Absenteeism in Massachusetts school districts [+link to your school]

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Across the state, chronic absenteeism is still “staggering,” DESE officials said Tuesday — though some districts have done better than others at keeping kids in class.

Statewide, attendance rates averaged out to 92.5% for the 2022-23. The state saw a moderate improvement in chronic absenteeism — missing at least 10% of school days — from the pandemic peak, moving from 28% to 22% in 2022-23, but is still leagues off of pre-pandemic rates. Compared to 2019, chronic absenteeism is up 72%.

Students missed an average of 13 days of school in the 2022-23 year.

Here’s how a sample of major school districts fared in the 2022-23 school year:

More 2022-23 attendance data is available on: profiles.doe.mass.edu/statereport/attendance.aspx

Feds add charges against Baxter nurse accused of stealing pain meds from hospice clinic

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BAXTER, Minn. — A registered nurse has been indicted for fraudulently obtaining prescription opioid pain medications from a central Minnesota hospice clinic, U.S. Attorney Andrew M. Luger announced last week.

According to court documents, Cambie Elizabeth Broker, 33, of Aitkin, was a registered nurse case manager at a hospice clinic in Baxter. She is accused of entering false prescription requests into the clinic’s e-prescribing software to fraudulently obtain oxycodone, hydromorphone and fentanyl for illegal sale and personal use.

Broker made her initial appearance on the federal indictment on Oct. 18 in U.S. District Court before Magistrate Judge Douglas L. Micko.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Crow Wing County Sheriff’s Office.

Broker also faces six felony charges in Crow Wing County related to the theft of prescription medications. She was charged on Nov. 30, 2022, in Crow Wing County District Court with five counts of felony theft and one count of felony fourth-degree possession of drugs.

According to the complaint filed against Broker in Crow Wing County, on Nov. 28, 2022, the Brainerd Police Department was contacted by the manager of clinical services of the hospice clinic about allegations of an employee stealing prescription medication. A pharmacist contacted the clinic over concerns about several oxycodone prescriptions picked up by Broker and not being delivered to hospice patients.

In its own investigation, the clinic found there were five hospice patients for whom Broker had filled and picked up oxycodone prescriptions. When the hospice manager met with Broker, she admitted she had been stealing and selling the medications, according to the complaint.

A list of prescriptions for the five patients was provided to Brainerd Police and showed that between Oct. 12, 2022, and Nov. 25, 2022, 14 prescriptions totaling 1,824 oxycodone tablets were picked up by Broker and not delivered to the patients.

Broker was arrested on Nov. 28, 2022, after police responded to a driving complaint on Lum Park Road. Officers identified Broker and found a bag containing at least one medication on the passenger seat and several empty oxycodone prescription bottles prescribed to several other patients.

In a statement to police, Broker admitted to stealing numerous prescription medications of oxycodone prescribed to hospice patients, that she had been doing this for about two to three months because she needed the money, and that she was selling them for $25 per tablet, according to the complaint.

Broker’s interim conditions of release on the Crow Wing County charges include remain law-abiding, no alcohol or controlled substance use, submit to chemical testing and have no contact with the victims, among others. Her next hearing in Crow Wing County District Court is scheduled for 11 a.m. Nov. 7.

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Howie Carr: Only cowards rip posters

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Now that she’s been fired from her job as a dentist, the middle-aged Newton woman who was videotaped ripping down posters of Israeli victims in Chestnut Hill can begin an even more lucrative career for herself.

She is about to become… a victim.

Actually she already is.  A local Hamas cheerleading cell has already issued a statement on her behalf to a TV station:

“Zena is being targeted simply because she is an Arab.”

You don’t say. So it has nothing to do with her callously tearing down posters of Israeli children kidnapped by Nazi fiends after the rape and slaughter of 1300 Israelis.

Her former employer, Dr. Marc Nevins of Nevins Dental Center, announced her firing for “actions that are contrary to our community standards and to the basic values of my clinical practice.”

But Doc, don’t you understand that she’s the victim here. I predict a front-page story in state-run media, most likely the Boston Globe, in three… two… one.

This is the traditional m.o. now. Terrorists do something unspeakably horrible to innocent individuals, and the entire story suddenly becomes the supposed overreaction of the victims.

The late comedian Norm Macdonald summed it up perfectly in a sarcastic 2016 tweet:

“What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims.”

Biden and his minions seem more worried about “Islamophobia” than about the Nazi pogroms the Muslims have been conducting in southern Israel.

This woman Zena is apparently a graduate of Boston University, historically Methodist but with a heavy Jewish influence forever. I wonder if she had a scholarship to BU, and who paid for that scholarship.

It seems to be a BU thing, tearing down the KIDNAPPED posters. A younger student was just recorded doing the same thing as the Arab dentist.

The homely coed had a great defense.

“I’m Jewish,” she said.

From what I can see, the fired dentist lives in, of all places, Newton. Odd place to choose as your home if you’re simmering with the kind of hatred she seems consumed by.

I mean, does Zena vote in the local elections in Newton? What does she think she sees all those… Zionist names on the ballot?

