Weather-related automobile crashes involving up to 69 vehicles closed westbound Interstate 10 in the downtown Phoenix area Saturday evening, according to media reports and the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Reports said Arizona Department of Public Safety officers, as well as Phoenix Fire Department units, responded to three major crashes between 16th Street and Seventh Avenue about 6 p.m. There were reports of one serious injury business
Get free instant insurance rates for universal, whole, variable and term life insurance from the nation's leading Insurance companies.
More children are crowding into classrooms in Modesto, Calif. Parents are paying extra to send their kids to full-day kindergarten in Queen Creek, Ariz. And the school buses stopped rolling in one St. Louis area school district.
These are but a few of the unwelcome changes greeting children as they start the school year. Tight fiscal times are forcing school districts to lay off teachers, enlarge class sizes, cut programs and charge for services that were once free.
"School districts are going to be stripped down from what there were a few years ago," said Jack Jennings, head of the Center on Education Policy, an advocacy group. "They are really feeling the economic squeeze."
The national economic downturn has sucked state coffers dry, forcing cuts to school districts and municipalities. The Obama administration’s stimulus package softened the impact, but many districts still found themselves having to downsize.
"Every student is being affected in some way or another," said Dan Domenech, executive director of the America Association of School Administrators.
Teachers are experiencing the brunt of the budget cuts this year, even though Congress last week gave states an additional $10 billion to keep an estimated 140,000 educators and support staff employed.
Still, the number of teachers who won’t have a job this school year could be as high as 135,000, experts said.
While grateful for the federal funds, school officials are not sure they will be able to use it to bring back many teachers this year. Many states have yet to say how they will distribute the money and many districts have already started or set up their class schedules.
Some plan to use it to hire tutors, counselors and non-core classroom educators such as art and music teachers. But others say they may hold onto the money until the next school year, when the last of the stimulus money is set to disappear.
"We’re all looking ahead over the next couple of years and not seeing any respite," said Chris Nicastro, Missouri’s commissioner of education.
More kindergarteners per class
The great wave of layoffs means students will have to share their classrooms — and their teachers’ attention — with more of their peers.
In California, for instance, state education officials have approved 23 requests from local districts to increase their average class sizes beyond the maximum allowed. At least 33 more are scheduled to be reviewed in coming months.
This is quite a change from the previous decade, when the state received no requests.
"It’s rising exponentially," said Judy Pinegar, manager of the waiver office at the California Department of Education.
Facing a $25 million budget gap for this year, Modesto City Schools district officials decided to raise the average class size in kindergarten through third grade to 25 kids, up from 20.
The school district was initially looking to lay off one-third of its teachers, or 500 people personal loan for poor credit. But after educators agreed to give up their raises and some retired, only 50 teachers were not rehired for this school year.
Still, the larger class sizes will have an impact, said Megan Gowans, executive director of the Modesto Teachers Association.
"Students are going to feel that they are getting less one-on-one attention," she said.
Neighboring Sylvan Union School District now has elementary school classes with up to 34 students in them. That’s 12 more than the average size last year. The elementary schools now only have one librarian and no dedicated art teachers, when there used to be four of each. In all, there are 19 fewer educators on staff, said Superintendent John Halverson.
The district has gone so far to combine several grades, teaching kindergarten and first graders and first and second graders together for the first time in recent memory.
These moves allow school officials to keep some classrooms dark, helping close a $5 million gap in its $60 million budget. But the changes won’t go unnoticed.
"I can’t say it won’t have an impact because I think it will," said Halverson, who has been in the California school system for 33 years.
Paying for programs
Elsewhere in the nation, school districts have cut back on programs and services or are charging for them.
Take Queen Creek, a small town 38 miles southeast of Phoenix. When the state cut funding for full-day kindergarten programs, Queen Creek took a $900,000 hit, but decided to continue offering it…at a price. Parents have to pay $200 a month to enroll their 5-year-olds.
"Our community was used to having it," said Shari Zara, the district’s chief financial officer. "We thought we’d still offer it for those who could pay."
Some 122 kids signed up for the extended program, while another 216 are in the free half-day class. Charging tuition spared the district from having to cut teachers or programs, Zara said.
Busing is another area that has taken a hit in scores of districts.
In the Bayless school district in the St. Louis area, for example, the board and administrators decided to eliminate bus service instead of laying off staff and raising class sizes beyond the current 25 to 30 per room. The decision affects about 650 of the district’s 1,650 students and saves $240,000 a year, said John Stewart, chief financial officer.
Getting rid of transportation helped close the roughly $650,000 gap in the district’s $14 million budget. Employees also agreed to pay more toward their health insurance.
"We wanted to impact the classroom and educational process as little as possible," Stewart said.
Free online car insurance quotes. Get insurance rate comparisons, and buy your auto insurance policy instantly.
