?" over it. CNN apologized over the incident, claiming it was a typo. Just in case you aren't familiar with the layout of a keyboard like the one probably sitting right in front of you I've made the following rough diagram.

QWERTYUIOP[]\
ASDFGHJKL;'
ZXCVBNM,./

Quite a leap from S to B, isn't it? I'll give CNN the benefit of the doubt however as it seems that I can never manage to type the right channel number for them on the remote and end up watching MSNBC. Imagine that?

A Sad Way To End A Year

Today it was confirmed that we've lost 3,000 soldiers in Iraq. Here some text from Dustin Donica's (the 3,000th casualty) Myspace profile.

About me:

hey, people call me dd. i'm not convinced that i can fully sum myself up in this block of text but i'll give it a try for you people that believe that i can. i'm 22 years old. i am stationed at ft richardson, ak. the army finds it prudent to condition me to the cold in preparation for my iraq tour. soccer has been my childhood pastime and my 15 minutes in the limelight. i always travel as part of a pack whenever i go out. i listen to rock and vocal trance. i don't rave, i like the music. if you can write text in regular english without abbreviating half the words in your sentence then you are ahead of 95% of the populace in my books. if you are a female and you see somebody you like in my friend list feel free to message them. they won't mind. oh, and if you are a ninja please turn away now, cause pirates rule you.

Who I'd like to meet:

peter griffin, ed norton, brad pitt, rusty shackleford

Source: www.myspace.com/doubled03 via ABC News.

Something Good About The President

In the "forgive and forget" spirit that comes with the New Years Holiday I've found something I like about President Bush. It seems that he's managed to triple the amount of U.S. aid going to Africa even with all of his tax cuts.

President Bush's legacy is sure to be defined by his wielding of U.S. military power in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there is another, much softer and less-noticed effort by his administration in foreign affairs: a dramatic increase in U.S. aid to Africa.

The president has tripled direct humanitarian and development aid to the world's most impoverished continent since taking office and recently vowed to double that increased amount by 2010 -- to nearly $9 billion.

Will it help polish his legacy? Only to Bono.

Source: WP: Bush has tripled aid to Africa - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

New Years Resolutions

It's that time of year again, the day when everyone makes a bunch of promises to themselves that they have no intention of keeping. I've never been much of a resolution maker, in fact the only resolution I remember making was for Ohio model United Nations when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. (It was about fixing the hole in the ozone layer over Australia. Good thing none of the hundreds of people attending realized that Australia didn't have a hole in the Ozone layer over it.) This year I decided to go ahead and give it a try.

This year I will...

• Buy a Congressman.
• Send Bob Ney a cake with a blank ballot hidden in it. Scratch that, I'll just send him some "freedom fries" instead.
• Find John McCain's illegitimate black child and buy him/her an ice cream cone.
• Invest in a company making political bobble head dolls (or maybe I'll just put some money in rare coins).
• Save up enough money to buy a full tank of gas.
• "Hack" Joe Lieberman's Senate website.
• Live to see Don Rumsfeld driven from his position in disgrace.

And before I forget...

Happy New Year!