Chess in the news at any price?
SPRAGGETT ON CHESS
By Wanda Combs and Doug Thompson
Boyd told the jury that she had trouble returning to work after the attack and was afraid to go shopping alone, adding that parking lots and large crowds bothered her. She said she suffers from vertigo as a result of the attack and takes medication to control it.
Judge Brown ordered a pres-sentencing report and set sentencing for Feb. 8., A jury sentence is a recommendation, but Virginia judges seldom change what the jury sets.
Young, a former chess champion and Eagle Scout, felt he had to slaughter someone at Slaughters Supermarket on January 30, 2008, and that feeling led to an unprovoked, violent attack on a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who worked at the grocery store on U.S. 221 south of Floyd, a forensic psychologist told a jury in circuit court Tuesday.
In closing arguments before the judge sent to the case to the jury shortly before noon, Shortt called the attack “brutal, unprovoked and calculated.”Recalling Young’s prowess as a chess player, Shortt said the defendant was still playing chess with the court and the jury.“But in this case, it is checkmate,” she said.
Employees and customers of Slaughters told the jury they saw Young’s car strike Boyd and then saw him beat her on her head with both the log and club. The employees watched from behind the locked front doors of the store. At one point, several said, he came up to the door and tapped on the glass with a kitchen knife.
The attack left Boyd with scars on her head and vertigo, which she must tread with medication. Her wounds required several stitches and places where he hair has not grown back. In her opening statement, Shortt said Young’s attack on Boyd was unprovoked and said the young man knew what he was doing in the assault.
Young cut off his hand with a chain saw near the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2006. The hand was reattached and he told police the incident was an accident.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
A wonderful video of a TV news report on the scandal is included in the abc link below.
Spring ISD’s spending leaves people puzzled
Really?” said one parent. We asked, “You didn’t know about the cruise?” “No,” she answered.
Vandi Redfern’s son loves to play. “He loves it,” she said. “And I think it’s a great idea for him to be learning it. It helps him mentally.”
And in the middle of our investigation, Dalane Buillion took her staff on a two day retreat during the school week to the Tremont Hotel. “Oh, it must’ve been nice,” parent Connie Szykowny said.
Buillion says the benefit of meeting away from Spring is “to remove oneself from the pace you keep in order to think and reflect on the direction in which you are going.”
By Jennifer Peebles ; October 29th, 2009
When Dolcefino asked folks with the school system about it, he got phony-baloney answers like “call our PR people.” Yeah, right. Call your PR people so you, who screwed up and have now been caught on television screwing up, don’t have to answer for your actions.
http://www.af4c.org/
http://af4c.memfirstclubs.net/club/scripts/section/section.asp?NS=FMPI
first move program information:
I have received some mixed feedback from my readers about yesterday’s blog on how the media prefers to make chess the butt of a joke and chooses instead to report the negative side of our noble game than to report about the many positive achievements of the chess community. About how the media is beginning to focus their coverage of the game of chess and chess players with much the same style as literature and hollywood have done ever since Nabakov’s Lolita and The Defence first attracted their attention.
Continuing today in much the same vein, I present some of the news today on chess that the mainstream news media has offered us.
Jury sentences Jef Young, former chess champ, to 16 years
By Wanda Combs and Doug Thompson
October 29, 2009
A jury of 6 men and 6 women found Jeffrey Martin Young guilty of all four charges in the 2008 attack of a Slaughter’s Supermarket employee and sentenced him to a total of 16 years, eight months in prison.
A jury of 6 men and 6 women found Jeffrey Martin Young guilty of all four charges in the 2008 attack of a Slaughter’s Supermarket employee and sentenced him to a total of 16 years, eight months in prison.
The jury rejected a defense contention that the 31-year-old man with a history of mental illness was insane at the time.
Young, dressed in prison garb and wearing a shock brace to prevent escape, showed no motion as Judge Howe Brown read the verdict. His victim, Ciera Sowers Boyd, was in the courtroom. Afterwards, family members gathered around her and shared hugs.
In a prepared statement released after the trial, the Sowers family thanked the jury for its verdict but said “although we appreciate the sentence given by the jury we would have liked for him to have received more time in the penitentiary to ensure the safety of our family and the community.“
The verdict came on the fourth day of the trial in Circuit Court. The case went to the jury shortly before noon Wednesday but the jury did not agree on a verdict before Brown sent them home for the night after nearly four hours of deliberation.
They resumed at 9:13 a.m. Thursday and notified the court they had reached a verdict at 10:08.
