Naheed Mangi, 70, was convicted earlier this year of intentional damage to a protected computer. Prosecutors say that after being fired, she changed the database by replacing patient information with gibberish and childish insults like, “doctor too stupid.”
While the incident happened in 2013, Mangi wasn’t indicted until 2018, and wasn’t convicted until a jury trial last February, records show. Prosecutors asked for a 10-month sentence to be split between jail and house arrest, but instead Senior U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila sentenced Mangi to probation.
Her attorney argued in court that no time in custody was a just outcome.
“Notably, for the seven years since her arrest, Ms. Mangi has complied with her conditions of release. She is 70 years old and has lived at the same address for the past 28 years,” a defense sentencing memo says. “Ms. Mangi is currently unemployed, living a solitary life on her social security and savings.”
Mangi must pay $10,520.69 in restitution, court records show.
Mangi was working on a Stanford University study, sponsored by Genentech, testing a new, experimental pharmaceutical treatment for breast cancer. Prosecutors argued her actions betrayed the trust of patients who agreed to participate in the study, and that it was motivated by Mangi’s hurt feelings from being fired.
]]>What’s good for Riverside County is good for the whole state: After a pilot to automatically admit high school students into the California State University system in the Inland Empire county took off last fall, lawmakers this year passed a law to greenlight a similar program statewide next fall.
Leaders at the California State University last year launched the pilot to attract more students to the university system and to steer some to campuses that have been struggling with enrollment declines.
RELATED: Cal State East Bay receives $50 million donation from MacKenzie Scott
The pilot worked like this: University officials and high schools in Riverside County pored over student course completion and grade data to identify every county high school senior who was eligible for admission to the 10 of 22 Cal State campuses chosen for the pilot. Then the students received a brochure in the mail last fall before the Nov. 30 submission deadline, plus digital correspondence, telling them they were provisionally admitted as long as they submitted an application to one or more Cal State campuses, even those not in the pilot, and maintained their high school grades.
Starting next fall, all students in California will be eligible for the automatic admissions program, which will expand the roster of participating Cal State campuses to 16. Cal State will release more information on the program’s implementation in February, its website says.
In justifying the expanded program during a legislative hearing, bill author Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Democrat from Napa, said college should be as seamless a transition from high school as it is for students finishing one grade and advancing to the next. “It’s entirely an invention of us, the gap between 12th grade and college. … The same gap does not exist between elementary school and junior high or junior high and high school.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 640, passed without any opposition and was signed into law by the governor. The program doesn’t mean students can enter any major at the campuses they pick. Some majors may require students to show higher high school grades or tougher courses if those programs have fewer openings than student demand. For Californians, the standard minimum GPA for entry is 2.5 in a series of college-preperatory courses.
Students will also be free to apply to the six other over-enrolled Cal State campuses, though admission isn’t guaranteed. Those are Fullerton, Long Beach, Pomona, San Diego, San Jose and San Luis Obispo.
What the Riverside pilot did
High school counselors told CalMatters that the Riverside County pilot encouraged students who never considered attending a university to follow through with the automatic admissions process. Counselors also reached out to some students who were a class or two short of meeting the requirements for Cal State admission to take those, encouraging more students to apply to college who otherwise wouldn’t have. Younger students who were off the college-course taking track might be emboldened to enroll in those tougher high school courses knowing automatic admission is in the cards, the counselors said.
Silvia Morales, a senior at Heritage High School, a public Riverside County high school, got an automatic admissions letter last fall. “I was pretty set on going to community college and then transferring, because I felt like I wasn’t ready for the four-year commitment to a college,” she said. She eventually submitted her forms, encouraged by her high school counselor.
Following the Riverside pilot, Cal State campuses saw roughly 1,500 more applicants and 1,400 more admitted students in 2025 compared to 2024, though just 136 more students enrolled.
The data for Riverside County reviewed by CalMatters suggests that more applicants and admitted students through an automatic admissions policy doesn’t translate into more enrolled students. Colleges closely follow their “yield rates” — the percentage of admitted students who ultimately enroll. In 2024, the Cal State yield rate for Riverside County was about a third. But in 2025, it declined by a few percentage points, meaning a lower share of admitted students selected any Cal State campus.
This suggests that the system will have to work harder to convert admitted students into ones who actually enroll, said Iwunze Ugo, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, particularly with students who would not have applied were it not for the automatic admissions program.