Core-Mark Holding Company Inc. said Friday it agreed to acquire Finkle Distributors Inc. for about $43 million.
South San Francisco-based Core-Mark (NASDAQ:CORE) is a marketer of packaged produce for convenience stores in North America.
FDI, which is based in Johnstown, N.Y., is a convenience wholesaler with customers in New York, Pennsylvania and surrounding states.
Dan Finkle, president of FDI, will join Core-Mark no fax payday loan.
Core-Mark expects to fund the transaction from a combination of cash and borrowings under its $200 million revolving credit facility. The deal is expected to close in August and be accretive in 2010 excluding approximately $2.6 million in start up and conversion costs.
Worldwide semiconductor sales were $24.7 billion in May, a sequential increase of 4.5 percent from April when sales were $23.6 billion, and a year-over-year increase of 47.6 percent from the same month last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday.
“Global sales of semiconductors in May reached a new high and remain on pace to reach the SIA forecast of 28.4 percent growth to $290.5 billion in 2010,” said SIA President George Scalise.
“Chip sales have been buoyed by strength in sales of personal computers, cell phones, corporate information technology, industrial applications, and autos. Unit sales of personal computers are now expected to grow by 20 percent this year and cell phone unit sales are predicted to be up 10 to 12 percent over 2009 levels."
Emerging markets, including China and India, are fueling sales of computation and communications products, Scalise said, and the automotive market is also slowly recovering after several years of weak sales paydayloans. The industry includes some of Austin's largest employers including IBM Corp., Freescale Semiconductor Inc., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Samsung Austin Semiconductor and others.
SIA noted that the industry year-on-year and sequential growth rates are likely to continue to slow during the second half of 2010.
“Recent chip sales have shown robust demand, but the year-on-year growth rates also underscore the very depressed market conditions of the first half of 2009. Going forward, the year-on-year growth comparisons will reflect the industry recovery that gained momentum in the second half of last year," Scalise said.
Alan Faber, executive vice president of Waltham, Mass.-based Accounting Management Solutions, has won the Lifetime Achievement award for the Boston Business Journal’s CFO of the Year contest. A special section with profiles of this year’s winners will run in the July 16 edition.
According to one of the many nominations in his favor, Faber, a veteran of such companies as IBM Corp. and Sylvania, has been a fixture in the Boston business community for over 45 years whose influence on behalf of executives has only been surpassed by his mentor and friend, F. Gorham Brigham Jr., for whom this award has been named.
“I’m most honored and flattered to be such an important part of the continuing legacy of F. Gorham Brigham Jr.,” said Faber, 72. “I take the liberty of speaking for so many of Gorham’s admirers who have and continue to benefit both professionally and personally from his wise counsel and enduring friendship no teletrek payday advance.”
The High Point City Council has voted to approve an incentive package for a startup drug company that is considering locating there.
The incentives for Apixir Pharma Sciences would be worth up to $35,000, if the firm does open a facility and meets certain milestones. Officials with the High Point Economic Development Corp. said Apixir plans to create at least 25 local jobs within three years, mostly in scientific and research positions. The average wage would be between $40,000 and $50,000 per year.
The company is considering a location at Premier Office & Technology Park, but is also considering other locations in the Triad and elsewhere, officials said.
Leafing through newspapers and magazines, I ran into these mutual fund ads.
From Janus: "100 percent of Janus equity funds have beaten their benchmarks since inception."
From T. Rowe Price: "Proven performance that has stood the test of time. For each 3-, 5- and 10-year period ended Dec. 31, 2009, over 75 percent of our funds beat their Lipper average." (That refers to the average performance of funds tracked by Lipper, a fund analysis firm.)
From Fidelity Investments: "In each of the past one-, five- and 10-year periods, at least 8 of the 10 Fidelity Select Portfolios broad-market sector funds beat their benchmark indexes." (This one refers to 10 Fidelity "Select" funds. Each invests in specific sectors of the economy.)
For many fund companies, performance sells (although some major firms, such as Vanguard, advertise low costs rather than performance, and others, such as Dodge and Cox, do not advertise at all). And when the fund’s "absolute," or actual return isn’t all that great, then "relative" performance, or how a fund did compared to others, is the thing to tout when you can.
For example, the Fidelity Select Technology fund did beat the so-called MSCI technology sector index for the 10 years ended March 31. But with technology stocks in the tank, the fund lost an average of 7.15 percent a year. It’s just that the index lost more, or 8 percent.
We need to read ads critically, including the tiny-print disclaimers in the footnotes. We also need to question how significant performance numbers are.
As the ads all say to comply with Securities and Exchange Commission rules, "past performance cannot guarantee future results." But even so, isn’t past performance a factor to consider?