You would think that at least a few of these new Americans who are waving the pom-poms for the savage Muslim killers in the Mideast might have picked up stakes and left the Great Satan, put their dinars where their mouths are, so to speak.

Until Donald Trump came along, these bloodthirsty savages had their own unofficial state, under control of a terror cell called ISIS. They referred to their Muslim thugocracy as a “caliphate.” It was run by a genocidal butcher whom the Washington Post respectfully described as “an austere religious scholar.”

I’m sure ISIS could have used a few dentists back when they were trying to murder every non-Sunni in Iraq and Syria. Their capital was in Raqqa, Syria.

Gays were dragged to the tops of Raqqa’s tallest buildings (two, sometimes even three stories) and hurled to their deaths. Local young women from religious minorities (including Shia Muslims) were gang-raped every evening by hundreds of austere religious scholars.

Like Hamas, ISIS enjoyed beheading infidels. Once they burned a Jordanian Air Force pilot alive.

It all seems a very long way from Newton, from The Street in Chestnut Hill, from civilization.

But until you get busted tearing down those posters, you can cheer on the ongoing genocide (and not just of Jews either). And there is never, ever any pushback from the virtue-signaling, spineless heretics.

If anyone ever looks at one of these Nazis cross-eyed while they’re screaming “Gas the Jews!” or “Allahu Akhbar” as they shoot up a gay bar, they just start yelling that it’s all Islamophobia, or something.

Look at the pampered pukes from Harvard, complaining about the “apartheid” regime of Israel. As I’ve said, isn’t “apartheid” just another word for “racism?” And Harvard’s racist admissions policy, recently ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court, is probably the reason most of these protected-class box-checkers were even admitted in the first place.

They certainly don’t seem to be very bright, even by Harvard standards.

Now, though, an alumni group has been trying to raise money for the Nazis of Harvard Square because their racist screeds have exposed the Ivy League Nazis to “severe risks to their immigration status and future career prospects.”

Oh no! You mean they might have to go home to these Third World failed states that they fled to come here and live on the arm in this terrible racist land?

The pitch for the Nazis of Harvard Square continued:

“They may require legal counsel, health care, mental health support, financial aid or mentorship to navigate these turbulent and uncertain times.”

Could I offer them some mentorship? Go home. The job opportunities in Raqqa aren’t what they used to be, but thanks to Biden the Taliban is back in charge in Afghanistan. Have the halftime stonings of gays resumed at the soccer stadium in Kabul?

I hear the Taliban is looking for a few good endodontists.

But you know, endodontist in Kabul not nearly as good a job as being a “victim” in the Great Satan. For one thing, as a victim, you can still live in civilization, with running water, central heating, electricity and, dare I say it, the right not to wear a hajib.

Something tells me that Rena, like all the Nazis of Harvard Square – Fatima, Mohini, Reem et al. – would much prefer to live in this racist, xenophobic, nativist, Islamophobic society than go home and fight Zionist imperialism.

(Order Howie’s new book, “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)

St. Lawrence Seaway strike in Canada shuts down oceangoing traffic on Great Lakes

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DULUTH, Minn. — A strike by unionized workers of Canada’s St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corp. that started Sunday morning has virtually shut down oceangoing shipping traffic on the entire seaway system.

Because the seaway is a linear system of canals and locks through Ontario, New York and Quebec, closure of any portion effectively results in closure of the entire waterway, officials of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority said Monday.

As a result of the strike, multiple ships loaded with exports are presently unable to exit the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System, and a growing line of inbound ships are unable to enter or pass through specific segments.

One vessel presently loading wheat in Duluth is scheduled to deliver its cargo to Algeria upon departure through the now-shuttered seaway, according to officials at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority. Several additional ships are scheduled to arrive in Duluth-Superior via the seaway for grain in the coming weeks. Various other vessels are scheduled to arrive with imports to support regional manufacturing.

Negotiators from the Canadian portion of the seaway management and the union attempted to reach an agreement on a new employment contract for several months. The union gave 72-hour strike notification Wednesday as required under Canadian law.

Negotiations are continuing between the corporation and union with officials urging a speedy settlement.

“This situation affects oceangoing activity for the entire Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway System, which makes it everyone’s concern,” Deb DeLuca, executive director of the Duluth Seaway Port Authority, said in a statement released Monday. “This interruption of Seaway operation has immediate and longer-term consequences for Great Lakes ports, the entire Seaway System, and countries around the world hungry for our exports, especially now, during peak grain harvest season.”

DeLuca said the strike harms the reputation of the entire Great Lakes shipping system.

“Countries that rely on our grain exports are left waiting and hungry. The toll will continue mounting until the system reopens,’’ DeLuca said.

It is reportedly the first strike-related closure of the St. Lawrence Seaway during a shipping season since June 1968. The strike doesn’t impact inter-lake movement of cargo such as taconite iron ore between Minnesota and Great Lakes steel mills.

A recent economic impact analysis of commerce through the seaway showed that, in 2022, the waterway handled more than 36 million tons of cargo and supported more than 24,000 jobs in the United States and 42,000 in Canada. Seaway officials estimate that every day of a mid-season seaway shutdown costs the shared U.S./Canadian economy $50 million to $80 million.

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