Automatic admissions doesn’t mean automatic enrollment
While admission to a college overcomes a major hurdle to eventually enrolling, there are numerous steps necessary before students sit down for their first college course. Accepted students must submit additional grades, put down a deposit, complete registration forms and actually show up for the fall term. Students who were less engaged in the college-going culture are more likely to “melt” during the process between acceptance and enrollment, some studies show, though researchers say this can be reversed with additional outreach to students at risk of not enrolling.
And even with an automatic admissions program, students must still register online and complete the application, which many students under the Riverside pilot didn’t do. Cal State sent out more than 17,000 automatic admissions notices to students, and just under 12,000 formally applied to at least one Cal State campus. Those who didn’t apply may have chosen another option, such as the often more selective University of California, private campuses, community colleges, or no college at all.
“I think that’ll be incumbent on the CSU to pick up some of that slack and encourage students admitted through this path to go through the rest of the process and ultimately end up at a CSU campus,” Ugo said.
Cal State officials also recognize this. “Students who apply independently tend to have stronger self-directed interest, and therefore stronger intent to enroll,” said April Grommo, a senior Cal State official who oversees enrollment management. More direct engagement with students admitted through this program will be necessary, she said.
Some campuses with a recent history of declining enrollment got a tiny pick-up from the pilot. San Francisco State saw 311 more applications from Riverside County in 2025 than in 2024. That translated to 11 more enrolled students, a review of Cal State data shows.
A statewide program may steer more students to attend campuses with enrollment woes, even if the “yield rate” declines. That’s because if the rate of new students enrolling doesn’t rise as quickly as the number of students admitted, the yield rate drops.
Under the expanded statewide program, Grommo said the system anticipates “enrollment growth as well, but not necessarily at the same rate as applications and admits,” she added.
And as the economy shows signs of decay, the prospect of a college degree may compel more high schoolers on the fence to attend Cal State; System data show students from there earn a typical salary of $71,000 five years after graduating with a bachelor’s degree. Postsecondary enrollment tends to rise as the number of available jobs decreases, a social science phenomenon in which employers are more selective about who they hire, compelling many job-seekers to hit the books to show they’re more trained.
Of course, souring economies often result in less public funding for colleges as state budgets are beleaguered, which may lead to fewer professors and staff for a growing cadre of students. “But I think generally, having more students is not a problem,” Ugo said.
]]>Exoplanet VHS 1256b, located 40 light years away from Earth, was identified in 2015. The planet has a similar volume as Jupiter but is 10 to 20 times its mass, earning it the super-Jupiter or brown dwarf title — smaller than a star, and similar to gas giant planets. This particular exoplanet quickly captured astronomers’ attention with its extreme variations in brightness.
Most objects in space appear to blink, due either to physical changes within the planet or star, or external factors. For super-Jupiter exoplanets, Zhang said, this change in brightness is usually minimal, hovering at 1 to 2%. But on VHS 1256b, brightness variations neared 40%, the largest ever recorded for an object of its size.
The mystery made it a target for researchers using the James Webb Space Telescope to directly image exoplanets. One of those researchers was UCSC astronomer Andrew Skemer, who is a co-principal investigator of the James Webb Space Telescope Early Release Science program.
In 2023, Skemer and his former graduate student Brittany Miles co-authored a paper revealing the chemical makeup of the planet’s atmosphere, home to silicate clouds made of sand-like crystals that are vaporized and then condensed. Still, questions remained. Most notably, scientists wondered how these clouds were distributed across the planet, and whether they could account for the huge fluctuations in brightness.
Zhang, who had been studying planetary atmospheres for years, wanted to find out. He used a modified version of a general circulation model — a computer program commonly used to model Earth’s atmosphere and climate dynamics — to create a simulation of VHS 1256b’s atmosphere. He and his research team experimented with different versions of their model, trying to create one that would replicate the observed brightness changes.
The team was working on the assumption that the distant exoplanet had key similarities to Jupiter. At most wavelengths of light, Jupiter, like its distant brown dwarf cousins, had a 1 to 2% brightness variability. But, at a certain wavelength, that variability jumped to 20%. That represented the planet’s famous Great Red Spot, a storm roughly the size of the Earth. So, Zhang thought, maybe VHS 1256b has some kind of great red spot, too. They tried to create a model with some kind of big storm, but struck out.
“We tried, but we cannot,” Zhang said. “No way, we just cannot get it right. And so we got puzzled.”
