CIR: All New Content

The fate of the world's tropical forests is a contentious issue as the U.S. debates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions. American companies want the ability to meet limits by purchasing forests and agreeing not to cut them down. In a two-part series on the public radio show Marketplace, CIR explores what a forest offset looks like on the ground, in Brazil's Atlantic Forest, and the impact of a forest offset on the people who live there. Part one aired on Thursday, February 25; part two aired on Friday, February 26.

These stories are produced as part of a collaborative project from CIR and FRONTLINE/World called Carbon Watch.

>> Listen to part one: "Calculating the value of carbon in trees"

>> Listen to part two: "Conservation projects displace locals"

>> Watch the video version of this story on FRONTLINE/World: "Brazil: The Money Tree"

>> Read a related story by CIR's Mark Schapiro that ran in Mother Jones: "GM's Money Trees"

Law enforcement agencies are more likely to seize cars from sober, unlicensed drivers than take drunks off the road at the state's sobriety checkpoints, investigation finds.

Retired narcotics agent Tom Padukiewicz worked undercover with confidential informant Ernesto Gamboa for thirteen years—busting drug dealers across Washington State. In separate interviews with the Center for Investigative Reporting, the two describe a meth deal that almost went wrong.

After confidential informant Ernesto Gamboa helped federal prosecutors secure nearly 100 convictions, ICE moved to deport him. In this episode of "The Investigators," CIR reporter Andrew Becker describes the predicament that some foreigners face while working for the U.S. government.

Part 1: Confidential Informants in Limbo

Part 2: The Case of Ernesto Gamboa

Confidential informants who don't have legal immigrant status have been led to believe that federal agencies would help them get U.S. residency in exchange for their assistance in undercover investigations, only to have the implied or explicit promises broken. CIR's Andrew Becker reports for the Los Angeles Times.

>> Read the full story in the Los Angeles Times.

Ernesto Gamboa, a native of El Salvador, spent more than a decade as an undercover informant for narcotics police, helping U.S. federal prosecutors secure nearly 100 convictions. Last summer, days after Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced a major bust it made with Gamboa's help, agents moved to deport him.

>> Listen to the full story on NPR.org on Saturday, February 13, 2010.

Starting in the fall of 2008, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity fielded a team of reporters to examine how effectively governments at all levels had managed money and programs dedicated to homeland security. The result was a series of stories – and an interactive map – that have been combined into a single collaborative website.

>> View the project here.

>> A state-by-state look at security spending.

Led by G.W. Schulz at CIR and Sarah Laskow at CPI, our team embarked on a broad search for documentation of homeland security spending and management, much of which had never been seriously scrutinized by journalists. Using open-records laws, we approached every state and Washington, D.C., requesting information that would show how and where officials had invested anti-terrorism and preparedness funding, placing a premium on computer files such as spreadsheets that listed individual grant transactions. In many cases, we received detailed electronic records and other material describing types of equipment, who purchased it, how much it cost, when it was acquired and other specifics. Some states simply refused our requests, while others released material only after extensive negotiation. Similar requests were made of federal officials, especially at the Department of Homeland Security – again, with mixed results.

We also reviewed thousands of pages of official government documents – some hunted down on the Web and others secured through official requests. Among them were dozens of reports from state auditors and overseers, public-interest groups, the federal Government Accountability Office, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, the Congressional Research Service and congressional committees with public safety responsibilities.

Our team augmented that research with more than 100 interviews – of current and former government officials, homeland security and preparedness experts, lobbyists and other experts at think tanks, universities and private companies. We also made use of lobbying and campaign contribution records.

Support for this partnership project of the Center for Public Integrity and the Center for Investigative Reporting is provided by the Open Society Institute and the Fund for Constitutional Government.

NAPA – The corporate shareholders live in tribal villages in the outback of western Alaska.

The CEO is in South Carolina, where his prior multimillion-dollar venture – a dot-com for sail boaters – collapsed in bankruptcy.

But the main action today is in Napa, where, without competitive bidding, this unusual construction company won a $54 million federal contract to build a new railroad bridge and other structures for the famed Napa Valley Wine Train tourist attraction.

This is the world of Anchorage-based Suulutaaq Inc. Because the company was founded by Alaska natives, it enjoys special access to federal contracts.

That’s how it obtained one of the biggest federal stimulus contracts in California – a key segment of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ flood-control project on the Napa River.

Army and Napa city officials say they’re pleased with Suulutaaq’s work on what they describe as an environmentally friendly project to curtail devastating winter flooding. It’s an ideal stimulus project, says Napa Mayor Jill Techel: “shovel-ready, green, and it provides jobs.”

But in December, U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., issued a report listing the Wine Train among 100 stimulus projects that they derided as “silly and shortsighted” and a waste of money.

The lawmakers also suggested the project wasn’t doing much for the economy. According to a report submitted by Suulutaaq late last year, the $54 million project had so far created 12 jobs. Officials involved with the project say that more recently roughly 40 workers have been on the scene, and they hope the project will ultimately create up to 200 jobs.

A Walnut Creek construction executive whose firm built a prior phase of the flood-control project said the government likely overspent by millions when it negotiated a contract with Suulutaaq rather than seeking competitive bids.

Meanwhile, investors aggrieved over the bankruptcy of the South Carolina dot-com called Sailnet said they were surprised to learn of former CEO Samuel Boyle’s new job as CEO of Suulutaaq. Boyle did not mention having construction experience or ties to Alaska tribes, they told California Watch. Some said Boyle’s involvement in Suulutaaq boded ill for the Alaska firm.

“My comment to anybody connected to this thing – if Sam Boyle is involved, watch out,” said Arizona venture capitalist Kent Mueller, who said he lost more than $1 million in Sailnet. Based on that experience, “I would not invest a nickel with this guy,” Mueller said.

Suulutaaq officials declined to be interviewed. In response to written questions, the company issued a statement saying that taxpayers were getting a “fair and reasonable” price on the project. The statement said that although Boyle lacked “specific construction experience,” he had “invaluable business experience” to make the Napa project a success.

But the company declined to answer most questions about the project, saying the information was confidential. It rebuffed a query about whether Suulutaaq employed lobbyists by asserting that the question “has potential undertones of a race-based presumption.”

Boyle also declined to be interviewed. In a statement, he wrote that the dot-com’s bankruptcy was “a tragedy” for which he was not responsible because he had left the company by the time it occurred.

