Nation

Postal Service Weighs Closing Offices, Cutting Services Ahead of 2020 Election

Published

3 years ago

July 30, 2020

The U.S. Postal Service may be closing a number of offices and cutting services ahead of the 2020 election, according to reports. The mail service is running out of funds as the country positions itself for sweeping mail-in elections in November.

According to MarketWatch, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is positioning USPS “to eliminate overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers, potentially causing a delay in mail deliveries.”

Additionally, The Associated Press recently obtained memos from the Postal Service describing the need for an “operational pivot” to compensate for the losses suffered as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s just asinine to think that you can shut something down or throttle it back in terms of the pandemic when basically the lifeline for voting and democracy is going to be in the hands of the Postal Service,” Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, who has received a number of complaints about USPS cutting offices, told reporters Wednesday, according to MarketWatch.

A USPS spokesperson told MarketWatch that the Postal Service “has experienced over a decade of financial losses, with no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis,” adding that “it is critical that the Postal Service take a fresh look at our operations and make necessary adjustments.”

Manchin, along with his Democratic colleagues in Congress, have expressed grave concerns over the financial cuts. Moreover, they’ve pushed to include extra funding for USPS in the coronavirus financial relief bills.

The bill passed in March allows the Treasury Department to lend $10 billion to the Postal Service.

education

Parents, advocates call on leaders to step down after ZERO children pass math at 13 Baltimore state schools

Published

7 hours ago

September 27, 2023

Sara Carter Staff

How long will leaders who let our children down blame Covid-19 for their failures? Anger swept across Baltimore, Maryland, after not a single student passed their state math exams, and almost 75 percent testing at the lowest possible score.

The Daily Mail reports “The poor performances came in the latest round of Maryland‘s state testing, where 13 high schools in the city – a staggering 40 percent – failed to produce a single student with a ‘proficient’ score in math.” Baltimore City Schools not only received $1.6 billion last year from taxpayers, but the school district also received $799 million in Covid relief funding from the federal government.

“So, it’s not a funding issue. We’re getting plenty of funding,” said Jason Rodriguez, deputy director of Baltimore-based nonprofit People Empowered by the Struggle, to Fox Baltimore. “I don’t think money is the issue. I think accountability is the issue…This is educational homicide, there is no excuse for the failure, which has come after years of warnings over the city’s poor education standards,” added Rodriguez.

A bombshell study published this month by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) found that 16 million students were chronically absent during the pandemic. “The millions of students had missed more than 10 percent of schools days during the 2021-22 year, twice the number seen in previous years. More than eight in 10 public schools also reported stunted behavioral and social-emotional development in their students due to the pandemic, according to a May survey cited in the report.”

However, six years ago a similar report by Project Baltimore found that 13 schools in the city had zero students test ‘proficiently’ in math. An almost identical finding. “We’re still dealing with these same issues year after year,” Rodriguez continued. “It’s just scary to me and alarming to me because we know that what’s happening now, you know, it’s just opening up the floodgates to the school-to-prison pipeline. I’m beyond angry… This is why we’ve been calling for the resignation of the school CEO.”

Daily Mail notes that Rodriguez’s group has previously held rallies over the mounting educational crisis in the city, and in 2021 led calls for Baltimore City Schools CEO Dr. Sonja Santelises to resign over low test scores and falling graduation rates.