Zhang and his team eventually had to consider the possibility that the exoplanet was, in some way, fundamentally different from Jupiter. Jupiter rotates much faster than Earth, its days lasting only nine hours. Zhang had been modeling VHS 1256b in a similar way, with fast rotation and short days. This fast rotation doesn’t allow storms or clouds to grow large. Instead, the force from the speedy rotation causes clouds to form into the neat bands and spots that can be seen on Jupiter. Zhang decided to see what would happen if he slowed down the model’s rotation.
“We said, ‘OK, why not?’ We’ll just try slow rotation,” Zhang said. “And when we try slow rotation, magic happens.”
In the slow rotating simulation, Zhang saw massive clouds of dust form across the planet’s surface. The clouds were unstable, forming and dissipating over time. Dust plumes were dredged from below into the atmosphere by the planet’s heat, which is much higher than Jupiter’s, and could form small cloud patches or global dust storms.
In the end, Zhang’s simulation showed that VHS 1256b is not as similar to Jupiter as scientists expected. The planet rotates once every 22 hours, compared to Jupiter’s nine. It is also much hotter — while Jupiter sits at around 128 Kelvin, or -224 degrees Fahrenheit, VHS 1256b is about 1,300 Kelvin or 1,880 degrees Fahrenheit. The planet’s turbulent clouds reminded Zhang not of Jupiter, but of Mars’ chaotic, unpredictable dust storms.
“I feel quite surprised,” Zhang said. “This has nothing to do with Mars, right? It’s super different, but its actual physical mechanism could be the same.”
These enormous and ever-evolving dust clouds explain the planet’s mysterious dips and spikes in brightness. Zhang believes the phenomenon could be present on other exoplanets, too.
“I think this is very strong evidence to show that silicate clouds cause brightness changes, at least for this object,” Zhang said. “But I believe it’s universal.”
This kind of research could revolutionize scientists’ understanding of planetary atmospheres. Before astronomers could directly observe exoplanets, they were limited to studying our own solar system’s eight planets. Now, with the James Webb Space Telescope and direct imaging exoplanet programs, scientists are able to dive into atmospheric dynamics that have never been observed.
For Zhang, the next step is to gather more information about other super-Jupiters to see if they follow similar patterns. Perhaps, he said, there will be a predictable correlation between brightness variation and rotation period that has to do with silicate dust clouds. VHS 1256b could end up as a point on a graph showing a clear relationship between the two factors.
“I would be very much happy to see that happen,” Zhang said, “but nature always surprises us.”
Zhang also thinks silicate dust clouds could play a significant role in a decades-long mystery known as the L/T Transition, a stage in brown dwarf or super-Jupiter planets when their temperatures are around 1,400 Kelvin or above, appear red. Somewhere between 1,400 and 1,200 Kelvin, there is an abrupt transition, and planets with temperatures below this threshold appear blue. This sharp change indicates a sudden change in the planets’ atmospheres at that temperature threshold, Zhang said, and nobody knows why.
VHS 1256b, sitting just above that temperature boundary at 1,300 Kelvin, is red. After discovering more about its atmosphere and its massive dust storms, Zhang thinks dust likely plays a significant role in this red to blue transition. Maybe, he hypothesized, these massive dust storms dissipate when temperatures drop to 1,200 Kelvin, causing the atmosphere to appear more clear.
“Unfortunately, no one has confirmed this hypothesis,” Zhang said. “But I think there’s a smoking gun.”
]]>Moses’ retirement will cap a three-decade career in education, starting as a teacher in the Oakland Unified School District before coming to West Contra Costa.
“We will miss Dr. Moses’s wisdom and leadership, but we are also grateful for the legacy she leaves behind,” said Superintendent Cheryl Cotton in a statement announcing Moses’ retirement.
An alumni of the West Contra Costa Unified School District, Moses earned a bachelor’s degree in education from University of California, Berkeley, her teaching credentials from California State University East Bay, a master’s degree in urban education leadership from UC Berkeley and her doctorate of education from East Carolina University.
Her tenure with the West Contra Costa Unified School District included three- to four-year stints as the principal at Nystrom, Wilson, Stege and Ohlone elementary schools before becoming a special education administrator and associate superintendent of business.
Following the retirement of former Superintendent Kenneth Hurst, Moses was appointed interim superintendent while the district searched for a permanent replacement. Following Cotton’s selection this summer, Moses returned to her role as associate superintendent overseeing the business department.
“From her early days as a principal and coordinator to her role as Associate Superintendent of Business Services and her time recently as Interim Superintendent, Dr. Moses has led with commitment, compassion, and love for our community,” Cotton said.
