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      California School Official Who Embezzled $16.7 Million Gets Nearly 6 Years in Prison

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      Jorge Armando Contreras used his position at a school district in Orange County to fund a luxurious lifestyle, prosecutors said.A former California public school official who embezzled more than $16 million from a school district and used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle was sentenced to nearly six years in prison this week, according to the Justice Department.A federal judge on Thursday sentenced Jorge Armando Contreras, 53, who worked for the Magnolia School District in Orange County, to 70 months and ordered him to pay $16,694,942 in restitution. Mr. Contreras, of Yorba Linda, Calif., had pleaded guilty in March to one count of embezzlement, theft and intentional misapplication of funds from an organization receiving federal funds, the U.S. attorney’s office said. Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said in a statement that “instead of using his job at a public school district to help socioeconomically disadvantaged children,” Mr. Contreras had embezzled millions of dollars in a scheme that fraudulently created for him a life of opulence.He used the money to buy a range of luxurious products like Louis Vuitton bags and $2,000 tequila bottles, according to the Justice Department. About $7.7 million in personal and real property traced to the scheme have been seized, officials said.Mr. Contreras’s lawyer, Ronald D. Hedding, did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Saturday.Court documents show that Mr. Contreras’s embezzling scheme appeared to have begun in 2016 and lasted until July 2023. During that period, he worked as the director and senior director of fiscal services at the school district, which serves students from preschool through sixth grade in Anaheim and Stanton, cities about 25 miles southeast of Los Angeles. About 81 percent of those students classify as socioeconomically disadvantaged, prosecutors said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Saint Ann’s Teacher Charged With Sharing Sexual Images of Students

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      Prosecutors said the teacher, who worked for Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, lured students from four different schools to share explicit images with him via social media.A former teacher at an elite private high school in Brooklyn was charged on Thursday with soliciting sexually explicit images of children, prosecutors said.The teacher, Winston Nguyen, who was arrested in front of students last month, taught math at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn Heights. Between October 2022 and May 2024, Mr. Nguyen pretended at least 11 times to be a teenager and “fellow student” on social media, during which he enticed or tried to entice teenage students to send him “images of nudity and sexual performances,” according to prosecutors at the Brooklyn district attorney’s office.Mr. Nguyen, 37, who lives in Harlem, used two different Snapchat accounts to exchange messages with the children — five girls and one boy, all between the ages of 13 and 15 — prosecutors said. The teenagers attended four private schools in Brooklyn: Saint Ann’s, Poly Prep Country Day School, Berkeley Carroll School and Packer Collegiate Institute.Mr. Nguyen was charged with use of a child in a sexual performance, promoting a sexual performance by a child and disseminating indecent material to a minor, among other charges.Frank Rothman, Mr. Nguyen’s lawyer, said his client turned himself in to prosecutors in Brooklyn on Thursday morning.“We arranged for his surrender with the prosecutors and detectives,” Mr. Rothman said. “He showed up and will be processed like any other defendant.”Eric Gonzalez, the Brooklyn district attorney, said the investigation into Mr. Nguyen had “revealed extremely disturbing conduct,” adding, “the fact that he was a teacher and a trusted figure among students make these allegations even more troubling.”On one occasion, Mr. Nguyen paid a child to send a sexually explicit video to him, according to prosecutors. He also shared explicit photos he had received with other children, prosecutors said.Before he was hired at Saint Ann’s, Mr. Nguyen was charged with grand larceny after he was accused of stealing more than $300,000 from an older couple he was hired to care for, according to news reports.Mr. Nguyen spent about five months in jail before being sentenced to time served, according to news reports.Saint Ann’s did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mr. Nguyen is expected to be arraigned Thursday afternoon. More

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      President of Florida A&M Resigns Amid Donation Controversy

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      Larry Robinson took responsibility for accepting a $237 million gift that is now on hold and under investigation.The president of Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University is stepping down from the top post two months after he acknowledged that he had mishandled a large donation that a donor had promised to the university but has since been put on hold.During commencement festivities in early May, Florida A&M, a historically Black public university in Tallahassee, announced that a business executive was making a donation worth more than $237 million. Questions soon arose over whether the source of the donation had been properly vetted, The Tallahassee Democrat reported.President Larry Robinson did not give a reason for his resignation in his open letter announcing his resignation or in a news release on July 12. But two months earlier, at a board of trustees meeting on May 15, Mr. Robinson took responsibility for “mishandling” the proposed donation and decided to “cease the engagement agreement” with the donor, according to the meeting’s minutes log.“He apologized to all parties involved and acknowledged the missteps in the University’s approach,” the log said.The gift had been promised by a business executive named Gregory Gerami and a family trust. Mr. Gerami was invited to speak in May at commencement, during which the donation was promoted. Photographs show Mr. Gerami, Mr. Robinson and others posing behind a large, ceremonial check for the amount of $237,750,000.But just four days later, Mr. Robinson told the university’s board that he had “received information suggesting the gift was not as it appeared,” according to minutes from the May 15 meeting. Mr. Robinson and Shawnta Friday-Stroud, who at the time was the school’s vice president, then “contacted the donor to cease the engagement agreement.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dear Elites (of Both Parties), the People Will Take It From Here, Thanks

