Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 190, Ed. 1 Saturday, February 8, 2014 Page: 3 of 22
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Denton Record-Chronicle
Saturday, February 8, 2014
3A
Schools
By Will Weissert
Associated Press
AUSTIN - An extra $3.4-
plus billion in funding is a mere
Band-Aid that leaves classrooms
still hurting and hasn’t fixed fun-
damental flaws in the balance for
students in rich and poor parts of
Texas, attorneys representing
600-plus school districts across
the state argued Friday.
Closing arguments before
state District Judge John Dietz
wrapped up a sweeping case
that began in October 2012 and
put school finance in Texas on
trial. But a final ruling isn’t ex-
pected until next month.
Dietz declared in February
2013 that $5.4 billion in cuts to
public schools imposed by the
Legislature two years earlier vio-
BRIEFLY
U.S. AND THE WORLD
Ankara, Turkey
Attempt to hijack
plane to Sochi foiled
A Ukrainian man tried to hi-
jack a Turkey-bound flight to
Sochi, Russia, as the Winter
Olympics were kicking off Fri-
day, but the pilot tricked him
and landed in Istanbul instead,
where he was stealthily detained
after a four-hour standoff on a
plane full of passengers, an offi-
cial said.
The hijacking drama came as
the Winter Olympics opened in
the Russian resort city, with
thousands of athletes from
around the world pouring into
the tightly secured stadium
amid warnings the games could
be a terrorism target.
A Turkish F-16 fighter was
scrambled as soon as the pilot on
the Pegasus Airlines flight from
Kharkiv, Ukraine, with 110 pas-
sengers aboard signaled there
was a hijacking attempt, accord-
ing to NTV television. It escort-
ed the plane safely to its original
destination at Sabiha Gokcen
airport in Istanbul.
Officials credited the pilot
and crew for convincing the 45-
year-old-man, who claimed he
had a bomb, that they were fol-
lowing his wishes.
“Through a very successful
implementation by our pilot and
crew, the plane was landed in Is-
tanbul instead of Sochi,” Istan-
bul governor Huseyin Avni
Mutlu told reporters at the air-
port. “He thought it was going to
Sochi but after a while he real-
ized that [the plane] was in Is-
tanbul.”
Philadelphia
Utility crews chip away
at power outages
A small army of electricity
restoration crews labored Friday
to reconnect nearly 300,000
customers in Pennsylvania and
Maryland, and utility compa-
nies warned some will have to
wait several more days.
The lion’s share of the outag-
es remained in the Philadelphia
suburbs, where many schools
were closed for a third day, and a
PECO spokesman said work
was continuing around the
clock. PECO accounted for
about 250,000 outages late Fri-
day afternoon.
“That number is coming
down throughout the course of
the day,” said PECO spokesman
Fred Maher. “We are preparing
people for the fact that some
folks will be without power over
the weekend.”
Sarajevo,
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Violent protests
spread across Bosnia
Anti-government protesters
stormed into the Bosnian presi-
dency and another government
building in Sarajevo and set
them ablaze Friday as riot police
fired tear gas in a desperate at-
tempt to stop them.
Smoke was rising from sever-
al Bosnian cities as thousands
vented their fury over the Bal-
kan nation’s almost 40 percent
unemployment and its rampant
corruption.
As night was falling Friday,
downtown Sarajevo was in cha-
os, with buildings and cars
burning and riot police in full
gear chasing protesters and
pounding batons against their
shields to get the crowd to dis-
perse.
— The Associated Press
: Public education funding still
“The Legislature, for whatever reason,
has faced this issue time and time again.
They have put a Band-Aid on a Band-Aid
on a Band-Aid
— Richard Gray, a lawyer for the Equity Center
lated the Texas Constitution’s
guarantees of a “general diffu-
sion of knowledge” with an “effi-
cient system of public free
schools.” He also ruled that the
“Robin Hood” system, where
districts in wealthy areas share a
portion of the local property tax-
es they collect with those in
poorer areas, meant funding
was unfairly distributed.
However, last summer, law-
makers restored more than $3.4
billion in classroom funding and
cut the number of standardized
tests high students must pass
from 15 to five — easing tough
graduation standards that
school districts argued they no
longer had the resources to pre-
pare students to meet.
Dietz reopened the case last
month to hear evidence on how
the funding increase and testing
shake-up would affect his initial
ruling. He will issue a final rul-
ing after mid-March.