In her roles as chief business officer and interim superintendent, Moses has had to lead the district through tough financial decisions, including cutting millions from the district’s budget or risk losing local control to the Contra Costa County Office of Education. The district has had a history of instable finances that led to a state takeover in the 1990s and the repayment of a near $29 million loan. The district’s latest agreement with the county Office of Education promises to cut $32.7 million from the budget over a period of three years.
Moses’ retirement announcement comes just weeks after district leaders landed tentative agreements with two of its unions, Teamsters Local 856, which represents staff from cafeteria workers to security, and United Teachers of Richmond, the union for about 1,400 educators, counselors and other employees.
A joint strike by the two unions helped earn them 8% pay increases over the next two years, better health care benefits and improved working conditions, despite warning from district leadership that meeting union demands could require future budget cuts.
District trustees have yet to approve the tentative agreements which have been ratified by both unions, a major concern for union members who voiced their worries to trustees during their most recent meeting.
Though Moses will officially retire at the end of the school year in June, the board and Cotton will select a replacement who will serve in her role during the upcoming spring semester, according to the district and a comment Trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy shared on social media.
]]>In a 52-page opinion handed down Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Roger Benitez said the case – Mirabelli v. Olson – presented four questions about a “parent’s right to information as against a public school’s policy of secrecy when it comes to a student’s gender identification.”
RELATED: California part of coalition suing HHS over move that could curtail youth gender-affirming care
Benitez asked in his ruling whether parents have rights to get gender information based in the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee to due process, and whether such information is allowed to be given to parents despite the First Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion. Further, he said, the court had to determine whether public school teachers have a right to tell parents — based in the teacher’s own free exercise of religion — or whether they have a right to tell parents based on their own free speech.
“In each case, this court concludes that, as a matter of law, the answer is ‘yes,’” the judge continued. “Parents have a right to receive gender information and teachers have a right to provide to parents accurate information about a child’s gender identity.”
The state filed an appeal and asked the court to pause the ruling in the meantime. State attorneys said the injunction could bring significant harm to students by having schools out them without their consent.
“The Court’s sweeping injunction, which forecloses enforcement of state constitutional and statutory protections applicable in the school environment, inflicts severe and indisputable irreparable harm on California,” lawyers with Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office wrote in their request.
“We believe that the district court misapplied the law and that the decision will ultimately be reversed on appeal,” a spokesperson for Bonta’s office said in an email Tuesday. “We are committed to securing school environments that allow transgender students to safely participate as their authentic selves while recognizing the important role that parents play in students’ lives.”
Monday’s decision caps a lawsuit filed in April 2023 by two now-former Escondido Union School District teachers, Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who were aided by the Thomas More Society. Citing their Christian faith, the two challenged their district’s policy barring school employees from telling parents about a student’s transgender status without the student’s consent, arguing it violated their First Amendment rights.
The policy also required teachers to use a student’s chosen name and pronouns at school, but use the student’s legal name and biological pronouns when speaking with parents, according to the organization.
The Thomas More Society said the policy forced teachers to conceal a child’s new identity from their parents.
Also this week, a coalition of states, including California, filed a lawsuit challenging a recent action by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that seeks to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth.
In a statement, the ACLU of Southern California said the Mirabelli decision puts trans and gender nonconforming students at risk of being outed to their parents by their teachers and other school staff members. The ruling, the organization noted, also bars educators from using a student’s chosen name or pronouns if the student’s parent objects.
“Rather than focus on ensuring all students receive the best education they can, these efforts seek to exploit lack of familiarity with transgender people, spread misinformation, and disrupt trust within our school communities,” said Christine Parker, senior staff attorney with the Gender, Sexuality and Reproductive Justice Project at the ACLU Foundation of Southern California. “This case is part of a nationwide, coordinated attack on trans people and all those who stand up for trans youth.”
Equality California, a LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, said the ruling undermines laws that protect transgender students, including last year’s SAFETY Act.
“Judge Benitez’s dangerous ruling goes far beyond the SAFETY Act and broadly targets numerous California laws and protections for transgender and gender-nonconforming students – attempting to invalidate critical safeguards that prevent forced outing and allow educators to respect a student’s affirmed name and pronouns at school,” the organization’s executive director, Tony Hoang, said in a statement.
“These protections exist for one reason: to keep students safe and ensure schools remain places where young people can learn and thrive without fear,” Hoang added.