After a short sentencing hearing, the jury began deliberations on Young’s punishment at 11:24 a.m.
After a short sentencing hearing, the jury began deliberations on Young’s punishment at 11:24 a.m.
In arguments for the sentencing hearing, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt called the attack in the parking lot of the supermarket on Jan. 20, 2008, a “horrific act” that changed the life of Boyd and created a “loss of innocence” for Floyd County.
Boyd told the jury that she had trouble returning to work after the attack and was afraid to go shopping alone, adding that parking lots and large crowds bothered her. She said she suffers from vertigo as a result of the attack and takes medication to control it.
Young faces prison time that could run from 8-45 years along with fines up to $100,000 on individual charges of malicious wounding, threatening a police officer and two charges of interfering with police officers.
The jury gave Young 12 years on the malicious wounding charge, two years on the charge of interfering with threatening deputy Tim Dulaney, 1 year, six months for interring with Dulaney’s performance of his duties and 1 year, two months for interfering with the performance of deputy Chad Harris in his duties
Judge Brown ordered a pres-sentencing report and set sentencing for Feb. 8., A jury sentence is a recommendation, but Virginia judges seldom change what the jury sets.
Young, a former chess champion and Eagle Scout, felt he had to slaughter someone at Slaughters Supermarket on January 30, 2008, and that feeling led to an unprovoked, violent attack on a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who worked at the grocery store on U.S. 221 south of Floyd, a forensic psychologist told a jury in circuit court Tuesday.
Young’s attorneys don’t dispute the attack that left Boyd scarred but they contend the 32-year-old man with a troubled past is not guilty by reason of insanity when he struck Boyd with his car in the store’s parking lot before attacking her first with a wooden log and then a club when the log broke. Young also threatened police and others with a knife.
r. Doris Nevin, the forensic psychologist who testified for the prosecution, said that while Young may be mentally ill she does not believe he was legally insane when he attacked Boyd. Nevin said the name of the supermarket triggered a feeling in Young that someone had to die at the grocery store.
Young faced charges of malicious wounding in the attack, assaulting a law enforcement officer and two charges of obstructing justice. Testimony in the trial began Tuesday after Circuit Judge J. Howe Brown, a retired judge from Fairfax County, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt and defense attorneys Fred Kellerman and Neil Horn spend most of Monday culling a pool of 72 potential jurors down to 14 for the trial.
In closing arguments before the judge sent to the case to the jury shortly before noon, Shortt called the attack “brutal, unprovoked and calculated.”Recalling Young’s prowess as a chess player, Shortt said the defendant was still playing chess with the court and the jury.“But in this case, it is checkmate,” she said.
Witnesses Tuesday said Young sat in the parking lot of Slaughters most of the day on Jan. 30, 2008, appearing to wait for someone before Boyd arrived for work after attending classes at Virginia Tech. As the Floyd County High School graduate walked from her car to the store, Young gunned his mother’s Nissan compact car and rammed Boyd, knocking her to the ground and scattering the contents of her handbag around the parking lot.
“The next thing I know, I’m laying on the ground in front of the door,” Boyd testified. “I saw a man standing over me, circling. I said ‘I’m Ciera and I work here.’” Young, she said, did not speak to her.
Employees and customers of Slaughters told the jury they saw Young’s car strike Boyd and then saw him beat her on her head with both the log and club. The employees watched from behind the locked front doors of the store. At one point, several said, he came up to the door and tapped on the glass with a kitchen knife.
Deputy Tim Dulaney testified that he arrived to find Young attacking Boyd and drew his weapon, telling Young to drop the club and knife. As Young advanced, Dulaney said he backed around the car and continued to yell at Young to drop his weapons.
Deputy Chad Harris arrived shortly after Dulaney and told the jurors that he shot pepper spray into the air but was too far away from Young for the spray to reach its target. Young, however, threw down the weapons and submitted to arrest.
The attack left Boyd with scars on her head and vertigo, which she must tread with medication. Her wounds required several stitches and places where he hair has not grown back. In her opening statement, Shortt said Young’s attack on Boyd was unprovoked and said the young man knew what he was doing in the assault.
Kellerman told the jury that his client was “profoundly mentally ill” and quoted John Milton, saying “the mind is at its own place.”
Young, born in Ohio in 1977, moved to Roanoke with his mother in 1988 and graduated from Patrick Henry High School. His mother, Rebecca Young, described her son as a happy, smart student who won the city chess championship three times and a national youth chess championship. He also modeled as a teenager.