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      I first learned about the opioid crisis three presidential elections ago, in the fall of 2011. I was the domestic policy director for Mitt Romney’s campaign and questions began trickling in from the New Hampshire team: What’s our plan?By then, opioids had been fueling the deadliest drug epidemic in American history for years. I am ashamed to say I did not know what they were. Opioids, as in opium? I looked it up online. Pills of some kind. Tell them it’s a priority, and President Obama isn’t working. That year saw nearly 23,000 deaths from opioid overdoses nationwide.I was no outlier. America’s political class was in the final stages of self-righteous detachment from the economic and social conditions of the nation it ruled. The infamous bitter clinger and “47 percent” comments by Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney captured the atmosphere well: delivered at private fund-raisers in San Francisco in 2008 and Boca Raton in 2012, evincing disdain for the voters who lived in between. The opioid crisis gained more attention in the years after the election, particularly in 2015, with Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s research on deaths of despair.Of course, 2015’s most notable political development was Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launch and subsequent steamrolling of 16 Republican primary opponents committed to party orthodoxy. In the 2016 general election he narrowly defeated the former first lady, senator and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who didn’t need her own views of Americans leaked: In public remarks, she gleefully classified half of the voters who supported Mr. Trump as “deplorables,” as her audience laughed and applauded. That year saw more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses.In a democratic republic such as the United States, where the people elect leaders to govern on their behalf, the ballot box is the primary check on an unresponsive, incompetent or corrupt ruling class — or, as Democrats may be learning, a ruling class that insists on a candidate who voters no longer believe can lead. If those in power come to believe they are the only logical options, the people can always prove them wrong. For a frustrated populace, an anti-establishment outsider’s ability to wreak havoc is a feature rather than a bug. The elevation of such a candidate to high office should provoke immediate soul-searching and radical reform among the highly credentialed leaders across government, law, media, business, academia and so on — collectively, the elites.The response to Mr. Trump’s success, unfortunately, has been the opposite. Seeing him elected once, faced with the reality that he may well win again, most elites have doubled down. We have not failed, the thinking goes; we have been failed, by the American people. In some tellings, grievance-filled Americans simply do not appreciate their prosperity. In others they are incapable of informed judgments, leaving them susceptible to demagoguery and foreign manipulation. Or perhaps they are just too racist to care — never mind that polling consistently suggests that most of Mr. Trump’s supporters are women and minorities, or that polling shows he is attracting far greater Black and Hispanic support than prior Republican leaders.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Florida to Pay Millions to Victims of Abuses at Notorious Reform School

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      A $20 million program will give financial restitution to students who endured abuse and neglect at the hands of the state.The horrors inflicted on hundreds of boys at a notorious reform school in the Florida Panhandle remain excruciating for survivors to recount, all these years later. Forced labor. Brutal floggings. Sexual abuse.For more than 15 years, survivors of the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, who are now old men, have traveled to the State Capitol in Tallahassee to share their deeply painful memories and implore politicians for justice — for themselves and for the dozens of boys who died at the school.In 2017, survivors, many of them Black, received an official apology. On Friday, Florida went further: Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation creating a $20 million program to give financial restitution to the victims who endured abuse and neglect at the hands of the state. Mr. DeSantis signed the bill in private, his office announced late on Friday.The compensation program will allow applications from survivors who were “confined” to the Dozier school between 1940 and 1975 and who suffered from “mental, physical, or sexual abuse perpetrated by school personnel.” Survivors may also apply if they were sent to the Florida School for Boys at Okeechobee, known as the Okeechobee school, which was opened in 1955 to address overcrowding at Dozier.Applications will be due by Dec. 31. Each approved applicant will receive an equal share of the funds and waive the right to seek any further state compensation related to their time at the schools.Florida lawmakers approved the program unanimously this year. Several survivors testified at an emotional State Senate committee hearing in February that appeared to leave some lawmakers at a loss for words.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Culture Wars Came to a California Suburb. A Leader Has Been Ousted.

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      Voters recalled a Southern California school board president after his conservative majority approved policies on critical race theory and transgender issues.From the start, the three conservative board members of the Temecula Valley Unified School District made clear where they stood. On the same night in December 2022 that they were sworn in as a majority, they passed a resolution banning critical race theory from classrooms in their Southern California district.Months later, they abruptly fired the superintendent, saying they believed the district needed someone with new ideas. After that, they passed a rule requiring that parents be notified whenever a student requests to be identified as a different gender at school.The moves were applauded by conservatives, many of them Christian churchgoers who had helped to install the new board members, hoping that Temecula Valley could remain an island of traditional values in a liberal state.But this once rural area, about 60 miles northeast of San Diego, had transformed in recent decades into a diverse bedroom community, and many other families grew frustrated by what they considered to be the unwelcome incursion of national culture wars into their prized public schools.That backlash came to a head this month when voters recalled Joseph Komrosky, a military veteran and community college professor who had been the school board president since that December night. Mr. Komrosky’s ouster was made official on Thursday evening.“People are moving here so they can put their kids in the school district,” said Jeff Pack, whose One Temecula Valley PAC led the recall effort. “They don’t want all this partisan political warfare, this culture war stuff getting in the way.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Debby Lee Cohen, Who Helped Prune Plastic From Schools, Dies at 64