Meanwhile, officials with the California Policy Center, a Southern California-based libertarian and conservative nonprofit public policy think tank, heralded the ruling as a “historic win for parental rights and a devastating loss” for Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
“Parents’ constitutional right to direct the upbringing and education of their children cannot be overridden by state bureaucrats,” Lance Christensen, the organization’s vice president of Government Affairs and Education Policy, said in a statement.
“Judge Benitez issued a well-reasoned opinion that protects California parents, teachers and students,” added Emily Rae, president of the organization’s California Justice Center. “The ruling affirms that teachers cannot lie to parents about the gender identity of their own children.”
The San Diego Union Tribune contributed to this report.
]]>The students at UC Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center contributed to a Human Rights Watch report titled “‘You Have Arrived in Hell’: Torture and Other Abuses Against Venezuelans in El Salvador’s Mega Prison,” which details allegations of beatings, sexual abuse and harsh confinement at the Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, or CECOT.
They analyzed satellite imagery and social media videos posted by prison visitors to help reconstruct the facility’s layout and corroborate accounts from 40 former detainees at the maximum-security prison, which held hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants deported by the Trump administration earlier this year.
The UCB students’ findings were slated to be featured in a “60 Minutes” segment CBS planned to air Sunday. But hours before broadcast, network executives halted the segment, saying in a social media post that it would run at a future date. A Canadian television network briefly posted the segment on its streaming app on Monday, and the video was soon downloaded and shared widely online.
Alexa Koenig, director of UC Berkeley Law’s Human Rights Center, said the students had been eager to see their work help inform the public about conditions inside the prison.
“It’s been disappointing after the incredible thought and care they put into doing this analysis,” Koenig said.
Human rights groups condemned the administration’s decision earlier this year to send immigrants to CECOT, a maximum-security prison built in 2023 and designed to hold thousands of alleged gang members. Administration officials have said the deportees belonged to criminal organizations that pose a threat to the United States, though critics have questioned the evidence used to support those claims.
After accepting the immigrants as part of a deal with the U.S. government, the El Salvadoran government brokered an agreement in July to return 252 Venezuelans to their home country in exchange for 10 U.S. citizens and permanent residents in Venezuelan custody.
Koenig, who was interviewed for the “60 Minutes” segment, said she received no explanation from producers about why the piece was postponed.
“It’s unfortunate that this story hasn’t had a chance to be seen by the American people,” she said, adding that it is important for citizens to understand actions taken by the U.S. government “in their name.”
CBS News and its parent company, Paramount, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to multiple news reports, new CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss pulled the segment in part because it lacked an on-the-record comment from an administration official. In an editorial call with CBS staff, Weiss said the story needed more reporting since the public was already aware that “Venezuelans have been subjected to horrific treatment in this prison,” according to the reports.
The segment’s reporter, Sharyn Alfonsi, criticized the decision in an email to colleagues obtained by news organizations, writing that she believed it was political rather than editorial.
CBS has since faced criticism from Democratic lawmakers and press advocates who accused the network of yielding to political pressure.
Paramount is owned by David Ellison, an ally of President Donald Trump who took control of the company this year after securing antitrust approval from the administration. His father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, is a longtime Republican donor and adviser to the president.
Since being hired by Ellison to lead CBS News, Weiss has drawn scrutiny over editorial decisions at the network, including the handling of politically sensitive stories. She has rejected suggestions that those decisions reflect political bias.
For Koenig and her students, the focus remains on whether their research will ultimately reach a broad audience.
“They were excited to have a chance to really see the work amplified,” Koenig said. “And to hope it would have a positive impact.”
]]>The Campbell Union High School District’s payout comes nearly two years after the allegations surfaced against Shawn Thomas, a physical education and social science teacher who also worked as a football and track coach at Los Gatos High School. The alleged abuse happened during the early 2000s, and came to light decades later after the former student’s sister urged her to go to authorities.
Thomas, who was arrested in March 2024, now faces numerous criminal charges, including rape, sexual penetration of a minor and lewd and lascivious acts on a minor.
The former student’s attorney said the payout represented a measure of justice for the former student, now in her late 30s, and “sends a clear message that schools must take their duty to safeguard students seriously.
“After all these years, my client is finally being vindicated and the school district is finally being held accountable,” said the attorney, Lauren Cerri. “Her entire life was derailed because no one listened to her, and no one believed her.”
The lawsuit accused Thomas of grooming the girl while she was a freshman at Leigh High School, by giving her “special attention” during the 2002-2003 school year. He was already known to be “overly touchy” with students, the lawsuit claimed, and he went on to ask the girl to wear a skirt to school and drove her around.
Their illicit relationship escalated to sexual encounters at his home, a friend’s home, and in his classroom, the lawsuit claimed.
At one point, Thomas’ wife — a dean at the school — nearly walked in on the two during one of those encounters in a classroom. When the student later alerted Sarah Thomas to her pregnancy in spring 2023, the lawsuit claims the dean responded by blaming her.
Neither Sarah Thomas nor anyone else at the school ever reported suspicions of her husband’s sexual abuse to authorities, the lawsuit said. Shawn Thomas allegedly insisted that the girl get an abortion, the lawsuit claimed, which she did.
Both Shawn and Sarah Thomas were placed on paid administrative leave when the allegations came to light in March 2024, Cerri said. Their statuses at the school district were not immediately clear Tuesday.
Leaders with the Campbell Union High School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment from this news outlet.
The case highlighted the peril of teachers or coaches being supervised by their romantic partners, as happened in this case. Cerri stressed that such arrangements never should happen, because it “clearly creates a conflict of interest.”
“The safety of the children always has to come first,” Cerri said.
The sister of the former student said in a statement provided by the former student’s attorneys that the settlement offers “one more step toward my sister reclaiming her life after the immense harm she endured.” The woman and her sister were not named in the statement, and the Bay Area News Group typically does not identify victims of sexual assault.
“While nothing can undo what happened, we are grateful that the district is finally being held accountable for its failures,” the former student’s sister said. “Our hope is that this moment not only helps my sister move forward, but also ensures that no other student is ever ignored or unprotected in the way she was.”
Staff reporter Robert Salonga contributed to this report.
Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.
]]>In an email to parents, Reed Elementary School Principal Jennifer Ponzio said that the San Jose Unified School District trustee, who was identified as Brian Wheatley, “requested to sing a song that was not part of the planned program.” Ponzio did not name the song in her email, but said that it dates back to the 1940s and included a mention of a weapon.
“After approximately 30 seconds, I intervened and stopped the sing-along,” the principal said. “This moment does not reflect the values of our school or of San Jose Unified, and we deeply regret that it occurred during an event meant to be joyful.”
Ponzio, who did not respond to a request for comment, said that Wheatley “has acknowledged this lapse in judgment and has taken full responsibility for the impact of his actions.”
“As a school community, we also recognize the importance of clear expectations and safeguards for school events,” she added. “Moving forward, we will be more intentional and diligent in ensuring that all performances and remarks follow approved agendas and reflect our shared values, so that this does not happen again.”
Ponzio’s email also included a note from Wheatley to the principal in which the trustee offered a “direct and sincere apology.”
“In an effort to bring levity and humor, I shared verses that were inappropriate, and I’m truly sorry for any disruption or distress this may have caused students, staff or families,” Wheatley wrote. “I take full responsibility for the impact of my actions. As a board member for the past seven years, I value the trust our school communities place in us and have deeply appreciated many positive moments we have shared at Reed events.”
Wheatley declined to comment, referring this news organization to a district spokesperson, who could not be reached for comment. Wheatley was elected to the board in 2018 and re-elected in 2022 — his term expires next December. Wheatley previously worked as a school teacher for more than three decades before retiring in 2020.
]]>THIBODAUX, La. (AP) — The teasing was relentless. Nude images of a 13-year-old girl and her friends, generated by artificial intelligence, were circulating on social media and had become the talk of a Louisiana middle school.
The girls begged for help, first from a school guidance counselor and then from a sheriff’s deputy assigned to their school. But the images were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after they’re viewed, and the adults couldn’t find them. The principal had doubts they even existed.
Among the kids, the pictures were still spreading. When the 13-year-old girl stepped onto the Lafourche Parish school bus at the end of the day, a classmate was showing one of them to a friend.
“That’s when I got angry,” the eighth grader recalled at her discipline hearing.
Fed up, she attacked a boy on the bus, inviting others to join her. She was kicked out of Sixth Ward Middle School for more than 10 weeks and sent to an alternative school. She said the boy whom she and her friends suspected of creating the images wasn’t sent to that alternative school with her. The 13-year-old girl’s attorneys allege he avoided school discipline altogether.
When the sheriff’s department looked into the case, they took the opposite actions. They charged two of the boys who’d been accused of sharing explicit images — and not the girl.
The Louisiana episode highlights the nightmarish potential of AI deepfakes. They can, and do, upend children’s lives — at school, and at home. And while schools are working to address artificial intelligence in classroom instruction, they often have done little to prepare for what the new tech means for cyberbullying and harassment.
