LAKEPORT
Library speaker to address living with low vision August 22
Bob Sonnenburg, CEO of Earle Baum Center for the Blind (EBC), a Santa Rosa based nonprofit, will speak at the Lake County Library’s free low-vision support group at Lakeport Library 1425 N. High St. on August 22 at 10:30 a.m. Sonnenberg and his guide dog Langley will provide a practical, light-hearted, and insightful look into technologies and tips to live life with low vision to the fullest. The event is open to the public.
Patricia Jefferson, EBC vision rehabilitation instructor, conducts the library’s free low-vision support on the fourth Thursday of each month. Lakeport Library offers its low-vision group a hands-on opportunity to see and experience products and low vision aids including hand held and electronic magnification devices. Group members experience assistive technology devices that improve communication and access to iPhones, iPads, tablets, and iPods, as well as personal assistant and voice-over screen readers and GPS. Independent living skills are presented including adaptive skills for cooking and household management techniques which help people remain independent and at home. The low-vision support group has space available to welcome new members.
Earl Baum Center serves people with sight loss and people who are blind in Sonoma, Lake, Mendocino, and Napa counties by improving their personal, social, and economic lives. EBC has provided opportunities and equity to more than 7200 people living with sight loss to help transform their daily activities. On September 21, EBC celebrates its 20th anniversary with a free, community open house from 10 am to 3 p.m. For more information about EBC visit https://earlebaum.org.
The Lake County Library is on the internet at http://library.lakecountyca.gov and Facebook at Facebook.com/LakeCountyLibrary.
—Submitted
SACRAMENTO
The forever prison lawsuit
The suicide rate in California prisons is rising, while the vacancy rate for psychiatrists in the prison system sits at 30%.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has been battling a federal class-action lawsuit over psychiatric care in prisons since 1990.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kimberly Jo Mueller of Sacramento, presiding over that case, cited the vacancy rate and a delay in state spending to add new beds for mentally ill inmates, writing that “essential remedial measures cannot continue to be delayed unnecessarily or indefinitely.”
Attorney Michael W. Bien, representing inmates in the case, provided numbers:
- In 2016, the suicide rate in the state prison system was 21.8 per 100,000 inmates.
- In 2018, the rate was 26.3.
- So far in 2019, it’s 24.6 per 100,000.
Bien: “We are ending up with more acutely ill people in prison. It is a bad place for them to be. They get sicker, and suicides are up.”
What’s next: A hearing is set for next month on the case, Ralph Coleman, et. al., vs Gavin Newsom. When it started, the case name was Coleman vs. Pete Wilson.
—CALMatters
A pause in ethnic studies plan
California education officials are willing to delay an ethnic studies plan that elicited thousands of comments and complaints, many of them that it leaned too far left and was anti-Semitic, CalMatters’ Elizabeth Castillo reports.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, appearing at a press conference Wednesday with members of the Jewish legislative caucus, said:
“Ethnic studies is to really give those who have historically been minorities a chance to have their history reflected. We have to find a way to have a broader conversation about what will be included.”
California Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s appointee, wrote that the proposal failed to meet the goal of being “accurate, free of bias, appropriate for all learners in our diverse state, and align with Governor Newsom’s vision of a California for all.”
California’s Department of Education has been working on an ethnic studies model curriculum as required by 2016 legislation. The comment period ends today. The curriculum is supposed to be in place by March 31, 2020.
Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Santa Barbara Democrat, said the plan needs to incorporate anti-Semitism and referred to her experience growing up in Boston. She faced bigotry and was called a racist name.
Jackson: “We need to teach kindness, we need to teach empathy, we need to teach compassion because children are not born as bigots and so it’s critically important that we get this curriculum right.”
—CALMatters