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      Her successful campaign against foam lunch trays in New York City led to similar city and statewide bans — and taught a group of fifth graders how to take on City Hall.As an artist who liked to play with scale, Debby Lee Cohen created monumental pieces, like the giant puppets she designed for Manhattan’s annual Village Halloween Parade, as well as miniatures, like the tiny forest she once made for a work by the interdisciplinary artist and compose Meredith Monk, with whom she often collaborated.A decade and a half ago, she became a plastic activist when she learned the scale of waste in New York City’s public schools.Her daughter Anna, then in second grade at a school in the East Village, had announced that she was boycotting lunch after seeing an exhibition on climate change at the Museum of Natural History that included a diorama of polar bears atop a mountain of what she recognized as her school’s lunch trays. It was then that Ms. Cohen learned that school lunches were served on foam trays — and that the city’s more than 1,800 public schools were using and throwing out at least 800,000 of them daily.Ms. Cohen, an artist, animator, performer, puppeteer and environmental activist whose campaign to eliminate foam trays from New York City’s public schools paved the way for similar bans in the city and state — and who taught students how to advocate for themselves at school and at City Hall — died on April 7 at her home in Manhattan. She was 64.The cause was colon cancer, said her sister, Ellie Cohen.The interdisciplinary artist and composer Meredith Monk, left, and Robert Een wearing costumes designed by Ms. Cohen in a performance of Ms. Monk’s “Facing North.” Ms. Monk and Ms. Cohen collaborated frequently.T. JunichiIn 2009, after her daughter’s school lunch boycott — which she solved in the short term by making her daughter’s lunches herself — Ms. Cohen looked for organizations that were dealing with the tray issue. There were none. But she found like-minded parents who were also working to reduce the staggering amount of plastic waste in their children’s schools, and they banded together to push for citywide action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Jill Biden Hosts Teachers at Awards Dinner, With a Bit of Pomp

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      The first lady commended the winner of the National Teacher of the Year award during an event evoking formal state dinners.The hallmarks of a state dinner were there: lavish floral displays festooning the White House, the first lady arriving in a floor-length sequined gown, and members of Congress and cabinet secretaries mingling with attendees. But the honored guest was not the president of France or the prime minister of Japan.It was Missy Testerman of Rogersville City School in rural Tennessee.Jill Biden, the first lady, kicked off a new format for delivering the National Teacher of the Year award on Thursday by hosting this year’s winner, Ms. Testerman, and dozens of other teachers from across the country at the White House with a ceremony emulating the pomp normally reserved for foreign dignitaries.Dr. Biden, who has kept her day job as an English professor while serving as first lady and has worked to support community colleges from the White House, spoke in support of teachers’ unions in her opening remarks and stressed the need of helping educators after the Covid-19 pandemic.“Tonight we celebrate you because teaching isn’t just a job, it’s a calling,” Dr. Biden said, adding, “To answer this call of service is in itself an act of hope.”Ms. Testerman, an English as a second language teacher who had worked as a first and second grade teacher for 30 years, also spoke, discussing the importance of her profession.“As an English as a second language teacher, my students are all either immigrants to our country, or first-generation Americans having been born to immigrant parents,” Ms. Testerman said. “Hearing the experiences of my students and their families reminds me daily what a privilege it is to be an American and what a privilege it is to attend a public school in this country.”The Council of Chief State School Officers, which oversees the award program, has honored finalists and a winner at the White House nearly every year since 1952, according to the council’s website. Dr. Biden has presided over the award ceremony every year of President Biden’s term. (Mr. Biden, who was returning from a trip to North Carolina, dropped in briefly, reflecting on his days teaching law classes and telling the teachers, “You are the kite strings that lift our national ambitions aloft.”)The evolution of the ceremony this year came complete with floral arrangements incorporating irises — the Tennessee state flower — and classroom-themed décor. The guests dined on a menu including lobster ravioli and honey-poached apple mousse, and were entertained by the U.S. Army Chorus with the Army and Air Force Strings.Miguel A. Cardona, the secretary of education, told attendees that the event was meant to bestow “our teachers with a level of national respect that is long overdue.”In all, 57 teachers, including past winners of the award, attended on Thursday, according to a guest list released by the White House. Apart from the honor, selected teachers are also invited into a yearlong professional development program.Before the event, the White House announced new measures aimed at encouraging higher pay for teachers and highlighted changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s effort to slash student debt, which allows public servants such as teachers to have their federal student loan debt forgiven after 10 years.Dr. Biden, a teacher for over 30 years and a member of the National Education Association, has often waded into education policy, particularly during the transition back to in-person learning as the Covid crisis waned. She also led a push to make community colleges tuition free, though legislation she helped draft did not survive in Congress.Mr. Biden renewed the call for free community college as a policy priority in his budget for next fiscal year, but the proposal has little chance of becoming law with Republicans in control of the House. More