Once again, as kids increasingly use new tech to hurt one another, adults are behind the curve, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology.
“When we ignore the digital harm, the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks,” Alexander said.
In Lafourche Parish, the school district followed all its protocols for reporting misconduct, Superintendent Jarod Martin said in a statement. He said a “one-sided story” had been presented of the case that fails to illustrate its “totality and complex nature.”
A girl’s nightmare begins with rumors
After hearing rumors about the nude images, the 13-year-old said she marched with two friends — one nearly in tears — to the guidance counselor around 7 a.m. on Aug. 26. The Associated Press isn’t naming her because she is a minor and because AP doesn’t normally name victims of sexual crimes.
She was there for moral support, not initially realizing there were images of her, too, according to testimony at her school disciplinary hearing.
Ultimately, the weeks-long investigation at the school in Thibodaux, about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans, uncovered AI-generated nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults, the district and sheriff’s office said in a joint statement.
“Full nudes with her face put on them” is how the girl’s father, Joseph Daniels, described them.
Until recently, it took some technical skill to make realistic deepfakes. Technology now makes it easy to pluck a photo off social media, “nudify” it and create a viral nightmare for an unsuspecting classmate.
Most schools are “just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn’t happening,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.
Lafourche Parish School District was just starting to develop policies on artificial intelligence. The school-level AI guidance mainly addressed academics, according to documents provided through a records request. The district also hadn’t updated its training on cyberbullying to reflect the threat of AI-generated, sexually explicit images. The curriculum its schools used was from 2018.
A school investigation hits obstacles
Although the girls at Sixth Ward Middle School hadn’t seen the images firsthand, they heard about them from boys at school. Based on those conversations, the girls accused a classmate and two students from other schools of creating and spreading the nudes on Snapchat and possibly TikTok.
The principal, Danielle Coriell, said an investigation came up cold that day as no student took responsibility. The deputy assigned to the school searched social media for the images unsuccessfully, according to a recording of the disciplinary hearing.
“I was led to believe that this was just hearsay and rumors,” the girl’s father said, recounting a conversation he had that morning with the school counselor.
But the girl was miserable, and a police incident report showed more girls were reporting that they were victims, too. The 13-year-old returned to the counselor in the afternoon, asking to call her father. She said she was refused.
Her father says she sent a text message that said, “Dad,” and nothing else. They didn’t talk. With the mocking unrelenting, the girl texted her sister, “It’s not getting handled.”
As the school day wound down, the principal was skeptical. At the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s attorney asked why the sheriff’s deputy didn’t check the phone of the boy the girls were accusing and why he was allowed on the same bus as the girl.
“Kids lie a lot,” responded Coriell, the principal. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o’clock when I checked again, there were no pictures.”
A fight breaks out on the school bus
When the girl stepped onto the bus 15 minutes later, the boy was showing the AI-generated images to a friend. Fake nude images of her friends were visible on the boy’s phone, the girl said, a claim backed up by a photo taken on the bus. A video from the school bus showed at least a half-dozen students circulating the images, said Martin, the superintendent, at a school board meeting.
“I went the whole day with getting bullied and getting made fun of about my body,” the girl said at her hearing. When she boarded the bus, she said, anger was building up.
After seeing the boy and his phone, she slapped him, said Coriell, the principal. The boy shrugged off the slap, a video shows.
She hit him a second time. Then, the principal said, the girl asked aloud: “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two classmates hit the boy, the principal said, before the 13-year-old climbed over a seat and punched and stomped on him.
Video of the fight was posted on Facebook. “Overwhelming social media sentiment was one of outrage and a demand that the students involved in the fight be held accountable,” the district and sheriff’s office said in their joint statement released in November.
The girl had no past disciplinary problems, but she was assigned to an alternative school as the district moved to expel her for a full semester — 89 school days.
Weeks later, a boy is charged
It was on the day of the girl’s disciplinary hearing, three weeks after the fight, that the first of the boys was charged.
The student was charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence under a new Louisiana state law, part of a wave of such legislation around the country. A second boy was charged in December with identical charges, the sheriff’s department said. Neither was identified by authorities because of their ages.
The girl would face no charges because of what the sheriff’s office described as the “totality of the circumstances.”
At the disciplinary hearing, the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s attorneys about what kind of school discipline the boy would face.