Richard Gray, a lawyer for
the Equity Center, which repre-
sents about 400 school districts,
many of them in poor areas of
Texas, said “all the Legislature
did was appropriate money into
the system and, unfortunately, it
did not even appropriate as
much money as it stripped.”
“The Legislature, for whatev-
er reason, has faced this issue
time and time again,” Gray said.
“They have put a Band-Aid on a
Band-Aid on a Band-Aid.”
Texas Attorney General Greg
Abbott’s office has defended the
system as constitutional, though
Abbott himself is running for
governor and hasn’t argued the
case.
lisa Dawn-Fisher, deputy as-
sociate commissioner for school
finance at the Texas Education
Agency, testified that average
per-student funding has in-
creased this school year and that
gaps between school districts in
wealthy and poor areas has actu-
ally declined since 2006.
The plaintiffs counter that
funding has declined overall,
even though Texas’ population
has boomed and the number of
low-income students has sky-
rocketed. Students from poor
families generally cost more to
educate because many require
instruction to learn English or
participate in remedial pro-
grams outside the classroom.
The school districts that filed
suit are responsible for educat-
ing around three-quarters of
‘broken’
Texas’ 5 million-plus public
school students.
Schools in rich and poor
parts of the state are on the same
side in the case because those in
economically disadvantaged ar-
eas say “Robin Hood” short-
changes them while wealthier
districts note local voters that
would otherwise support prop-
erty tax increases fail to do so
since they know much of the
revenue raised will be sent to
schools elsewhere.
Legal battles over school fi-
nance have been raging for de-
cades: This case is the sixth of its
kind since 1984. If the state Su-
preme Court ultimately declares
the system unconstitutional, it
will be up to the Legislature to
devise a new funding plan.
Weak jobs report renews concerns
LM Otero/AP
Job seekers line up to meet prospective employers during a career fair at a hotel in Dallas on
Jan. 22.
By Christopher S. Rugaber
and Paul Wiseman
AP Economics Writers
WASHINGTON - A sec-
ond straight month of weak job
growth renewed concerns Fri-
day that the vigor displayed by
the American economy late last
year may be gone, at least for the
moment.
The Labor Department’s
monthly employment report
showing a tepid gain of 113,000
jobs in January followed Decem-
ber’s puny increase of 75,000 —
far below last year’s average
monthly gain of194,000.
Yet the report provided some
cause for optimism. Solid hiring
last month in manufacturing
and construction point to un-
derlying strength.
And in a healthy sign, more
Americans began looking for
jobs, suggesting they were more
hopeful about their prospects. A
sizable 115,000 formerly unem-
ployed people also said they
found jobs. Their hiring reduced
the unemployment rate to a sea-
sonally adjusted 6.6 percent, the
lowest in more than five years.
Most economists say they
think hiring will strengthen dur-
ing 2014 as the economy im-
proves further.
Job growth “clearly has
downshifted over the past two
months,” said Doug Handler,
chief U.S. economist at IHS
Global Insight. “But we still be-
lieve the economic fundamen-
tals remain strong and ... fore-
cast an acceleration of growth
later in the year.”
Janet Yellen will be pressed
about jobs and the economy
when she testifies to Congress
next week in her first public
comments since becoming Fed-
eral Reserve chair on Feb. 1. Fed
officials are scaling back their
stimulus for the economy.
They’ve also said they would
consider raising their bench-
mark short-term interest rate at
some point after the rate falls be-
low 6.5 percent.
But the Fed has not been
clear about the timing. With the
unemployment rate now close
to that threshold, economists
think the Fed may update its
guidance after its next meeting
in March.
Most economists say two
weak hiring months won’t lead
the Fed to halt its pullback on
the stimulus. Fed policymakers
will have February’s job report to
consider when they next meet in
March.
Friday’s figures add to evi-
dence that the economy is slow-
ing in the first few months of the
year after expanding at a robust
3.7 percent annual pace in the
second half of 2013.
The figures follow other signs
of a possibly softening economy.
A survey of manufacturing firms
showed that factory expansion
slowed last month. A measure of
forthcoming home sales fell.
The jobs report offered some
hints that hiring could return to
last year’s healthier levels in
coming months.
To begin with, the unemploy-
ment rate is at its lowest point
since October 2008, when the
financial crisis was erupting.
The rate fell because many of the
unemployed found work. And
the influx of people seeking jobs
— a sign of optimism — was an
improvement from December.
In that month, the unemploy-
ment rate fell only because
about 350,000 people stopped
looking for work and were no
longer counted as unemployed.