The young man went to Queens College in North Carolina after graduation but dropped out in his sophomore year after breaking up with his girlfriend, his mother testified. After a car crash that nearly killed him, she said he began to change, going into prolonged periods of depression.
Young was sent to mental hospitals in Virginia and Georgia in 2003, 2004 and 2007. In 2003, doctors at Southwest Virginia Mental Health Center in Marion diagnosed Young with a “psychotic disorder.” Other doctors later diagnosed him with schizophrenia.
Young cut off his hand with a chain saw near the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2006. The hand was reattached and he told police the incident was an accident.
His mother told the jury that her Young was “not the son I once knew” and said he once choked her until she passed out and on another occasion soaked her bed in gasoline and threatened to burn her “in hell.”
Mrs. Young said he son began to believe he was Jesus Christ and got upset when she tried to call him by his real name. She twice had him committed to mental institution and once drove from their home in Copper Hill to Roanoke with him clinging to the hood of her car.
Earlier this year, a Roanoke County jury acquitted Young of charges in the hit-and-run death of attorney Thomas Farrell.
………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Another story that has this week attracted national attention is about how Spring’s Independant School District has got involved with the First Move chess program and have allegedly mis-spent hundreds of thousands of tax payers dollars on questionable items, such as a 5 day all expenses paid trip about a cruise ship!
A wonderful video of a TV news report on the scandal is included in the abc link below.
Noteworthy here is to mention that this chess program is all part of the AF4C undertaking, and the Executive Director, Wendi Fisher, is directly involved.
http://www.af4c.org/
http://af4c.memfirstclubs.net/club/scripts/section/section.asp?NS=FMPI
http://www.af4c.org/
http://af4c.memfirstclubs.net/club/scripts/section/section.asp?NS=FMPI
Spring ISD’s spending leaves people puzzled
By Wayne Dolcefino
HOUSTON (KTRK) — 13
Undercover has exposed the questionable use of your tax money on travel by the Spring Independent School District. Spring is using more of taxpayers’ money in a campaign to question our investigation.
A summer trip to Cozumel, Mexico. Nice beach. Great diving, and a cruise ship brings you to the island paradise. Check out the onboard casino and the miniature golf course. You didn’t get to go — but you paid the bill. And it’s all in the name of education, Spring ISD style.
A summer trip to Cozumel, Mexico. Nice beach. Great diving, and a cruise ship brings you to the island paradise. Check out the onboard casino and the miniature golf course. You didn’t get to go — but you paid the bill. And it’s all in the name of education, Spring ISD style.
Really?” said one parent. We asked, “You didn’t know about the cruise?” “No,” she answered.
A four-night Caribbean cruise — that’s where Spring ISD trains the teachers who will teach other teachers how to teach the kids to play chess, in between the shopping in Key West and the visit to Cozumel, of course. The first three days on the boat there’s only five hours of chess training. No wonder the chess vendor calls it lots of fun.
The First Move curriculum says only one teacher needs to be trained per campus. Spring has 25 elementary schools, yet 76 Spring employees have already taken the cruise.
Some principals even used their own campus money to go along to watch the training. Imagine the sacrifice — interrupting your summer vacation to spend five long days on a cruise.
But it’s all for the kids.
But it’s all for the kids.
First Move claims chess can help second and third graders improve math and reading skills, and self-esteem. And all Spring elementary schools now have to teach an hour long class of chess at least once a week in place of other subjects.
Vandi Redfern’s son loves to play. “He loves it,” she said. “And I think it’s a great idea for him to be learning it. It helps him mentally.”
The queen of the chess program is Wendy Fisher. She made a visit to Northgate Elementary School this month, where they even have a life-sized chess set for the kids to play with. The chess lady sang with the kids, but she was too busy to talk with us on camera.
“The deal is somebody got something free,” Spring taxpayer Tom Matthews said.
Dalane Buillion got something free. She’s chief of the Curriculum Department for Spring ISD. The vendor has paid for her to be on the cruise twice. Her family was on board once. Buillion said they paid their way. But no question, she’s a big fan.
Just look at the chess vendor’s website: “Dalane Bouillion, Ed.D. Associate Superintendent, Curriculum & Instructional Services, Spring Independent School District. I give the First Move program the highest ratings possible!”
Buillion said the chess program provides “authentic engagement for students, and allows them to learn via a hands-on approach.”