Emerging players

Suulutaaq is one of dozens of Alaska Native corporations that have emerged as players in federal contracting via measures crafted in the 1980s and 1990s by former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, a powerful lawmaker whose career ended with a contracting scandal.

For decades, the U.S. Small Business Administration has run a preferential contracting program to aid disadvantaged businesses. Qualifying firms can get federal contracts worth up to $5.5 million by negotiation, rather than competitive bidding.

The Stevens measures gave corporations that were set up by Alaska Natives special access to the program – with no cap on the size of contracts they can obtain. The share of federal contracts going toward Alaska Native corporations has grown rapidly. It was $508 million in 2000 and $5.2 billion in 2008, records show.

Advocates say the program has provided crucial economic development for impoverished Alaskan tribes. It’s a way of redressing centuries of grievous wrongs against them, they say.

But critics have complained that the no-bid contracts provide relatively few jobs and little investment income to the tribes while costing taxpayers a fortune.

“Alaska Native corporations don’t have to prove that they’re socially or economically disadvantaged,” U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said at a 2009 hearing. “They don’t have to be small businesses. And they can receive no-bid contracts worth billions of dollars.”

The companies employ few Alaska natives and “rely heavily on non-native managers,” McCaskill claimed. Thus the firms create relatively few jobs for the people they are supposed to benefit, she argued.

McCaskill also contended that some of the companies “may also be passing through work to their subcontractors.” In those cases, the companies were collecting a profit simply because they had special access to federal contracts, not because they were performing actual work, she said.

McCaskill proposed putting a cap on the no-bid contracts, but the measure stalled in the face of intense lobbying by tribal corporations.

West of Anchorage

Suulutaaq is a subsidiary of the Kuskokwim Corp., also called TKC, which was formed in 1977 by Yupik Eskimos and Athabaskan Indians on the remote Kuskokwim River, 350 miles west of Anchorage.

Suulutaaq is a Yupik word for gold, and the company was initially formed to develop a nearby goldfield.

Hoping to ease “poverty in the isolated and rural villages of its region,” the company said it began competing for federal contracts. Suulutaaq wouldn’t describe how that came about. Experts say tribal corporations often get into federal contracting by hiring consultants in the lower 48 states who have connections with contracting officers.

Many federal agencies find it simpler and faster to negotiate a contract with a single vendor rather than put a contract out to bid. But sole-source contracts are generally more costly to taxpayers, experts say.

In April 2006, Suulutaaq negotiated a federal contract: $68,000 to replace a sewage pump at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento.

Four months later, it obtained a $14.1 million, no-bid contract to rebuild meat lockers in Honolulu for the U.S. Defense Commissary Agency, which runs supermarkets on military bases. Since then, the tribal company has built a headquarters building for the Department of Homeland Security in Arizona and repaired meat lockers on military bases in California, Nevada and Japan.

Before it won the job in 2008, Suulutaaq had negotiated about $45 million in federal contracts, records show. Most of the projects were outside Alaska.

Two other TKC subsidiaries have also sought federal contracts. In 2007 and 2008, API Inc. won a series of no-bid contracts for army uniforms that totaled $94.7 million. The uniforms were sewn at plants in Puerto Rico, records show.

In 2007, a subsidiary called TKC Aerospace, with an office on Daniel Island, S.C., began obtaining no-bid contracts from the Air Force. Its CEO was Boyle, the former CEO of Sailnet.

In his statement to California Watch, Boyle described himself as a former consultant for government agencies, and said he lived in Alaska for four years in the early 1980s. In a handout for potential dot-com investors, Boyle said he was a marketing expert with a background in Air Force logistics. He told investors he began selling sailing gear on the Internet when he lived in Detroit in the 1990s, and moved the business to South Carolina to be near the sea.

Under Boyle, Sailnet burned through more than $13 million in venture capital, company documents show, but it never made a profit. Boyle was terminated in 2004, according to a former director and published reports.

The company went bankrupt the following year. Investor Larry French said he thought Boyle had gone on to run another sailing dot-com.

“He was a good talker, but a lousy businessman,” French said. “This is the first time I have heard about him and Alaska.”

In his statement, Boyle said hundreds of start-ups failed when the dot-com bubble burst, with many “burning through millions more in venture capital than Sailnet ultimately did.” After leaving Sailnet, Boyle wrote that he was hired as a consultant at TKC Aerospace and in 2005 became CEO.

In all, TKC Aerospace has obtained $117 million in contracts. In 2009, the U.S. Department of State paid the company $9 million to retrofit light-wing aircraft for use in the war in Afghanistan.

By then, Boyle also was working as the CEO of Suulutaaq.

A history of flooding

For decades, the Napa River has been prone to disastrous flooding. In the 1980s, the corps of engineers proposed forcing the river into a concrete channel to control floods, but the idea met local resistance.

Then, in 1998, environmentalists proposed what they called a “living river” project to manage floods. Floodwater would be absorbed and diverted through a system of wetlands and a bypass channel. Napa County voters agreed to tax themselves $6 million per year for 20 years to help pay for the project.

The rest is being paid with federal funds. The total price has ballooned from $250 million to more than $400 million.

The price tag might have been significantly lower but for the Wine Train, a private rail line established by the late Vincent DeDomenico, the wealthy creator of Rice-A-Roni pasta.

Sixteen times each week, according to the Wine Train’s Web site, the train transports tourists from Napa to St. Helena aboard restored dining cars. A champagne dinner on the Vista Dome car costs $129 per person. About 125,000 people ride the train each year.

The train’s rail bridge in downtown Napa was too narrow for the wider river channel proposed, so it’s being replaced. A new floodwall will also be built to protect the train’s Napa station. Tracks are being relocated as well.

The added expense of accommodating the Wine Train was politically necessary, said Chris Malan, manager of the Living Rivers Council environmental group and a proponent of the tax measure. Without the support of the politically influential DeDomenico, the tax measure would never have passed, she said.

“He came out right from the beginning, saying, ‘If you do not take care of me, I will campaign against you,’” she recalled.

The corps of engineers solicited bids for the early phases of the project. In 2005, a Walnut Creek engineering firm, R&L Brosamer Inc., won a $25 million contract to build floodwalls and a promenade in Napa. Brosamer’s work was honored by the American Public Works Association as Northern California “project of the year.”

President Robert G. Brosamer planned to bid on the job as well. But in 2008, he said he learned that no bids were being sought. The project “was a done deal with an ANC,” as he put it, using contractors’ jargon for an Alaska Native corporation.

