Chicago Elementary School Assigned Students A Project About ‘African Animals’ For Black History Month
Parents are speaking out after their children were assigned a project about “African animals” for Black History Month.
Three white kindergarten teachers at Sutherland Elementary, a neighborhood Chicago Public School rooted in Beverly, Illinois, thought of a bizarre Black History Month assignment and sent children home with a note that read, “We are celebrating African American History Month in various ways at Sutherland this month. Since our students have a genuine interest in animals and love to learn about them, we are going to take a closer look at African animals.”
According to the Chicago Sun Times, Valeisha Manning, whose 5-year-old attends the school, said, “You’re supposed to be learning about someone’s history and how they provided some type of ongoing fight for equality. Monkeys didn’t help us do that. Giraffes? Elephants? Zebras?
Manning, who is Black, also said, “It’s ignorant and racially insensitive. I do not believe that whomever put this together sat back and said, ‘Okay, let’s subliminally call these people monkeys or animals.’ I just think they were very careless.”
The Chicago Sun Times reports, “dozens” of parents complained on social media.
Principal Margaret Burns, who is white, apologized for the “insensitive and inappropriate” project. She claimed she hadn’t seen the assignment and it has now been canceled. She also sent out a letter that read in part, “We apologize for any concerns or offense this may have brought to our parents and assure our families that administration will be working closely with our team to ensure that our future assignments are reflective of our principles of equity and our commitment to our diverse and inclusive community.”
CBS reported, “CPS (Chicago Public Schools) has not said if the teachers who came up with the assignment have been reprimanded or face disciplinary actions.
That said, the school district has a larger issue of diversity. The students in the school district are 36% Black, 47% Latino, 4% Asian and 11% white. However, 50% of the teachers are white and only 21% are Black.
These are the victims of the far-right mass shooting in Germany, including a pregnant mother, and 22-year-old who just finished studying
A shooting in Hanau, Germany on Wednesday night has left 10 people dead and five wounded, according to local police.
The attacker, Tobias Rathjen, left behind a racist manifesto, in which he called for the extermination of nonwhites and identified as an incel.
All of the victims were from immigrant backgrounds and some were German citizens, local media reports.
One victim was the attacker's mother, whom he shot in their home before killing himself.
These are the people who lost their lives, including a pregnant mother of two, and a waiter who was engaged to be married.
Studying Abroad: China State-Owned Enterprises
Investing is rooted in quantitative analysis, but the ultimate decision to buy or sell is often overruled by intuition.
The latter situation may cause investors' portfolios to reflect a home bias - their portfolios lack global diversity and are concentrated in securities listed in their own country.
Perhaps there is some validity to this common behavioral tendency. Investing internationally can add a layer of complexity, especially when corporate governance and political influence are concerns.
Naturally, many investors default to "beta" products that offer total market exposure for their foreign equity allocations.
But intuition tells us extra discretion may be needed when investing abroad.
Illustration by Example: China State-Owned Enterprises
China's equity market has become more accessible to nondomestic investors over the last decade. The nation's Stock Connect program, which opened stocks listed in mainland China (A-shares) to offshore investors, and MSCI's decision to include a greater proportion of A-shares in its Emerging Markets benchmark are key developments that have helped buoy China's equity market to rank second largest globally, behind the United States'.1
Despite these advancements, 2019 returns for the broad Chinese equity market did little to incentivize investors to diversify outside of the U.S. Chinese equities, as measured by the MSCI China Index (MXCN), returned 23.46% while the MSCI USA Index returned 30.88% - a 7.42% performance differential.2
For investors still searching for a compelling reason to diversify, there is a Chinese equity market exposure that significantly outperformed both the broad Chinese and U.S. benchmarks in 2019 - the WisdomTree China ex-State-Owned Enterprises Fund (NASDAQ:CXSE) returned 36.44% in 2019.3
Our intuition about political influence in foreign markets can help explain CXSE's outperformance.
CXSE invests in non-state-owned companies (non-SOEs), defined as companies with less than 20% government ownership.
State-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been a meaningful headwind on MXCN's returns in, and before, 2019:
Measurable results help validate the instinct that government ownership could negatively impact returns, but we are still left questioning "How?"
SOEs are more heavily concentrated in "old economy" sectors like Financials and Energy, while non-SOE companies tend to be driven by "new economy" consumer trends in the Information Technology and Consumer Discretionary sectors.
Our sense is China's evolution into a more consumer-centric economy would result in faster revenue and pretax operating earnings growth for SOEs versus non-SOEs. Taking a step further, given that CXSE filters out exposure to SOEs, we would expect the weighted average revenue growth of the companies currently held in CXSE to be greater than that of MXCN.
The results in the figure below confirm our assumptions - the current constituents of CXSE have consistently generated stronger weighted average revenue and operating income growth than those currently held in MXCN.
KDOT studying possibility of toll lanes on US 69 in Overland Park to ease traffic jams
Relief from traffic congestion along a nearly six-mile stretch of US 69 in Overland Park could come sooner than later - if - new traffic lanes were tolled.
"We know that corridor continues to see growth and traffic, I think the congestion is going to worsen," says Lindsey Douglas, deputy secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation.
So the question for those who drive that stretch of US 69 between 119th and 159th Streets - is not if... but when.
Douglas says an express toll lane could be built sooner than a regular road project, because the costs would be shared by the state and by drivers.
"Because of limited resources we're going to have to partner with communities in this next transportation program to meet as many needs as possible," said Douglas. "And tolling is one tool."
The concept of building toll express lanes along US 69 is being looked at right now. A phase one study is being conducted by KDOT to determine if the project is even doable.
That study is expected to be completed and presented to the Overland Park city council in mid-March, says Douglas.
If the OPKS council wants to move forward, KDOT will then conduct a phase-two detailed feasibility study. It's a deeper dive, Douglas says, into the size and cost of the project, and will include public input.
If the idea takes hold and moves forward, Douglas says this is how it could work:
Two new lanes would be built, one in each direction, and those, and only those lanes, would be the toll lanes. In Kansas, only new road construction can be tolled. Existing roadways must remain 'free'.
There would be no toll booths and no stopping for those who use the toll express lane.
Tolls would be collected electronically, as drivers move at highway speed, by readers hanging over the lane and reading a transponder tag installed in a vehicle. Like the K-Tag used on the Kansas Turnpike.
If a driver didn't want to pay a toll to use the express lane, they could stay in the regular lanes of traffic.
And the amount of the toll would vary depending on how many were using it. Similar to surge pricing with a ride-sharing app. Less traffic, the toll would be less. More traffic, and using the toll express lane would cost more.
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