The League of Women Voters Pensacola Bay Area has two meeting scheduled:
C. A. Weis Community School
Speaker: Holly Magee, Principal of Weis Community School,.
When: Saturday, March 17, 10:15 a.m. coffee, 10:30 a.m. program
Where: Tryon Branch Library, 1200 Langley Ave.
A community school is a publicly-funded school, which not only educates children but also provides a center for community life. More importantly, it is a place where the community provides extra services to children and families to enhance the ability of the children to learn. Pensacola is fortunate to be the home of C.A. Weis Community School, which is only the second such school in the state. The school has many community partners .
How Bail is Converting our Jails to Debtor Prisons
Speaker: Attorney Benjamin Stevenson of the ACLU
When: Thursday, March 22, 5:30 p.m.
Where: Pensacola Public Library, 239 N. Spring St.
ACLU attorney Benjamin Stevenson will be leading a discussion of the process of bail. When someone is arrested and cannot afford the bail he is assigned, he is held in the local jail until his trial date. Our jails are crowded with non-violent arrestees who have not been proven guilty of anything. They are retained for varying lengths of time, sometimes months. As they await trial they are accumulating further expenses rapidly increasing their indebtedness.
Juveniles in jail are housed separately. The Escambia School system sends in a teacher two or three times a week in an effort to keep the child from falling too far behind, it is not enough to keep up.
The jails are crowded. They are costing us too much money. Benjamin will describe how this system of injustice works and what we need to do to correct it.
For further information, please contact Paula Montgomery, montpns@aol.com.