“It was very frustrating,” he said. “Particularly because the job we did was a tough thing, and the community loved us – and then we didn’t even get a shot.”

In September 2008 the corps of engineers awarded a $6.2 million contract to Suulutaaq to begin work on the Wine Train segment. The flood control project was already years behind schedule, said Bert Brown, the corps’ project manager.

“One of the mechanisms to expedite (a project) is to use qualified firms and go to them and negotiate a price,” he said.

Brown, who said he was not yet involved in the project, said he doesn’t know who contacted Suulutaaq on behalf of the corps of engineers.

A corps official said that someone on the project design team had recommended the company. But this official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said that no one could recall who made the recommendation. California Watch sought documents on this point via the Freedom of Information Act, but the corps said the information was exempt from disclosure.

A few months after Suulutaaq got its contract, the federal stimulus program was announced. The corps recommended the project, hoping to further speed its completion. With the support of U.S. Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, $54 million in stimulus funds also went to Suulutaaq. That puts the company in the top 10 of largest stimulus contract recipients in California, records show.

Brosamer, the Walnut Creek contractor, said the public was paying a premium for the project, saying, “It would have been a hell of a lot cheaper if they had put it out to bid.”

But the quality of the construction is first rate, Brosamer said, because Suulutaaq subcontracted much of the job to the giant Peter W. Kiewit & Co. engineering firm, which is also a contractor on the Bay Bridge.

“The reality is, Suulutaaq isn’t doing much,” Brosamer said, “They’ve got some staff on the job, and they’re running some subs, but Kiewit is doing the work.”

Federal records show that Suulutaaq is paying Kiewit $28.1 million – 53 percent of the total stimulus contract. Suulutaaq is keeping about $20.4 million, or 38 percent of the total. The rest, about $4.7 million, goes to other subcontractors, all from the lower 48 states.

In its statement, Suulutaaq said the company was complying with federal law regarding hiring subcontractors.

“Obviously, there cannot be any sort of guaranteed profit” built into the contract, the statement said.

The company said Boyle was a “transitional” CEO, and would soon be replaced by an Alaska native CEO.

California Watch reporter Agustin Armendariz contributed to this report.

 

In the digital age, half our electricity still comes from coal. DIRTY BUSINESS: "Clean Coal" and the Battle for Our Energy Future is a documentary that reveals the true social and environmental costs of coal power and tells the stories of innovators who are pointing the way to an alternative energy future. Guided by Rolling Stone reporter Jeff Goodell, the film examines what it means to remain dependent on a 19th century technology that is the largest single source of greenhouse gases. Can coal really be made clean? Can renewables and efficiency be produced
on a scale large enough replace coal? The film seeks answers in a series of stories shot in China, Saskatchewan, Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada and New York. COMING SOON.

Berkeley, CA and Vancouver, British Columbia – Today, the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and Paperny Films announced the launch of the Civil Rights Cold Case Project (www.coldcases.org), a multimedia investigation of unsolved civil rights murders that took place in the South decades ago. The project is an unprecedented collaboration, bringing together the power of award-winning investigative reporting, narrative writing, documentary filmmaking and interactive multimedia production to reveal the long-neglected truth behind the murders and the untold stories of victims of racial injustice.

The Project’s reporters, including John Fleming, Ben Greenberg, Jerry Mitchell, Stanley Nelson, and Melvin Claxton, are well known for their investigative news reports, some of which prosecutors have used to build criminal cases against killers and conspirators who had walked free for more than 40 years. To date, every civil rights murder case that has been reopened and successfully prosecuted was the direct result of an investigation initiated by a journalist.

“Investigative journalism has always played an important role in our democracy, and the Cold Case Project is no exception,” said Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. “These investigations will reopen unsolved murders that still cause pain to families and divide our communities. By seeking truth and justice, these investigative journalists and all of the partners involved will have real impact by moving our country closer to its goal of leaving racial conflict behind.”

The project is led by the Center for Investigative Reporting, Paperny Films and public television station WNET.org in New York, and also involves the National Security Archive, National Public Radio and leading law and journalism schools. Plans for the multimedia investigations, to be distributed in the coming years, include extensive print reporting, a television series, radio reports and rich new media to reach the broadest possible audience.

Support for the Cold Case Project to date has been provided by Atlantic Philanthropies, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, Open Society Institute, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

About Paperny Films
Paperny Films (www.papernyfilms.com) is an independent, Vancouver-based production company founded by David Paperny. In 1994 his HBO documentary The Broadcast Tapes of Dr. Peter was nominated for an Academy Award for its groundbreaking portrait of a doctor diagnosed with AIDS. Since then Paperny Films has tackled a broad spectrum of documentary and factual projects for a range of broadcasters including PBS, Discovery Channel, HGTV, Food Network, MTV/LOGO, and Planet Green. The company has created over 300 hours of television which has been seen in 36 countries worldwide and is consistently ranked in Realscreen Magazine's Global 100, a list of top international factual producers.

About the Center for Investigative Reporting
Founded in 1977, the Center for Investigative Reporting is the nation's oldest nonprofit investigative news organization. Its mission is to produce and distribute multimedia reporting that reveals injustice and abuse of power, has an impact, and is relevant to people's lives. CIR reports reach the public through television, print, radio and the web, appearing in outlets such as 60 Minutes, PBS Frontline, NPR, The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Politico and U.S. News & World Report. CIR stories have received numerous journalism awards including the Alfred I. du Pont-Columbia University Silver Baton, George Polk Award, Emmy Award, Investigative Reporters and Editors Award, and National Magazine Award for Reporting Excellence. More importantly, its reports have sparked congressional hearings and legislation, United Nations resolutions, public interest lawsuits and change in corporate policies.

The top 100 carbon dioxide-producing facilities in California generated 101,890,944 metric tons of CO2 in 2007, according to data recently released by the California Air Resources Board. We¹ve mapped that data to show where the 100 largest polluters are located. Power plants and oil refineries appear to be the largest culprits.

DISCLAIMER FROM AIR RESOURCES BOARD: This is the first year of reporting, and these numbers are self-reported and have not been verified. The air resources board has accredited the first batch of third-party verifiers and we will begin that process in 2010. Thus, these numbers are subject to change and could contain errors.The measurements reported here are CO2E, "carbon dioxide equivalent," as some greenhouse gas emissions might be other gases, like methane, which have different "global warming potentials." Almost all emissions reported are CO2.