One of Buillion’s jobs is to monitor the 29 chess lessons that are supposed to be taught in all Spring elementary schools. You wouldn’t want to waste that cruise training. But the answer to every to every question we tried to ask Spring administrators on camera is the same — every time.“Again, I’d like to ask for you to please contact our public relations,” Buillon said. “I know you know our procedures.”
We did. Didn’t help. When I asked how we scheduled an interview with an administrator, they just walked away.“So, Allison, what do you think? Is it working?” “The excitement is there.”
Last November, Spring’s School Board got a chess report card of sorts.“Our campuses completed at least 20 lessons. We expect that the pacing will improve this year.”
Yet our review of the most recent Spring school year shows most Spring teachers never complete the chess curriculum.
“If you have some documentation that allows me to pursue that, hand it over to me please and I will make sure that we pursue it,” said School Board President Mel Smith.
You know where we got the records? From Spring.
At Reynolds Elementary School, less than half of the lessons were even taught. “If it’s not being implemented, then that’s something the district needs to know about,” Smith said.
Look at how much the First Move program has cost so far — nearly $390,000. The lion’s share of the investment are not the little chess sets for the kids. It’s the cruise to Cozumel.
“I know for a fact that teachers have to supply their classrooms with school supplies out of their own income,” said parent Faith Stankovic. So are taxpayers getting rooked?
“They can come up here and learn it here in the school,” Redfern said. “They don’t have to take a cruise to learn how to play chess.” “That’s the program they offer — I don’t know. The answer is I don’t know,” Smith said. “That’s something you’d need to ask administration.”
The chess cruise is just part of the out-of-state travel bill for Spring ISD this summer — nearly $400,000. The travel is part of Spring’s strategy to help the kids. “We’ve had to look at alternative ways of keeping our children engaged in the education process,” Smith said. “We’re losing them.”
And in the middle of our investigation, Dalane Buillion took her staff on a two day retreat during the school week to the Tremont Hotel. “Oh, it must’ve been nice,” parent Connie Szykowny said.
Buillion says the benefit of meeting away from Spring is “to remove oneself from the pace you keep in order to think and reflect on the direction in which you are going.”
Of course you got to eat. We found $6,571 in food and hotel bills for two just days. “I’ve still got to pay school taxes every year like everybody else around here,” said Spring ISD grandparent Guillermo Barboza. “Why do they have to do that?”
The chess lady says a Caribbean cruise is actually cheaper than training teachers in Seattle or Chicago. She does not explain why the teachers can’t be trained here, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Spring schools dodge Dolcefino’s questions about $400K chess cruise
By Jennifer Peebles ; October 29th, 2009
Don’t play games with taxpayers’ money — or with Wayne Dolcefino. Too bad the folks at the Spring Independent School District have been doing both.
The district has coughed up about $400,000 in the name of teaching chess to the kiddos. Unfortunately, as Dolcefino reports at KTRK’s Web site, most of that money didn’t go toward chess or education at all — it went to take a whole crowd of Spring ISD employees on a cruise where they spent a few hours on chess and, we reckon, spent the rest of their time doing cruise-stuff.
When Dolcefino asked folks with the school system about it, he got phony-baloney answers like “call our PR people.” Yeah, right. Call your PR people so you, who screwed up and have now been caught on television screwing up, don’t have to answer for your actions.
I would go off on a tangent here about government-funded PR people using tax dollars to spin the public about wasteful taxpayer spending, but there’s no need for me to get worked up about it in this case — from the looks of Dolcefino’s story, it looks like Spring ISD can’t even do that right.
As for me, I love chess. My dad taught me to play an eon ago. Hey, Dad, did anyone ever take you on a cruise for that?
……………………………………………………………………………………………………….http://www.af4c.org/
http://af4c.memfirstclubs.net/club/scripts/section/section.asp?NS=FMPI
first move program information:
Wendi Fisher
Wendi Fisher is the Executive Director of America’s Foundation for Chess, but to kids across the country she is “The Chess Lady.” As the teacher on the First Move™ DVD’s, Wendi appears weekly in First Move classrooms and has become rather famous among 8 and 9 year olds. Prior to joining AF4C, Wendi owned her own television production company focusing on family and educational programming. Wendi spent six years as a classroom teacher, was department head for four years, and served on the School Task Force Committee. While teaching, Wendi received a Teacher of the Year award from her school for her dedication to her students and passion for education. Wendi graduated from the University of Washington with a B. A. in Sociology, and a Teachers Certificate in Social Studies K-12. She received her Television Production Certificate from Bellevue Community College.