Word: palo
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...enforcement agencies are in a quandary over what to do about clubs like Peron's. A few cities, such as Concord and Palo Alto, have instituted moratoriums on pot clubs. California attorney general Dan Lungren, a law-and-order Republican, is pursuing civil and criminal litigation against Peron's club; he says undercover cops have bought marijuana there without a doctor's recommendation and that videotapes have shown minors on the premises...
...competing claims of white vs. African-American students: Who should be bused where? Or, how many dead white males should crowd the curriculum? But the newest racial flash point in schools in many parts of the U.S. pits Hispanic parents against African-American ones. The disputes like East Palo Alto's arise in part from frustration over how to spend the dwindling pot of cash in low-income districts. But they also reflect a jostling for power, as blacks who labored hard to earn a place in central offices, on school boards and in classrooms confront a Latino population eager...
...East Palo Alto blacks made up 85% of the student population a decade ago; today almost 70% of the 5,000 students are Latino. But while the composition of the schools has changed, the composition of the people who run them has not. A black woman, Charlie Mae Knight, has served as superintendent for the past 11 years; the five-person school board has just one Hispanic member; and only one of the district's school principals is Latino. Says David Giles, a lawyer who represents East Palo Alto's Latino parents in their battles with the district: "African Americans...
Invariably, the issue that drives Hispanic parents into local school politics is bilingual education. In East Palo Alto Latino parents filed a complaint with the state earlier this year demanding that the school district provide English-deficient kids with general instruction in Spanish along with daily English lessons. Says parent Sergio Sanchez: "[The administration] always says yes, yes; they promise to do things, but they never change. We need a new face in there." Many of the city's blacks, for their part, don't see the value--and resent the cost--of bilingual education. "If they want to learn...
Bilingualism isn't the only point of conflict. Hispanics in East Palo Alto are using their increasing clout to protest what they say is the schools' overall mediocre performance and the inefficiency of its bureaucracy, as well as alleged instances of cronyism and graft. Parents like Sanchez accuse Knight of stirring up racial resentments among blacks to deflect criticism about her administration. Knight dismisses her critics, saying, "Whenever whites are in charge of Latinos, they don't get the same kind of push that a black superintendent does. People...tend to distrust those who look more like them...