CO2 conversions are from the EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.

An organization representing some of California’s biggest carbon polluters is working to alter the state’s global-warming law, while claiming to represent several “green” environmental companies that have since left the coalition after learning of its recent actions.

>> Read the full story on California Watch.

Large corporations working in California have reaped tens of millions of dollars in new federal stimulus funds, despite previous pollution violations, criminal probes, and allegations of fraud, a California Watch investigation has found.

Sergeant Adam Gray made it home from Iraq only to die in his barracks. Investigating his death, American RadioWorks pieces together a story of soldiers suffering psychological scars – because they abused Iraqi prisoners.

>> Listen to the story on American RadioWorks.

See letters tracking how Stewart Resnick asked for help, and got it.

Explore major contributions made to candidates and political committees by Stewart Resnick, his wife, and executives of his companies.

Wealthy corporate farmer Stewart Resnick has written check after check to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political campaigns. He’s hosted a party in her honor at his Beverly Hills mansion, and he’s entertained her at his second home in Aspen.

And in September, when Resnick asked Feinstein to weigh in on the side of agribusiness in a drought-fueled environmental dispute over the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, this wealthy grower and political donor got quick results, documents show.

On Sept. 4, Resnick wrote to Feinstein, complaining that the latest federal plan to rescue the Delta’s endangered salmon and smelt fisheries was “exacerbating the state’s severe drought” because it cut back on water available to irrigate crops. “Sloppy science” by federal wildlife agencies had led to “regulatory-induced water shortages,” he claimed.
“I really appreciate your involvement in this issue,” he wrote to Feinstein.

One week later, Feinstein forwarded Resnick’s letter to two U.S. Cabinet secretaries. In her own letter, she urged the administration to spend $750,000 for a sweeping re-examination of the science behind the entire Delta environmental protection plan.

The Obama administration quickly agreed, authorizing another review of whether restrictions on pumping irrigation water were necessary to save the Delta’s fish. The results could delay or change the course of the protection effort.

To environmentalists concerned with protecting the Delta, it was a dispiriting display of the political clout wielded by Resnick, who is among California’s biggest growers and among its biggest political donors.

Resnick’s Paramount Farms owns 118,000 acres of heavily irrigated California orchards. And since he began buying farmland 25 years ago, Resnick, his wife, and executives of his companies have donated $3.97 million to candidates and political committees, mostly in the Golden State, a California Watch review of public records shows.

They have given $29,000 to Feinstein and $246,000 more to Democratic political committees during years when she has sought re-election.

“It is very disappointing that one person can make this kind of request, and all of a sudden he has a senator on the phone, calling up (U.S. Interior Secretary Ken) Salazar,” says Jim Metropulos, senior advocate for the Sierra Club.

Feinstein’s letter was “based on what she believes to be the best policy for California and the nation,” spokesman Gil Duran said in a statement. “No other factors play a role in her decisions.”

With the Valley’s economy battered by recession and drought, Feinstein believed it was important to reconsider the restrictions on pumping Delta water for irrigation, he said. Many farmers have urged such a review, he added.

In an interview, Resnick said he didn’t leverage his relationship with Feinstein to persuade her to intervene.

“Honestly, I’m not saying we could not have done that, but I don’t think that’s the way it happened,” he said. Feinstein long has had an interest in water issues, and “she just wanted to get to the bottom of this,” Resnick said.

A Troubled Estuary
The Delta provides drinking water for 20 million people and irrigation for the state’s vast agriculture industry. But after decades of water diversions, Delta fish populations are in catastrophic decline, scientists say.

Prodded by lawsuits from environmentalists, federal wildlife agencies commissioned scientific studies of the Delta’s ecological crisis. Based on the studies, the agencies launched a restoration program that curtailed pumping for irrigation and increased water flows for migrating fish.

Meanwhile three years of drought have forced big cuts in water allotments for farmers, and swaths of valley farmland lie fallow. The recession pushed the unemployment rate in some valley towns to 40 percent.

As a result, the restrictions on pumping Delta water became the target of a series of noisy protests that played out over the summer. Farmers and politicians blamed “radical environmentalists” – and the Obama administration – for ignoring the drought’s impact on the valley’s economy. “The government decided that the farmers come second and the delta smelt come first,” as Sean Hannity of Fox News put it on a visit to Fresno.

Farm groups filed 13 different lawsuits to overturn the restoration plans, arguing that climate change, urbanization, and discharges from sewers and factories are causing the Delta’s problems. One suit was filed in August by the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, a non-profit founded by three executives of Resnick’s Paramount Farms. Resnick said he is “on the periphery” of the non-profit.

People familiar with Resnick’s political operation say Feinstein’s letter is a reminder of the power he can wield on water issues.

“Paramount Farms is a huge player,” says Gerald Meral, former director of the Planning and Conservation League environmental lobby.

“They are just way different from the average farmer – far more strategic” in their thinking, Meral says.

Wealth and Philanthropy
In Los Angeles, Resnick, 72, is known as one of the city’s wealthiest men and among its most generous philanthropists. He’s given $55 million to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, millions more for a psychiatric hospital at UCLA and an energy institute at Cal Tech.

His wife and business partner, Lynda Resnick, is an entrepreneur, socialite and writer. Her 2008 marketing book, “Rubies in the Orchard,” had blurbs from Martha Stewart and Rupert Murdoch, and her “Ruby Tuesday” blog is sometimes featured on huffingtonpost.com. The couple live in a Beverly Hills mansion that writer Amy Wilentz called “Little Versailles.” It’s the scene of parties for celebrities, charities and politicians – governors, senators and presidential candidates.

Resnick said he worked his way through UCLA “washing windows,” and made his first million running a burglar alarm service. Since then, the couple’s Roll International holding company has profitably operated a long list of businesses: Teleflora florist wire service; POM Wonderful pomegranate juice; Franklin Mint, a mail-order collectibles firm; and FIJI bottled water, imported from the South Seas.

Underpinning their fortune is agribusiness – 70,000 acres of pistachios and almonds, 48,000 acres of citrus and pomegranates – most of it in Kern County at the south end of the San Joaquin Valley, and all requiring irrigation to survive.

Resnick said he makes political donations “without much real strategy,” other than to give to centrists from both parties. Water issues aren’t a major factor, he said.

Records show Resnick often contributes to politicians with power over the bureaucracies that make decisions affecting farming’s financial bottom line.
Since 1993, the Resnicks have given $1.6 million to California governors, key players in determining state water policy. Their donation pattern seems non-partisan, with the money following who’s in power.

In the 1990s, they gave $238,000 to Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, records show, although Resnick says he doesn’t recall giving to Wilson and doesn’t think he ever met him.

The Resnicks also backed the Democrat who replaced Wilson, Gray Davis. They gave Davis $643,000 and $91,500 more to oppose Davis’ recall in 2003.

With Davis gone, Resnick began donating to Arnold Schwarzenegger — $221,000, records show — plus $50,000 to a foundation that pays for the governor’s foreign travel.

Other big donations include $776,000 to Democratic political committees; $134,000 to agribusiness political committees and initiatives; and $59,000 to Republican committees.

Hedging Bets
The Resnicks have developed easy access to some of the politicians to whom they donate.

Schwarzenegger has called them “some of my dearest, dearest friends,” and like Feinstein, he has urged a review of the science behind the Delta restoration plan. Davis appointed Resnick co-chair to a special state committee on water and agriculture.
A more enduring benefit came during Wilson’s administration, when Paramount Farms gained part ownership of what was to have been a state-owned storage bank for surplus water.

As recounted in a report by the advocacy group Public Citizen, in the 1980s state water officials devised a plan to ease the impact of future droughts by collecting excess water during rainy years and storing it underground.

The water was to be pumped south via the California Aqueduct, then put into a vast aquifer in Kern County that could hold a year’s water supply for one million homes.
The state spent about $75 million to buy a 20,000-acre site and to design the water bank. But in 1994, state water officials transferred the water bank site to the local Kern County Water Agency in exchange for significant water rights, Resnick said. The water agency developed the water bank in partnership with four other public agencies and one private business — a subsidiary of Paramount Farms. Paramount wound up controlling a 48 percent share of the bank.

Resnick said the state had been unable to develop the water bank and gave up on the project. The local agencies and his company spent about $50 million to engineer the project and make the bank a success, he said.

Paramount’s control of the bank continues to infuriate some environmentalists. In recent dry years, the bank sold some of its stored water back to the state at a premium, Public Citizen reported.

“Resnick likes to call himself a farmer, but he is in the business of selling public water, with none of the profits returned to the taxpayers,” says Walter Shubin, a director of the Revive the San Joaquin environmental group in Fresno.

A supportive community
When she first emerged as a statewide candidate in the 1990 governor’s race, Feinstein made little headway in the Central Valley, and she was defeated by Wilson. After she was elected to the Senate two years later, Feinstein set out to befriend farmers.

Her attention to agriculture and water issues has paid off, says Dan Schnur, director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former Wilson aide

“That community has been very supportive of her, much more for her than for most statewide Democrats,” Schnur says.

The Resnicks contributed $4,000 to Feinstein’s 1994 re-election campaign. When she ran again in 2000, they gave her $7,000. Resnick also donated $225,000 to Democratic political committees that were active in key Democratic races.

Resnick said he first got to know Feinstein personally 10 or 12 years ago because the senator also has a second home in Aspen.

In August 2000, when the Democratic National convention was in Los Angeles, the Resnicks hosted a cocktail party for Feinstein in their home. Among the guests were the singer Nancy Sinatra, then-Gov. Davis and former President Jimmy Carter, the Los Angeles Times reported.

In 2007, they gave $10,000 to the Fund for the Majority, Feinstein’s political action committee. In June, another committee to which Resnick has contributed, the California Citrus Mutual PAC, spent $2,500 to host a fundraiser for Feinstein, records show.

Feinstein also socializes with the Resnicks. Arianna Huffington, the blog editor and former candidate for governor, told the New York Observer in 2006 that she had
spent New Year’s with Feinstein at the Resnicks’ home in Aspen. “We wore silly hats and had lots of streamers and everything,” she said of the party.

On Aug. 26, Feinstein met with growers and water agency officials in Coalinga, Fresno County. While there, she told the Fresno Bee that she wanted the U.S. Interior Department to reconsider the biological opinions underlying the Delta protection plan.

The following week, she received the letter from Resnick, which was first reported by the Contra Costa Times. She then sent her own letters to Interior Secretary Salazar and U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. Days later, the administration agreed to pay $750,000 to have the National Academy of Sciences re-study the scientific issues underlying the Delta protection plan.

Last month, state lawmakers enacted a package of measures aimed at reforming the state’s outmoded water allocation system. The centerpiece – an $11 billion bond to build new dams and canals – must be approved by voters.

California Watch is a project of the Center for Investigative Reporting with offices in the Bay Area and Sacramento.

This story was edited by Mark Katches and copy edited by William Cooley at California Watch

Aafia Siddiqui was missing for five years and reappeared in Afghanistan in 2008.

In May 2009, Petra Bartosiewicz received the first H.D. Lloyd Investigative Fund grant for her report on the case of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who vanished from her hometown of Karachi in 2003 along with her three children. At the time Siddiqui went missing, she was suspected by U.S. law enforcement of being an Al Qaeda operative, and the prevailing belief, at least among Pakistanis, was that she was "disappeared" by the U.S. in connection with the global war on terrorism. Then in August 2008 Siddiqui reappeared in Afghanistan, and her story grew stranger still. "The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes Its Enemies Disappear," Bartosiewicz's investigation of Siddiqui's case and the phenomenon in which hundreds of individuals who have gone missing in Pakistan since the attacks of September 11, 2001, appears in the November 2009 issue of Harper's Magazine. Her reporting on the Siddiqui case will be part of her forthcoming book on terrorism trials in the U.S., "The Best Terrorists We Could Find," to be published by Nation Books in 2010.

This began as an essay about "how I got the story" of Aafia Siddiqui, but despite many months of reporting, I never really did "get" the story. I have no definitive answer as to where Siddiqui was during her five missing years, or who, if anyone, picked her up, or who held her, or how she ended up in Afghanistan, where she was finally captured. But I realized along the way there was another story to tell.

"The Intelligence Factory" examines how our system for apprehending terrorists has created an infinite demand for "intelligence," which comes largely from detainees like Siddiqui. While the United States has devoted great energy to apprehending and interrogating these detainees, there are few mechanisms to determine the veracity of the intelligence being generated. The role of "intelligence" goes to the heart of a fundamental dilemma in tracking terrorism in that in almost every case the crime hasn't happened yet. Law enforcement is looking for someone who hasn't done the deed—they haven't blown up a building, they haven't hijacked a commercial airliner, they haven't killed anyone. The danger then is that what the criminal justice system must deal with is not the subject's alleged actions, but their suspected intentions.

I've covered terrorism trials in the U.S. for the past five years and Siddiqui's case, like so many others, is at first glance a straightforward crime story. She is charged with attempted murder for shooting at a group of U.S. soldiers and FBI agents while in custody in Afghanistan. But the criminal charges elide more daunting questions. Where was she during her five missing years? Where were her children? Is she the fearsome extremist portrayed in much of the media—the Al Qaeda mom—or a woman caught in a series of far more complicated but ultimately less nefarious circumstances?

The answers make all the difference in understanding her intentions and thereby framing the criminal case in which she is now embroiled. Mind-reading, needless to say, is not supposed to be the purview of our courts. From the start I knew there was almost no chance I would interview Siddiqui herself, even though by the time I began my reporting she'd been transported to the U.S. to face indictment in a New York federal court. The Justice Department rarely allows journalists to interview defendants before trial, but even if they had, I doubt Siddiqui would have spoken with me.

In the weeks after her arrival in New York she was disoriented and in pain from a gunshot wound she'd received in Afghanistan. She didn't want to speak to her defense attorneys, let alone a reporter, she didn't want to appear in court, and she was deteriorating mentally, seeing apparitions in her jail cell.

So the mystery I tried to solve was why Siddiqui went missing in the first place, and this is how I came to investigate the business of intelligence gathering.

In Siddiqui's case, as in so many others, getting to the root of the evidence against a defendant is additionally hindered, if not made impossible, by the fact that most former and current intelligence officials will only speak to reporters off the record or on background. Unnamed sources, by virtue of shielding their identity, can feed a reporter spin and misinformation with greater impunity, and in stories involving "intelligence information," there is a greater chance this information will land unvetted in the public sphere, and readers will not know whether they are reading the truth or whether some hidden agenda is being played out.

The use of unnamed sources is a bad trend in journalism in general, one that has been exacerbated by journalists themselves, who, generally for expediency, acquiesce to it. There is a small circle of former intelligence officers willing to speak openly to the press, who are invoked repeatedly and liberally by the media (I challenge anyone to find a major national security related book in which ex-CIA officer Vince Cannistraro is not cited), and while these individuals certainly have expertise worth sharing, the pool of information about the inner workings of the intelligence community is inevitably far shallower than the coterie of talkative ex-intel officers would make it appear. Moreover, it's become standard that government officials, including, bizarrely, those who work in the public affairs offices of the various law enforcement and intelligence branches, insist their interviews are off the record or on background.

The CIA press officer I spoke to for the Siddiqui story, George Little, was actually startled when in the middle of our one brief conversation, after we covered a series of entirely benign factchecking questions, he asked me if we were on the record. When I said yes, he quickly ended the phone call. It was against this backdrop that I had to weigh the government's initial assertions about Siddiqui—that she was an Al Qaeda operative, that she was a potential suicide bomber, that she'd been on the run for five years, that she'd married Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's nephew. To try to get some sense of context for Siddiqui's life, I traveled to Pakistan this spring to meet with her family, who after years of being questioned by intelligence and law enforcement officials were understandably paranoid about speaking with a journalist. Siddiqui's sister was convinced from the start I was employed by the CIA, and I don't believe I was ever able to persuade her otherwise.

But over six weeks of reporting in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, I came to see that no matter what Siddiqui might have done, her life at the time she vanished was in turmoil and could not have helped but influence her actions. In the space of a single year she went through a bitter divorce, witnessed the death of her father, and gave birth to her third child—alone. I did not leave Pakistan with all the answers I sought, but the trip made apparent the greater political context in which her disappearance played out.

As I expected, Pakistan on the ground is far different than the mostly violent images that dominate the U.S. media, in part because the heightened risk is commonplace enough that it has become an accepted fact of life. While I was in Lahore the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team was ambushed by a team of masked gunman in the middle of the workday, but by sunset traffic had resumed to its normal flow at the shooting site.

The one place I wanted to travel to but was unable was Ghazni, Afghanistan, the scene of Siddiqui's arrest in August 2008. Ghazni is about 150 miles south of Kabul, and the highway joining the two cities is among the most dangerous stretches in Afghanistan. Journalists braver than I have made it to Ghazni by land, but the only marginally safe way is by air, which would have required hitching a ride with a United Nations transport during one of its regular runs. There had been a number of kidnappings of foreign journalists around the time I wanted to travel, so I hired a local reporter in Ghazni to conduct a series of video interviews with police officials and residents who witnessed Siddiqui's arrest. But as with so many other aspects of this story, the completely divergent accounts, in this case from individuals who were actual witnesses to the event, brought little clarity.

The best chance for definitive answers about what transpired in Ghazni will likely come at Siddiqui's trial, now scheduled for January 2010. It is unlikely, however, that the bigger mysteries surrounding her disappearance will be resolved to any satisfaction. Nor will the trial address one of the most troubling aspects of Siddiqui's story—the two youngest of her three children, Mariam and Suleiman, remain missing. Suleiman, born in Karachi and just six months old when he vanished with his mother, is suspected to be dead. Mariam, now eleven years old, was born in the U.S., making her both a citizen and a minor, and meriting an investigation by our government.

When I asked the State Department to comment on whether any effort was being made to locate her, the response was "no comment." Then, because of Siddiqui's pending trial I was referred to the Justice Department. When I called the Justice Department to ask about Mariam, I was informed that her disappearance has nothing to do with the criminal case and that they would have no comment either.

It's likely that much more than the whereabouts of a child will remain a mystery.

Petra Bartosiewicz is a journalist living in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach her at www.petrabart.com. Her original article was published in Harper's Magazine in November: "The Intelligence Factory: How America Makes its Enemies Disappear." Bartosiewicz also wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the LA Times.

Get the answers to your questions about California's class-size reduction program as well as who to contact

How did the program start?
The program was initiated in 1996, to reduce average class sizes in K-3 grades to 20 students to every teacher. At the time, K-3 class sizes in California averaged 28.6 students, among the highest teacher-student ratios in the nation. It was motivated by research in Tennessee that showed that students in classes from 13 to 17 students did better academically.

Do school districts have to participate?
No. The program is voluntary. School districts don't have to participate, but the financial incentives – along with the program's popularity among parents and teachers – have resulted in almost every school district participating. Roughly 1.85 million K-3 students benefit from the program, at an annual cost of $1.8 billion to the state, according to 2007-08 figures.

How does the subsidy work?
School districts are required to monitor how many students are in a class, and report attendance figures to the state. To qualify for the full subsidy – currently $1,071 per student – school districts have to have average enrollment of 20.4-students-per teacher or fewer. The 20-to-1 ratio is an average of the daily attendance counts for each of a school's classes. School districts qualify for half of the subsidy if they limit class size to 20 students or fewer just during the time they receive instruction in math and reading, not for the entire school day.

Can California still afford the program?
Because of its popularity, the Legislature has preserved funding for class-size reduction, making it one of the few education programs to survive the budget axe. But because Sacramento does not cover the full costs, the Legislature has made it easier for school districts to raise class sizes. Until recently, schools lost their entire subsidy if the average reached 21.9 students. Now they will lose 20 percent of the subsidy if K-3 class size reach 24 students and 30 percent if class sizes go to 25 or more.

How does California class size compare with other states?
In 1996, California's K-3 class sizes were an average of 28.6 children – among the largest in the nation. The class-size reduction program brought California's K-3 class sizes in line with those in many other states. However, when looking across all 12 grades, California still lags far behind most states on another standard measure, teacher-student ratios. In 2007-08 California still had a higher teacher-student ratio than all other states except Utah and Arizona. Recent teacher layoffs, along with increases in class sizes, threaten to push California even further behind other states. (The ratios are reached by dividing student enrollments by the total number of full-time equivalent teachers, even though not all are classroom teachers.)

Who do I contact about the program?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
916.445.2841
gov.ca.gov/interact#email

The governor is the major single decision-maker in how education dollars are spent.

Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento
916.651.4006
senator.steinberg@senate.ca.gov

The Senate leader is often considered the second most powerful politician in the state – behind only Schwarzenegger. He can shape and influence budget and policy decisions coming out of the Legislature.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles
916.319.2047
speaker.bass@assembly.ca.gov

Bass' office was instrumental in providing school districts more flexibility in how they spend class-size reduction funds. She has influence over all education policy coming out of the Legislature.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell
916.319.0800
superintendent@cde.ca.gov

The state's highest-ranking education official was a major backer of class-size reduction and helps set policy for the state.

California Watch’s report on class size appeared in various media, including several newspapers including the Los Angeles Daily News, Modesto Bee and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

As a part of our collaboration with KQED Radio, the class size story also aired on KQED's The California Report. The program was also heard on more than two dozen other public radio stations around California. California Watch Director Louis Freedberg will appear on KQED's Forum to discuss the class size issue.

Bay Area television station KGO (Channel 7) also carried a report by investigative reporter Dan Noyes on the class size issue.

In a new collaboration, KCRA, the #1 station in the Sacramento market, will also carry a story on California's class size issue.

We thank all partners for being a part of this important story.

 
 

A California Watch survey of the state's 30 largest, K-12 school districts found that class sizes in kindergarten through third grade are increasing beyond 20 in many districts.

In general, the figures in this map refer to teacher-student ratios set by the district for the 2009-10 school year. Actual class size may vary at individual schools depending on enrollments and attendance. District officials provided all responses.

Select any state on the left to see how it compares to California in terms of student-to-teacher ration for public, K-12 schools.

Source:  National Education Association (NEA) Rankings and Estimates 2006–07. Figures refer to the ratio between students and all full-time, credentialed teaching staff in a school during the 2006-2007 school year. This is the most recent year for which figures are available.

Teachers and administrators at Plummer Elementary in California's San Fernando Valley discuss how large class sizes affect their instruction.

What does large class size mean for teachers? (Part 1)

How do teachers manage their classrooms with more students? (Part 2)

What does larger class size mean for teachers? (Part 3)

Most of California's largest school districts are increasing class sizes in kindergarten through third grade, eroding the most expensive education reform in the state’s history.



California Watch surveyed the 30 largest K-12 school districts in the state and found that many schools are pushing class sizes to 24 in some or all of the early grades. Other districts have raised class sizes to 30 students – reverting to levels not seen in more than a decade. 

The changes at more than two-thirds of the districts surveyed have parents and teachers concerned that the academic performance of millions of children will suffer. California already ranks 48th in the nation in terms of student to teacher ratios.

And new measures are in place that will allow districts statewide to raise class sizes even higher and still receive more than $1 billion in state aid — money that was originally intended to reward schools that kept class sizes low.

The class-size reduction program was adopted 13 years ago with much fanfare. Its goal was to bring the state’s overcrowded K-3 classrooms down to a maximum of 20 students for every teacher in the lower grades. As an incentive to participate, Sacramento gave school districts a generous annual subsidy for every child – now $1,071 per child.

Carol Kocivar, California PTA’s president-elect, said that adding just four students more than the base level of 20 represents a significant increase.

“When you start inching up above 20, kids don’t get the individual attention they need,” she said.

The state has invested about $22 billion in direct subsidies into reducing class size, including $1.8 billion this school year. This is on top of billions more that individual school districts have had to pay to cover the full costs.

The program was rooted in research from other states that showed students in smaller classrooms were more successful academically.   

Even though the state never implemented measurements to track the academic impact of class-size reduction, the program has been enormously popular among parents and teachers. Yet because of the state’s budget crisis, school officials are finding it harder than ever to sustain.

That’s the case in both the Mount Diablo Unified School District, in Contra Costa County, and the San Jose Unified School District. In Orange County’s Capistrano Unified School District, second and third grade classes have grown to an average of 30.5 students. In Los Angeles, which enrolls 10 percent of California’s students, K-3 class sizes are creeping up to 24 in many schools.

“In better times it is something that should be protected, but in the times we are in, it is not something we can afford to continue,” said Don Iglesias, San Jose’s superintendent, noting that raising class sizes to 30 will save his district $4 million this year alone.

At Oliveira Elementary School, in a quiet residential neighborhood of Fremont, kindergarten teacher Cheryl Accurso is adjusting to a 30-student classroom for the first time in her 11-year career.

“My worry is that with 30 kids in the class, I won’t be able to reach out and touch, and get to every child in my classroom,” she said. “When they come in the morning, I make sure I tap them on the shoulder or pat them on the head, and say their names, so that there is at least one time when I know I can get to all the children.”

California’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, who authored the class-size-reduction legislation when he was a state senator, said that it is no accident that elementary school students in recent years have achieved significant academic gains.

“That is now in jeopardy because we have so many school districts walking away from class-size reduction,” he said.

For most of the program’s existence, schools lost the entire subsidy if the average class size hit 21. That has proved to be a powerful incentive for schools to participate. All but about a dozen of the state’s 883 eligible districts have done so.

The state Legislature has designated lower class sizes as a top priority for education spending. The program was one of a handful that escaped the budget axe this year.

At the same time, however, lawmakers acted earlier this year to make it easier for schools to abandon the program. The move allows school districts to raise K-3 classes to as high as 31 students on average — at least for the next three years. Schools that raise the class size above 25 can still receive 70 percent of the subsidies they have received in the past. In past years, K-3 classes of 22 or more students would have been denied state funding through the program.

In theory, school districts could spend more than $1.2 billion of the $1.8 billion set aside for the program on classes with 25 or more students.

Rick Simpson, deputy chief of staff to Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, and her chief adviser on education policy, said lawmakers are hoping the popularity of the program will force school districts to keep class sizes small, despite reducing the penalties for exceeding the 20-student cap. He said the goal was to give school districts more flexibility in how they spend class-size reduction funds, something they have sought for years.

But former Gov. Pete Wilson, who initiated class-size reduction when the state enjoyed a budget surplus in 1996, said the recent changes “totally defeat the purpose of the program. If you get 70 percent of the funds for doing nothing, where is that money going? It is not accomplishing the purpose for which the program was devised.”

One purpose was to bring California’s class sizes down — to get them in line with those of other states. That did happen in the elementary grades. But by 2007, California had larger student-teacher ratios than every state except Utah and Arizona across all 12 grades.

Larger K-3 class sizes now threaten to push California even further behind.

“Having the largest class size in America is a crime and a shame,” said Delaine Eastin, the former superintendent of public instruction who oversaw the implementation of the class-size-reduction initiative until 2002.

It is not only poor districts that are affected. In fact, in some cases, districts serving large numbers of low-income and minority students have benefited from the additional $1.25 billion in Title 1 stimulus funds California receives from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

And nearly 500 of the state’s lowest-performing schools are still receiving funds from the Quality Education Investment Act, passed by the Legislature in 2007. These funds have allowed school districts like Los Angeles to maintain some of their K-3 class sizes at previous levels. The Fremont Unified School District has so far been able to keep class sizes to 20 in the first, second and third grades. But in kindergarten, enrollments have risen to 30.

This year, at Oliveira Elementary, Accurso has her students sitting in groups of six, at five tables, instead of groups of four, at five tables, as in previous years. Across the yard, one of the bungalows brought to the school when the class-size reduction program began in 1996, now stands empty.

But Accurso isn’t nostalgic about the smaller class sizes.

“My focus is on the 30 kids I have in front of me and what I can do for each of them,” she said. “I can’t be thinking about what might have been. I can’t go there.”

She says she is managing with the extra kids – in part because she gets help from another teacher for about two hours, as well as parent volunteers. “We’re just worried that we won’t be able to get them where they need to be at the end of the year,” she said.

In Los Angeles, each of the district’s 524 elementary schools could choose between retaining all their teachers and keeping class sizes low – or laying off teachers and keeping support staff such as school nurses, math coaches and “intervention coordinators.” At Plummer Elementary in the San Fernando Valley, principal Angel Barrett, made the painful choice to let go seven of the school’s first and second year teachers, out of a teaching staff of 45. As in many schools across Los Angeles, her classrooms are more crowded this year.

“You guys are doing a great job at listening,” Norma Plascencia, a teacher with 22 years of classroom experience, told her 24 second-graders on a recent morning, before launching into a lesson about family trees.

“It doesn’t make it impossible to teach, it just makes it harder,” she said. Plascencia said she and other teachers are doing much more advance planning to take into account the extra students. “We are not mass-producing items; we’re not making shoes or pizza. We are dealing with human beings — so four extra bodies are not just four extra bodies — it is everything that comes with them, or doesn’t come with them.”

Will it affect how her students will do this year?

“It better not,” she said. “You have to assume they can reach for the stars. Are some going to fall by the wayside? We’ll find out this year. Is there a possibility? Yes, I think there is.’’

Her comment points to the controversy that has so far been waged mostly in academic circles – whether class-size reduction makes a difference in boosting student performance. Dominic Brewer, a USC professor, said there is no compelling research showing that class-size reduction results in improved academic performance in California. What research does exist has typically been done in other states and in classrooms with even smaller enrollments than in California.

“A class of 20 may be terrible for an ineffective teacher,” he said. “And a great teacher can do great things with 30.”

Some education leaders who have been lukewarm about the program are now making the case that the funds could be better used.

“I don’t think 20-to-1 is sacred,” said L.A. schools Superintendent Ramon Cortines. More important, he said, “is the kind of quality time you spend with your students, and how you divide your time in the classroom.” To tackle high drop-out rates, he believes the real need is for smaller classes in middle and high schools, where class sizes in his district have soared to 40 and higher in some schools.

San Jose’s Iglesias said that even if the state’s economy rebounds, he’s not sure he’d put money back into the class-size-reduction program. “I’d put it into longer school days or Saturday classes rather than this,” he said.

But California superintendent O’Connell doesn’t share any of these concerns. He said his experience as a teacher in Ventura County convinced him of the merits of smaller classes.

The same goes for Doug Wheeler, a veteran kindergarten teacher in San Pablo, just north of Richmond, who said that the larger the class, the more difficult it is for teachers to “deliver the goods.” This year he volunteered to take more students into his bilingual class rather than having some of them be cut from the program. He now has 27 students.

“Teaching is not just standing in front of the class and delivering a lesson,” he said. “It’s about working with kids who are in danger of falling far behind. To get really good results, it has to be one on two, or even one on one.”

This story was edited by Editorial Director Mark Katches and copy edited by William Cooley.

On Brazil's Atlantic coast, people with some of the world's lowest carbon footprints are being displaced—so their forests can become offsets for US corporations. CIR's Mark Schapiro reports for Mother Jones.

>> Read the full article on MotherJones.com.

In the new economy created by global warming, forests are turning into a valuable commodity. Promising not to cut them down is one of the most popular ways companies would like to offset their emissions. Correspondent Mark Schapiro follows the trail of one of those offset projects deep into Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.

This multimedia feature is a joint project between CIR and FRONTLINE/World.