Super Tuesday results are in and the winner is... Can a teacher be fired for being a former porn actor? Obesity epidemic may not be related to supermarket scarcity. Billy Childs’ impressionistic approach to jazz.
Super Tuesday results are in and the winner is...
Last night’s primary and caucus elections in 10 states didn’t clear up who would be the Republican nominee for president so much as keep the waters just as muddy as they have been.
Mitt Romney took home the win in 6 states including his home state of Massachusetts, Virginia and Vermont, adding a couple of hundred to his delegate lead. Rick Santorum may not have won in as many states but he took home some southern biggies in Oklahoma, Tennessee. Santorum also gave Romney a run for his money in Ohio, a state that wasn’t called until early this morning with Romney winning by just one percentage point.
So was Romney really the big winner last night? Or do Santorum’s wins give him enough momentum to get to the conventions? Gingrich and Ron Paul show no signs of dropping out, what will their role be in upcoming contests? And, does a longer nominating process help or hurt the eventual candidate in the national election?
Guests:
Karen Kasler, Columbus Bureau Chief, Ohio Public Radio
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Senior Fellow, School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California and the political analyst for KNBC, Los Angeles.
Dan Schnur, Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and adjunct faculty at USC Annenberg School
Can a teacher be fired for being a former porn actor?
A middle school teacher has been put on administrative leave by the Oxnard School District, following accusations that she appeared in at least one pornographic film. The teacher’s name hasn’t yet been released, but Oxnard School District Superintendant Jeff Chancer has confirmed that officials are investigating the allegations.
Students from Richard B. Haydock Intermediate School approached administrators last week, saying they’d seen the science teacher in an X-rated movie. Initially the district said the students’ claims were only rumor, but they were subsequently verified. Superintendent Chancer showed the video to the district’s lawyers and the teacher was put on paid leave.
So far, she hasn’t been terminated. But should she be?
Chancer acknowledged that her past behavior outside the classroom isn’t a crime as far as the penal code goes. But added, “…it’s a crime as far as moral turpitude is concerned.” The school sent a letter on March 6 explaining the situation to parents and assuring them that “These allegations do not involve any Oxnard School District students.”
So, what kind of latitude do school districts have in firing employees for conduct that takes place outside the classroom? How does state education code define moral turpitude? If a teacher is good in the classroom but has a racy past, should he or she be fired or accepted?
Guest:
Michele Goldsmith, Partner with the law firm Bergman, Dacey, Goldsmith (BDG); specializes in labor and employment law including teacher dismissal actions
Obesity epidemic may not be related to supermarket scarcity
A new study from the Rand Corporation is calling into question something many of us accepted as true: When children live in neighborhoods with too much fast food and too few grocery stores, obesity rates rise. Increase access to healthy foods, and obesity rates will decrease.
However, the conventional wisdom may be wrong. Roland Sturm of Rand examined data from over 13,000 California children between the ages of 5 and 17 years old. What he found was that children who live in neighborhoods that are dense with fast food and small food stores are not necessarily heavier than children that live closer to large supermarkets.
This is similar in some ways to other recent findings, including a study from the University of North Carolina that found that just living near grocery stores and the healthy fare they provide doesn’t result in lower levels of obesity. But in that study proximity to fast food was found to be a corollary to obesity.
The relationship between obesity and lack of access to good food seemed obvious, not just to researchers but to policy makers as well. Here in southern California it was used to pass legislation limiting the number of fast food restaurants that could be built in poorer areas and incentivize grocery chains to build there instead. But, according to Sturm of the Rand Corporation there is no relationship between the food environment a child lives or goes to school in and the food they eat.
Is this the last word on the subject? Is what we thought knew about obesity rates and food access really wrong? If it is, what impact will that have on policy makers? And, if access to grocery stores isn’t the answer to our obesity problem…what is?
Guests:
Roland Sturm, Senior Economist, The RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School
Dr. Jonathan Fielding, Director of Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and County Health Officer
Billy Childs’ impressionistic approach to jazz
In his latest recording, "Autumn: In Moving Pictures," jazz composer/pianist Billy Childs says he hoped to capture “the movement of autumn — wind blowing leaves as they spiral through the air, the drumming of the rain as it hits the brown earth, the stillness of a lonely red wheelbarrow.”
This impressionistic quality, translated to music, might very well be one definition of jazz; Childs writes that he hopes “to create a world of autumn as my mind sees and remembers it…different from yours; the world you’d create, in your mind, from listening to this music would look different from what is in my mind.”
This Sunday, Childs will create those worlds onstage at Disney Concert Hall, in performance with San Francisco-based string quartet Kronos. Los Angeles native Childs began playing piano at age six, and started his professional career as a teenager. He graduated from USC and spent six years playing with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. Childs cites both jazz and classical composers as influences: Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Maurice Ravel and Igor Stravinsky among them.
He has released over a dozen albums, both as a solo artist and with his own Jazz-Chamber Ensemble, which merges jazz and classical elements and instrumentation. He has received numerous Grammy Awards and has had works commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Los Angeles Master Chorale, among others. Childs joins Larry Mantle to discuss his amazing career and collaborations and his upcoming Disney Hall performance.
Guest:
Billy Childs, Grammy-winning jazz pianist, composer and arranger
Billy Childs Quartet, Kronos Quartet and Bill Frisell’s Beautiful Dreamers perform at Disney Concert Hall this Sunday, March 11th, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets available here.