• Carlee is heading home with Mediterranean takeout for herself and her mother, on the highway, after dark

• She calls 911 to report that she sees a toddler wandering alone on the side of the highway. She will wait with the child until police arrive

• Carlee calls her brother's girlfriend while she approaches the child. The girlfriend says she heard Carlee ask the child "Are you OK?," then scream and drop the phone

• Cops arrive within minutes, finding Carlee's running car, her wig, hat, and phone, but no sign of Carlee or any child

• A tip is called in claiming a trucker saw another car stopped next to Carlee's with a man beside it

• Video footage with very few pixels shows Carlee stopping and exiting her car, but with such poor quality that little else is clear except that no other car stopped

• Carlee shows up at her family's on foot and alone, apparently refuses to elaborate as of yet

• No one else seems to have noticed the child wandering on the side of the highway

• Reports do not indicate what happened to the Mediterranean food

Of course it's all about race, and TikTok

Black, Latinx NYers who failed teacher’s test strike $1.8B in NYC settlement

Failing the New York State teachers’ exam really paid off — especially for a Queens man who learned this month he’s getting a $2 million windfall over it.

Roughly 5,200 black and Latinx ex-Big Apple teachers and once-aspiring educators are expected to collect more than $1.8 billion in judgments after the city stopped fighting a nearly three-decade federal discrimination lawsuit that found a certification exam was biased.

It’s the largest legal payout in city history.

As of Friday, 225 people who failed the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test used for teacher licensing from 1994 to 2014 had already been notified they’re getting settlements of at least $1 million, according to an analysis of Manhattan federal court records.

Court rulings found the exam violated civil-rights laws, allowing far more white candidates to pass.

The case is expected to generate hundreds of other future million-dollar awards.

Herman Grim, 64, of Queens, on July 5 was awarded the biggest judgment to date — a jaw-dropping $2,055,383.

It includes $1,583,114 in back pay for time never clocked, lost interest accrued, and other compensation.

Other top winners include Andrea Durant, 62, of Center Moriches on Long Island, who scored $1,976,787, and the estate of the late Kathy Faye Bailey of Queens, who was awarded $1,875,119.

The judgments are based on what the teachers and teacher candidates would have earned had they passed the test and kept working in the city’s public school system.

Typically, the further back they failed the test, the more money plaintiffs are entitled to.

Under an agreement ironed out in November 2021 during then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s final weeks in office, the city agreed to set aside more than $1.8 billion in funds to pay off the plaintiffs through 2028.

But the cost to taxpayers is expected to be significantly higher because they’ll also be footing the bill for many of the plaintiffs to collect pension checks based on time never worked after they reach retirement age, plus their health insurance.

So far, more than $750 million in judgments have been awarded to 2,959 of the 5,200 plaintiffs.

Some judgments are as low as several hundred dollars.

The remaining plaintiffs’ claims are being assessed by a court-appointed special master, who already racked up more than $8 million in fees at taxpayers’ expense.

The city is also on the hook for the plaintiff’s lawyer’s fees, a sum that totaled more than $43 million last year.

The payouts have many critics flabbergasted.

“It’s a struggle to explain how New York City could spend $38,000 a year per kid with such a poor return, but decisions like this really help people understand where all that money’s going,” said Ken Girardin, a fellow and labor specialist for the conservative government watchdog group Empire Center for Public Policy.

When contacted Thursday, Grim said he was unaware he struck gold but confirmed the award the following day with his lawyer.

Grim said he’s in disbelief but the money can’t come fast enough because he’s racked up serious debt on his Queens home and credit cards.

He couldn’t recite examples of why the test was biased.

But Grim recalled hiring private tutors and studying for it during the early 1990s, before failing many times.

“I can’t tell you how many times I took them. A lot! A lot!” he said.

Grim said he opened a preschool business in the mid-1990s but closed it in 2015.

After that, he predominately made a living as a substitute teacher until passing the current certification test last year and going to work as a special education teacher for the city in Harlem.

“I want to stay as normal as possible,” he insisted. “I’m not going to be a millionaire.”

Arthur Goldstein, a recently retired veteran teacher at Francis Lewis High School in Queens, said the former test wasn’t a good indicator of how well candidates would perform in the classroom and the city would’ve been better off resolving the issue decades ago by hiring many of those who sued.

“All this money for nothing – nothing!” he fumed. “I’ve been teaching in … overcrowded classrooms in miserable conditions when we could’ve had more teachers working. Instead, we just have the city paying [money] for no reason at all. It’s ridiculous.”

One Brooklyn principal said the city was “crazy” to settle the case.

“The standards are the standards,” he said. “It shouldn’t be based on what would be easy for blacks or whites. To hire people who are not qualified and change the requirements because a certain group didn‘t pass the test is bulls–t.”

The class-action suit dates back to 1996 when it was filed on behalf of Elsa Gulino and three other teachers against the former Board of Education, which once ran the city’s public schools before it was disbanded by the state Legislature to give that power to the mayoral-controlled Department of Education.

The plaintiffs targeted both the state and city, but an appeals court ultimately let Albany off the hook since the city is the teachers’ employer — even though the city argued it had no control over the testing.

The case has had a winding road through the court system, including repeated trips to appellate courts.

A 2003 trial ended in the city’s favor, but the tests were ruled discriminatory in 2012 by the third Manhattan federal judge to handle the case.

The city Law Department insisted it pursued all legal avenues before finally deciding to bring the longstanding case to a close.

“Over decades, we challenged court rulings holding the city liable for a teacher certification test created and mandated by the state,” said agency spokesman Nicholas Paolucci. “Unfortunately, the city did not prevail against these mistaken court decisions that unfairly burden city taxpayers with costly judgments.”

Joshua Sohn, a lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, said the city knew the certification test was discriminatory and failed to evaluate whether a test taker would be a competent teacher.

Despite this, the city “continued to use the test to deny a generation of black and Latinx teachers a fair opportunity to be considered for teaching positions and deprived a generation of students of receiving the benefit of having a more diverse teacher population,” he said.

Luz Perez, who walked away with $1,771,190, praised the plaintiffs’ legal team.

“I’m grateful everything was solved,” said Perez, 79, of Queens. “Of course I’m happy.”

Remember hearing about these murders as a teen on LI, kindof crazy to think they may have found the guy.

There's a police report in the article that shows all their clues. Guy was using burner phones and doing all these disturbing searches on Google that are a little uncomfortable to read

The funniest thing in there though is the police taking a picture of a pizza box in a trash can cause the suspect discarded it lmao

Reddit

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/14zdmlo/biden_administration_announces_39_billion_in/

This will upset the GOP.

One Reddit mutant actually reads the article

This change only helps people who have been paying their loans for more than 20 years, so it definitely won't help young people.

Politics reacts to this enlightening fact

They realized a maga cop with his red cap got filmed dropping (planting) it there at the WH. So i expect they'll drop it or stick to theatrics instead of real charges for fear of seeing the video played at any trial , lol. They litterally got caught on tape sprinkling some coke.

Edit and since Don Jr was one of the loudest pushing the "dems on coke" angle i'm gonna point out it's as usual more projection to mud up the waters, and that his sniffing reflex on multiple videos is almost certainly due to a coke habit :

And

I’m done with saying anything bad about Biden. He can literally just play checkers for the rest of the term and I’ll vote for him

Anyways controversial link here

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/14zdmlo/biden_administration_announces_39_billion_in/?sort=controversial

How the right-wing exercises: