AAWA

  AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN'S AGENDA EDUCATION FOUNDATION

I Am Woman, Hear Me...

MONITOR NOTES  (October 2003)

DECISION MAKING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Good Marketing Inc. of Cleveland, a product development and consulting firm specializing in the kids market, has created a new line of flavored jellies called Jelly Bean Jelly to be distributed to market retailers including Heinen’s and Gourmet Chef. (PD 9/10)

Local sales and customer service trainers Hal Becker and Marvin Montgomery have a biweekly radio program called “The Sales Guys airing at 8 am, Thursdays and 6 pm Mondays on WERE.  Becker and Montgomery are authors and will answer questions from listeners about how to make sales. (PD 9/17)

The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2003 totaled $374 billion, easily surpassing the previous record of $290 billion in 1992. (PD 10/11)

Poverty’s tentacles are growing and creeping deeper into our nation’s suburbs, indicating that the current recession is squeezing a wide range of families. (PD 10/2003)

HEALTH

Health insurance premiums for American employees rose 13.9 percent during the past year, the biggest annual jump since 1990. It was also found that many employers plan to charge their employees more for health insurance benefits over the next year.  (PD 99/10)

Less than half of all American workers receive health insurance through their employers, down from about two-thirds a decade ago. (PD 9/25)

Cleveland – which has one of the highest childhood lead poisoning rates in the country, according to a recent Plain Dealer analysis of nearly a dozen cities – lacks the money to undertake what pediatricians and public health experts agree is the most effective way of eliminating this chronic urban problem: cleaning up the lead before a child can be poisoned.  The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a $50 million program to 25 metropolitan areas, including Cleveland.  Greater Cleveland will get $2.7 million of it to rehabilitate 438 housing units.  Good work AAWA!  (PD 9/25)

CRIME 

The Cleveland Police Department’s SWAT team received a national award for its efforts in ending the standoff in May at Case Western.  A committee selected Cleveland’s elite 19-member SWAT unit from nominations from across the country and Canada.  (PD 9/25)

HOUSING 

Bowing to pressure, the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority has agreed to give preferential treatment to five groups of people, including homeless applicants.  The policy is a departure from an earlier plan that would have eliminated the homeless as a preferred group along with working families and people enrolled in educational, training or upward mobility programs. (PD 9/2003)

EMPLOYMENT

Supervalu Inc. announced it is closing the former Fleming Cos. Warehouse in Massillon that it is buying from C&S Wholesale Grocers Inc., putting about 850 people out of work.(PD 9/2003)

 Only 10 percent of employers in Cleveland and the Lorain-Elyria area expect to hire workers during the closing months of 2003, according to a quartly survey by Manpower Inc. (PD 6/16)

 Even in a tough labor market, job satisfaction among employed U.S. workers has hit a record low.  A private research group shows less than half of American workers, 48.9 percent say that they are satisfied with their jobs. (PD 9/19)

 Cleveland is on pace to run a $21 million deficit this year and a $50 million in 2004. Among the reasons cited are: The city has not collected as much from income taxes and fee increases as it had projected; health-care costs for city workers increased dramatically; and the state gave the city $4 million less that expected.  It is predicted that workers will be laid off.  (PD 9/10)

 According the Labor Department, the total job loss since January is almost 600,000.

“Businesses across the board are figuring out ways to do more with fewer people.  Practically every sector of the economy got rid of jobs in August”. Said Bill Cheney, Chief economist at John Hancock Financial Services.  (PD 9/6)

 Wal-Mart Stores Inc. paid and promoted women workers less than men under policies set by the company, a lawyer said in a hearing.  Brad Seligman a lawyer for the women, told U.S. District Judge Martin Jenkins that the disparities in pay and promotion were the result of corporate policies and are cause to broaden the lawsuit to encompass 1.6 million current and former female Wal-Mart workers. (PD 9/25) 

SENIOR CITIZENS

Ohio residents, who are 60 or older, regardless of income, have been mailed a Golden Buckeye Card that supporters say will shave up to 30 percent off the price of prescription drugs.  The cards are expected to offer discounts to about 2 million Ohioans, and card -holders will be able to use them at 92 percent of Ohio’s pharmacies. (PD9/23) 

EDUCATION

The nation’s top education official said that many minority children are so badly served by public schools that their circumstances can be compared to apartheid. Education Secretary Rod Paige used his back-to-school address to warn of an unrecognized educational crisis of disadvantaged students who are written off at school and unready for a complex world. (PD 9/25)

In what is believed to be a first for a public college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced that it would cover the full costs of an education for students from families of the working poor without forcing the students to take out loans. (PD 10/2)

The James J. Nance College of Business Administration at Cleveland State University has received a $171,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to create a partnership in international business with World Trade Center Cleveland. (PD 9/10)

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates announced that his foundation will donate $51 million to create 67 small, academically rigorous public high schools in poor neighborhoods.  (PD 9/18)

In the past two decades, the price of textbooks has soared.  The price of educational books and supplies has risen 238 percent, while the price of consumer goods overall has increased only 51 percent, according to the Consumer Price Index.  At four-year private colleges, the College Board found, students spent an average of $807 on books last year.  Some students, particularly science and math majors, spent as much as that in one semester.  (PD 9/16

Last modified: 08/25/05