Another positive sign: Manu-
facturers, construction firms and
mines added a combined 76,000
jobs last month — the most since
January 2006. Goods-produdng
employers like those tend to hire
only when they’re confident in the
economy.
‘You rarely see expansions in
these industries without the
economy being in fairly healthy
shape,” said Gary Burtless, an
economist at the Brookings In-
stitution.
Home sales and construction
are rising, a trend economists
expect to continue. If it does,
more construction jobs would
be created and would likely lead
to higher retail spending as peo-
ple furnish homes.
The effect of government tax
increases and spending cuts,
which dragged on growth last
year, should sharply diminish in
2014. And despite recent tur-
moil in several emerging econo-
mies, the global economy ap-
pears in better shape than it has
in the past three years, when Eu-
rope’s financial crisis threatened
U.S. growth.
“There’s nothing really hold-
ing growth back,” said Paul Ash-
worth, an economist at Capital
Economics. Most economists ex-
pect the U.S. economy to expand
2.5 percent to 3 percent this year,
up from L9 percent in 2013.
Several industries shed jobs
last month, but the losses were
likely to be temporary. Retailers
cut nearly 13,000 jobs, but that
followed three months of huge
gains.
And government jobs
dropped by 29,000. Local gov-
ernments shed 11,000jobs, part-
ly because bus drivers and cafe-
teria workers were temporarily
laid off when winter weather
closed schools. The federal gov-
ernment cut 12,000, including
8,500 at the U.S. Postal Service.
Economists don’t expect
such deep cuts to continue. State
and local tax revenues have re-
covered after plunging during
the Great Recession.
Hackers may have used
contractor to hit Target
By Bree Fowler and Joe Mandak
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The hackers
who stole millions of customers’
credit and debit card numbers
from Target may have used a
Pittsburgh-area heating and re-
frigeration business as the back
door to get in.
If that was, in fact, how they
pulled it off — and investigators
appear to be looking at that the-
ory — it illustrates just how vul-
nerable big corporations have
become as they expand and con-
nect their computer networks to
other companies to increase
convenience and productivity.
Fazio Mechanical Services
Inc., a contractor that does busi-
ness with Target, said in a state-
ment Thursday that it was the
victim of a “sophisticated cyber-
attack operation,” just as Target
was. It said it is cooperating with
the Secret Service and Target to
figure out what happened.
The statement came days after
Internet security bloggers identi-
fied the Sharpsburg, Pa., compa-
ny as the third-party vendor
through which hackers penetrat-
ed Target’s computer systems.
Target has said it believes
hackers broke into its vast net-
work by first infiltrating the
computers of one of its vendors.
Then the hackers installed ma-
licious software in Target’s
checkout system for its estimat-
ed 1,800 U.S. stores.
Experts believe the thieves
gained access during the busy
holiday season to about 40 mil-
lion credit and debit card num-
bers and the personal informa-
tion — including names, e-mail
addresses, phone numbers and
home addresses — of as many as
70 million customers.
Ctybersecurity analysts had
speculated that Fazio may have
remotely monitored heating,
cooling and refrigeration systems
for Target, which could have pro-
vided a possible entry point for
the hackers. But Fazio denied
that, saying it uses its electronic
connection with Target to submit
bills and contract proposals.
The new details illustrate what
can go wrong with the far-flung
computer networks that big com-
panies increasingly rely on.
“Companies really have to
look at the risks associated with
that,” said Ken Stasiak, CEO of
SecureState, a Cleveland firm
that investigates data breaches.
Stasiak said industry regulations
require companies to keep cor-
porate operations such as con-
tracts and billing separate from
consumer financial information.
Stasiak emphasized that the
thieves would have still needed
to do some serious hacking to
move through Target’s network
and reach the checkout system.
Chester Wisniewski, an ad-
viser for the computer security
firm Sophos, said that while it
may seem shocking that Target’s
systems are that connected, it is
a lot cheaper for a company to
manage one network rather
than several.
He added that while retailers
are supposed to keep consumer
information separate, they are
not required to house it on a sep-
arate network.
A Town Brought together
When We Were All
BRONCOS
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 12, AT 6:30 p.m. THIN LINE TENT
SATURDAY, FEB. 15, AT 10:30 a.m. CAMPUSTHEATER
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Cobb, Dawn. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 190, Ed. 1 Saturday, February 8, 2014, newspaper, February 8, 2014; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1108283/m1/3/: accessed July 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .