Latest news with #RIDE
CTV News
16-07-2025
- CTV News
A late-night R.I.D.E. stop led to a slew of charges
A breathalyzer with handcuffs shown in this undated file image. Photo: DUFFERIN OPP A Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere (R.I.D.E.) stop on Centre Street in Orangeville netted an alleged impaired driver. Dufferin Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) pulled over a car at 1:15 a.m. on July 4. Police officers determined the Orangeville resident was impaired and charged him with: Operation while impaired - blood alcohol concentration (80 plus) Operation while impaired - alcohol and drugs Driving a motor vehicle with liquor readily available Driving a motor vehicle with no currently validated permit The accused is scheduled to appear before the Ontario Court of Justice in Orangeville. In addition, his driver's licence was suspended, and his vehicle was impounded. The Dufferin OPP asks all motorists to plan ahead when consuming alcohol or drugs. If you suspect someone is driving while impaired, call 911 immediately or contact the OPP at 1-888-310-1122, or submit an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
RIDE disability rights case settlement disrupts R.I. House final budget preparations
The Rhode Island Department of Education's Westminster Street entrance in Providence is shown. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current) The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) may soon have to pay $1.86 million to settle a class action lawsuit that claimed the state had failed to provide special education services for students with disabilities between the ages of 21 and 22. That news presented a last minute complication for the Rhode Island House Committee on Finance's fiscal 2026 state budget preparations Tuesday. 'We literally worked to, like, 15 minutes ago to do this budget,' House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi told reporters at a press briefing on the $14.33 billion spending plan that began after 9 p.m. Tuesday night. He cited a figure of nearly $2 million needed because of an adverse ruling against RIDE, but details were unavailable at the time. The case of K.L. v. Rhode Island Board of Education is close to a settlement, Victor Morente, a RIDE spokesperson, confirmed via email on Wednesday morning. He said officials were still drafting a 'tentative' agreement that is still subject to approval from Rhode Island District Court as well as the Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, RIDE's governing body. The settlement comes nearly seven years after a federal appeals court ruled that RIDE shortchanged students with disabilities in the 2010s. The class action suit began in 2014 with a single plaintiff: A Warwick parent filing on behalf of their daughter, a Rhode Island student on the autism spectrum who also had ADHD and severe anxiety. But the student, named K.L. in the lawsuit, aged out of state-sponsored educational accommodations at age 21, before she could finish her high school diploma — something she should have been eligible to receive until age 22 under federal disability laws, her attorneys argued. K.L. had an individualized education program (IEP), which tailors learning for students with disabilities and helps to address their needs. These support programs are the roadmaps to ensure local schools education agencies supply students with a free and 'appropriate' public education per mandates derived from the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Students 'who were over 21 and under 22 as of February 10, 2012, or turned 21 before July 1, 2019,' Morente wrote, would be eligible for relief under the draft settlement if they did not receive their high school diploma and aged out of support services under previous Rhode Island law. When the case came before the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, it ruled in favor of RIDE by determining that 'public education' under the federal law would not include adult learning for students with disabilities over age 21. The class members then took their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, which vacated the lower court's judgment. We literally worked to, like, 15 minutes ago to do this budget. – House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi during a press briefing Tuesday Senior Judge Kermit Victor Lipez wrote in the first circuit's October 2018 majority opinion that the lower court had relied on too 'narrow' a definition of public education. 'At present, if a 21-year-old student in Rhode Island does not complete high school for a non-disability related reason — say, because she was previously incarcerated — the state will provide her the services needed to attain a secondary-school level of academic proficiency and a route to obtain a high-school level degree,' Lipez wrote. 'However, if the same 21-year-old does not complete high school due to a qualifying disability, the state currently does not offer her ability-appropriate services to attain the same level of educational achievement.' That imbalance violated disability law, the First Circuit decided, and the court boomeranged the case back to the District of Rhode Island for the two parties to determine remedies for class members. Sonja Deyoe, the attorney representing class members since the suit's inception, wrote in an email Wednesday that the First Circuit ruling was pivotal for disability rights in Rhode Island. 'The law previously had limited that education until the age of 21,' Deyoe wrote. 'This was a major change for disabled individuals in Rhode Island.' The First Circuit's ruling predates current RIDE leadership, and in August 2019, then-new education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green issued a memo instructing how state education officials should comply with the ruling. 'It is now clear that if they have not already done so, school districts … must comply with the recent First Circuit decision and should make services available and give careful consideration to the cost of prospective compliance,' Infante-Green wrote, adding that it was still unclear 'how appropriate remedies will be provided to those eligible class members.' Deyoe echoed that sentiment, saying that determining damages under the lawsuit 'did span a very long time,' with both parties trying to avoid forcing a legal decision as to whether individual class members could receive relief for damages. 'Whether individualized compensatory education damages could be awarded to the individual class members was always disputed by the RI Department of Education,' Deyoe said. The settlement also needs to be approved by the members of the class, Deyoe said. The currently draft spares class members from having to undergo individual trials to determine compensational education benefits. 'We are very hopeful the settlement will be approved, but the class members always have the opportunity to object and the Court may approve the settlement only with certain changes,' Deyoe wrote. 'We cannot predict that yet…While all of this took a long time to achieve, we do believe this is a good resolution for the class members.' The funding source to resolve the settlement was not immediately available from RIDE or the House on Wednesday. But Shekarchi detailed in a statement over email that the sudden news had cost the House some time on Tuesday. 'After the budget is posted for consideration by the House Finance Committee 48 hours in advance, there are always a number of policy decisions, options and calculations that must be finalized,' wrote the Speaker. 'The notification of a $1.86 million additional expense on the morning of the budget adoption certainly complicated the final process.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lawmakers seek answers in faulty school funding estimates
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Lou DiPalma, a Middletown Democrat, holds his head during during a committee hearing on Thursday, May 22, 2025, during a presentation on a state enrollment data debacle that may leave Rhode Island public schools underfunded by about $24 million. (Photo by Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current) An outdated calculation by the state education department and Gov. Dan McKee's budget office last fall now leaves Rhode Island schools facing a $24 million budget shortfall. 'This is not your fault, but it is your problem,' Sen. Jonathon Acosta, a Central Falls Democrat, told Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) officials at a legislative hearing Thursday. 'It's our problem.' The discrepancy was driven by the data, or lack thereof, on low-income and multilingual learner students in the state. Both populations factor in the statewide education funding formula that determines aid to local school districts. The Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) generates enrollment numbers in March and October, using data provided by school districts. Typically, the governor's budget office uses the March data when preparing the education funding formula around August, ahead of the release of the governor's budget the following January. But this time round, McKee's office used the October 2024 data collected by RIDE, which showed declining enrollment overall, and therefore fewer students in poverty. The new March numbers, according to RIDE, showed things swinging in the opposite direction, with more English learners and students living in poverty than accounted for in the fiscal 2026 budget McKee submitted months ago. 'The October data hasn't been great the last few years,' Mark Dunham, the education department's finance director, told senators. 'And then 2025 was the first year that October was used.' The discrepancy includes roughly $12 million in basic education aid and another $12 million tied to the Student Success Factor, a weight in the state's school funding formula that gives additional support to districts with many students living in poverty. For fiscal year 2025, the state began using October enrollment figures instead, and RIDE reported a total enrollment of 136,000 students, while the governor's budget used 134,000 for the number of students statewide. The March 2025 update later corrected the count to 135,600 — revealing a roughly 1,000-student gap between RIDE's projection and the updated total. 'OK, so the numbers in October were incomplete for your assessment, we [now] believe the numbers in March are complete,' said committee chair and Middletown Democratic Sen. Lou DiPalma. 'I'm trying to understand how we have a new set of data here. How do we believe what we have that this is correct? How do I know that the 39 cities and towns that provide the data are still not incomplete?' 'It looks to us that they did not completely update their poverty numbers,' Dunham said of local school districts who had to submit data. The state currently uses food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) enrollment to calculate student poverty, applying a 1.6 multiplier to estimate the real total need. RIDE has also considered matching students through Medicaid, but the state has not yet fully incorporated it into the formula. 'An overwhelming number of states in the country use Medicaid match as their proxy for poverty,' Dunham said, then described what that approach could mean to the state budget. 'At the time we suggested it, it was about a $20 million number. Now, with all the new data we have, the enrollment updates, it's a $40 million number.' Victor Morente, a RIDE spokesperson, said in an email Thursday, that RIDE updates the data twice a year as part of its own preparation for submitting a budget request to the governor. 'At this time, research is ongoing to determine if there is an actual under identification,' Morente said. Legislation in 2022 changed how students are counted, Morente said, which may have resulted in the undercount. 'We were probably under-counting the number of students in poverty in certain districts,' Office of Management and Budget Director Brian Daniels told lawmakers. 'And the broader way of fixing it…is changing your student success factor based on the wealth of each individual community.' 'But if you do that … are you setting 40% [aid] as the floor, or is that the starting point?…It gets very complicated, because in that case, you have winners and losers. So I think this is a longer term issue. We do need to fix this.' Daniels said the budget office will be submitting a budget amendment which reflects the changes in enrollment from March. Dunham said states like Massachusetts and Connecticut are facing similar data collection issues when it comes to low-income students. 'I think we'd have to really rebuild the whole formula to be the same as Massachusetts, because I think the core [funding amount] is a lot less, or at least less, than ours,' Dunham said. 'But we do wonder. We do understand that there are different levels of poverty that we should be able to address.' Dunham ended his comments on a resigned note: 'Even if we match all the kids exactly, we still are probably going to undercount a lot of the kids that are eligible for different reasons.' DiPalma shrugged. 'Until we change the system, that's what it is,' he said. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
CTV News
19-05-2025
- General
- CTV News
OPP report multiple long weekend impaired driving incidents in cottage country
Officers from City of Kawartha Lakes OPP conduct a RIDE program. (Source: OPP Central Region/Facebook)
CTV News
18-05-2025
- CTV News
Highway 69 traffic stop nets $31K in suspected drugs and cash
An Ontario Provincial Police officer conducts a traffic stop as part of Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere (R.I.D.E.) operations in northern Ontario in this undated photo. (File photo/Eric Taschner/CTV News Northern Ontario)