The district said in a statement that federal student privacy laws prohibit it from discussing individual students’ disciplinary records. Gregory Miller, an attorney for the girl, said he has no knowledge of any school discipline for the classmate accused of sharing the images.
Ultimately, the panel expelled the 13-year-old. She wept, her father said.
“She just felt like she was victimized multiple times — by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by them putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions,” he said in an interview.
The fallout sends a student off course
After she was sent to the alternative school, the girl started skipping meals, her father said. Unable to concentrate, she completed none of the school’s online work for several days before her father got her into therapy for depression and anxiety.
Nobody initially noticed when she stopped doing her assignments, her father said.
“She kind of got left behind,” he said.
Her attorneys appealed to the school board, and another hearing was scheduled for seven weeks later.
By then, so much time had passed that she could have returned to her old school on probation. But because she’d missed assignments before getting treated for depression, the district wanted her to remain at the alternative site another 12 weeks.
For students who are suspended or expelled, the impact can last years. They’re more likely to be suspended again. They become disconnected from their classmates, and they’re more likely to become disengaged from school. They’re more likely to have lower grades and lower graduation rates.
“She’s already been out of school enough,” one of the girl’s attorneys, Matt Ory, told the board on Nov. 5. “She is a victim.
“She,” he repeated, “is a victim.”
Martin, the superintendent, countered: “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
But the board was swayed. One member, Henry Lafont, said: “There are a lot of things in that video that I don’t like. But I’m also trying to put into perspective what she went through all day.” They allowed her to return to campus immediately. Her first day back at school was Nov. 7, although she will remain on probation until Jan. 29.
That means no dances, no sports and no extracurricular activities. She already missed out on basketball tryouts, meaning she won’t be able to play this season, her father said. He finds the situation “heartbreaking.”
“I was hoping she would make great friends, they would go to the high school together and, you know, it’d keep everybody out of trouble on the right tracks,” her father said. “I think they ruined that.”
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.
]]>A vote by the Pinole City Council during a Dec. 16 meeting and the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education during its Dec. 17 meeting made both jurisdictions the second and third in the Bay Area to officially prohibit the use of their properties for federal immigration operations.
Pinole’s policy will apply to land owned by the city while the school district’s will cover dozens of sites across El Cerrito, San Pablo, Richmond, Pinole, and Hercules. More than a quarter of Contra Costa County residents are foreign born, according to 2023 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
“I want every family in Pinole to hear this clearly: you belong here, and you deserve to feel safe,” said Councilmember Cameron Sasai, who just rotated out of the mayor role, in a statement. “People cannot thrive when they are living in a state of constant fear. Pinole is taking a firm stand for the dignity and the equal protection of all our residents.”
The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors was the first jurisdiction in the region to adopt similar restrictions, voting on Dec. 9 to approve a policy brought forward by Supervisor Sylvia Arenas.
Alameda County, Berkeley and San Francisco have also begun considering similar ordinances that apply to their own properties. BART has said their Safe Transit Policy, which prohibits the use of funds or resources for federal immigration enforcement, already addresses the issue.
Local policies were inspired by ICE free-zones implemented in Chicago by executive order in October, and stem from a threat by the Trump administration to deploy federal agents to the Bay Area.
Protesters gathered outside of Coast Guard Island in Alameda in October after news broke that federal agents were planning to use the site as a staging ground for immigration operations.
A phone call between President Donald Trump and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie resulted in the operation being called off before it even began, but officials remained concerned that future large-scale actions could still take place.
A number of people have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers during court appearances, from work and at home since the Trump administration began ramping up its mass deportation plans.
The Pinole Police Department has routinely checked potential ICE sightings, though none have been confirmed and no detentions in the city have been made, Sasai said. The use of unmarked vehicles makes detecting ICE officers challenging, Sasai added.
Aiming to help create a sense of trust and safety for its residents, jurisdictions up and down the Bay Area have declared themselves sanctuary cities, counties or districts and prohibit their employees from sharing information with federal officials unless presented with a judicial warrant.
In Pinole, the first city to adopt ICE-free zones, said its policy is meant to instill even more trust between the city and residents who may fear reaching out for help, reporting crimes or participating in city programs if public property is allowed to be used for immigration operations.
“The ordinance reflects the City’s commitment to public safety, community trust, and the responsible use of local government resources,” the city said in a statement announcing the policy adoption. “Pinole is home to residents of diverse racial, ethnic, and national backgrounds, including a significant immigrant population that contributes to the City’s economic, civic, and cultural vitality.”
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