In brief: Sentences cut for three ex-educators

ATLANTA – A judge sharply reduced the sentences Thursday for three former Atlanta public school educators who received the harshest prison terms in the trial stemming from the city’s standardized test cheating scandal.

Fulton County Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter reduced sentences for Tamara Cotman, Sharon Davis-Williams and Michael Pitts. Each was given three years in prison and seven on probation.

Previously, each was sentenced to seven years in prison and 13 on probation.

“When a judge goes home and he keeps thinking over and over that something’s wrong, something is usually wrong,” Baxter said. “I want to modify the sentence so I can live with it.”

The three former district regional directors were the highest-ranking of the 11 former educators convicted of racketeering. Their original sentences were more than double what prosecutors had recommended.

Each of the three also was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine, compared with the original sentence of a $25,000 fine. They also must perform 2,000 hours community service – unchanged from the original sentence.

A state investigation found that as far back as 2005, educators from the 50,000-student Atlanta school system fed answers to students or erased and changed answers on tests after they were turned in. Evidence of cheating was found in 44 schools with nearly 180 educators involved, and teachers who tried to report it were threatened with retaliation.

Feds, New Mexico settle radiation claim

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – The Energy Department will funnel more than $73 million toward road and water projects around New Mexico as part of a settlement over a radiation leak that forced the indefinite closure of a troubled nuclear waste dump.

The agreement, announced by Republican Gov. Susana Martinez and state Environment Secretary Ryan Flynn, follows months of negotiations.

The settlement is the largest ever reached between a state and the department, Flynn said, noting that the agency needed to be held accountable for putting people at risk.

“We have a shared responsibility to protect the citizens that work at these facilities as well as the communities that host these facilities,” Flynn told the Associated Press.

The state initially levied more than $54 million in penalties against the agency and its contractors for numerous permit violations at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant that were identified following the repository’s shutdown.

The newly announced settlement comes after a drum of waste was inappropriately packed with incompatible ingredients at Los Alamos and shipped to the repository, starting a chemical reaction and radiation leak on Feb. 14, 2014.

Elementary school students brought guns

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – A first-grader and his brother in kindergarten took two handguns, one of them loaded, on a bus to a Kentucky elementary school Thursday morning after apparently thinking they were toys, authorities said. They said no one was hurt and the firearms were seized when the boys reached school.

The boys, ages 6 and 7, had a gun each in their school backpacks and showed them to some other pupils on a bus headed to Dewitt Elementary School in Flat Lick, said Kentucky State Police Trooper Shane Jacobs. He said one student alerted a teacher and the eastern Kentucky school was briefly locked down and the guns were confiscated.

“We never felt that the kids’ intent was to hurt anyone at the school,” Jacobs said by phone. “We feel the kids didn’t know that they were actually a firearm. They thought they were toy guns.”

Each boy, however, has been charged with possession of a firearm on school property, Jacobs said. “Due to the seriousness of a firearm being brought to a school, state police felt like charges had to be filed,” he told the Associated Press.

Investigators were trying to determine how the boys obtained the handguns, state police said.

The parents have been charged with endangering the welfare of a minor, police said. They were released, but the boys were placed with grandparents, police said.

The bus driver was arrested at the elementary school and charged with facilitation to unlawfully possess a weapon on school property, state police said. The driver was told by a student about the guns on the bus but failed to alert school staff or stop the vehicle to check for weapons, police said. He was being held in jail Thursday.

16 co-workers split $58M lottery jackpot

NEW YORK – Sixteen co-workers at a New York City biopharmaceuticals company have won a $58 million Mega Millions jackpot.

New York State Lottery officials said Thursday the colleagues call themselves the Lucky 16 Trust and pooled their money before the March 24 drawing.

Most of the employees come from New York and New Jersey. One travels from her home in Venice, California. They’ll split the funds.

Ophthotech Corp. spokeswoman Evelyn Harrison said members of the winning group work in all parts of the company, from senior to administrative posts. She said the employees have been pooling funds since 2010 to play the lottery, each pitching in $4 weekly to buy tickets.