Debate has been raging on that front for years, with a recent academic study suggesting fund performance advertisements are misleading investors payday advance low fees.
"A large body of studies has found little evidence that high past returns predict high future returns. In fact, advertised mutual funds even tend to underperform the market after being advertised," said Ahmed Taha, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law and co-author of the study.
"We found that people viewing the advertisement with the current SEC disclaimer were just as likely to invest in a fund, and had the same expectations regarding a fund’s future returns" as people shown the ads without the disclaimer, said Alan Palmiter, another co-author and law professor at Wake Forest.
The study, also co-authored by Molly Mercer, an accounting professor at Arizona State University, suggests investors would be more likely to heed a more strongly worded disclaimer such as: "Do not expect the fund’s quoted past performance to continue in the future. Studies show that mutual funds that have outperformed their peers in the past generally do not outperform them in the future."
On the other hand, I can cite evidence that sectors in the market that have done well recently — and therefore, the funds that invest in them — continue to do well for a while.
That is, in fact, the basis of the "upgrading" strategy of moving incrementally into funds with superior near-term performance — a strategy that has led to strong absolute and relative long-term returns for DAL Investment Company of San Francisco, which publishes the NoLoadFundX newsletter and manages the FundX Upgrader mutual funds. (Disclaimer: I invest in some of these funds.) Overall, I consider many factors when choosing a fund, including performance in up and down markets, costs, manager tenure and sticking to a well-defined discipline.
Lee Enterprises announced Wednesday that it will produce a new food publication for the St. Louis area, called Feast.
The free monthly publication will begin in August with a circulation of 70,000. It will be distributed at more than 500 locations in the St. Louis region.
The company described Feast as "a culinary magazine that celebrates St. Louis’ food culture." The magazine will serve as the "backbone" of the Feast Media brand, the company said.
Catherine Neville, co-founder and former editor of Sauce Magazine, has been named Feast’s publisher.
US Airways Group Inc. said Thursday it ended merger talks with United Airlines, the biggest carrier at San Francisco’s airport.
A union of the two companies would have would have created a carrier nearly as big as Delta Air Lines Inc., the nation’s biggest airline.
“It remains our belief that consolidation makes sense in an industry as fragmented as ours,” said Chairman and CEO Doug Parker. “Whether we participate or not, consolidation that leads to a more efficient industry better able to withstand economic volatility, global competition and the cyclical nature of our industry is a positive outcome.”
Parker, in his prepared statement, did not discuss why talks ended. But media reports indicate UAL Corp., United Airline’s parent, is considering a merger with Continental Airlines.
United Airlines accounts for one-third of the flights at San Francisco International Airport.
Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, has a lot of explaining to do this week. His company owns the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, W.Va., site of the most fatal mining disaster in decades. Even though the cause of Monday’s explosion, which claimed 25 lives, has yet to be determined, questions are already flying about the coal company’s safety standards.
By chance, I met with Blankenship just days before the accident as he was passing through Washington. Massey’s public relations firm suggested the meeting, and I was curious whether his personality would match his professional reputation.
Blankenship has long been unpopular with environmental groups who say the company’s mountaintop mining methods are destroying the Appalachia region. Blankenship in turn has not hidden his disdain — for them or for the climate legislation they stand for.
Yet, for a man who penned an op-ed last fall with the headline "No harm from cap-and-trade? You lie!" Blankenship is remarkably soft-spoken and delivers his critical bombs in a near-monotone.
Asked about the company’s long list of enemies and critics, Blankenship said that Massey (MEE) gets flack, because it’s "the largest and least politically correct." Its labor force is 97% non-unionized, which he says makes it a target of the labor left. (AFL-CIO has declaimed Massey’s safety violations this week.)
Even though he’s unpopular with labor and environmental constituencies among Democrats, Blankenship’s political views aren’t neatly aligned with either party. He’s against cap-and-trade, but he also resents free trade, arguing that not enough attention is being paid to protecting the interests of U.S. companies.
In our conversation, Blankenship displayed a streak of stubbornness. He had harsh words for the various trade associations that represent Massey to Washington, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association. He accused them of being too focused on political maneuvering rather than defending their core principles. "Most of the time, they’re too compromising," he said.
Likewise he’s holding his ground on this mining accident, in spite of reports that the Mine Safety and Health Administration recently fined the company for violations related to ventilation that control methane. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Massey denied that Upper Big Branch Mine had any safety problems. "The safety record in the past three months had been really, really good," he told the Journal.
Before we finished talking, I asked Blankenship how often he comes to Washington. He said he used to come only a few times a year but expects to be visiting the capital at least a dozen times in 2010 because of all the issues affecting Massey. That schedule might be something Blankenship revises. After all, mining accidents like this one are just the sort of thing that lawmakers love holding hearings on.
Powered by WordPress -- XHTML 1.0