News briefs: Thursday, November 22, 2012

Union members played a key role — as voters and volunteers — in clinching President Barack Obama’s re-election. The AFL-CIO’s election night polling, done by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, found that union members voted for Obama at a rate of 65 percent to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s 33.

Voters in Idaho and South Dakota overturned harmful education laws promoted by Republican governors. Voters in Washington and Georgia gave a thumbs-up to charter schools.

California voters rejected a measure that would have blocked unions from funding political work with dues automatically deducted from members’ paychecks. But the labor movement suffered a key setback in Michigan, when voters soundly rejected Proposal 2, an amendment that would have enshrined collective-bargaining rights in the state constitution.

California and Oregon passed measures to bolster education funding and Missouri and Arizona turned back measures that would have raised taxes and used the revenue for school funding.

Using the classroom as a support group is an effective way to help students heal from a traumatic event when all of the students have been exposed to the same trauma, as is the case in a natural disaster, according to a review of the literature on school crisis intervention programs.