Kernan middle school teacher suspended

Colorado Teacher Sent To Re-Education Training For Suggesting To Teen That Trans Youth Regret Transitioning

July 1, 2022 by dailycaller.com Leave a Comment

A Colorado teacher was disciplined after suggesting to a transgender student that the rise in transgenderism is a “trend” that some come to regret, according to documents provided to the Daily Caller from the educator.

Jefferson County Public School teacher Phil Vagos underwent disciplinary action following an email exchange between himself and a transgender student. The student — a biological female who initially emailed Vagos begging for a second chance to pass his class — asked to be addressed using “he/him” pronouns “when in absence of parental figures,” according to the communications reviewed by the Daily Caller.

“I understand that my grade in your class is incredibly low and that I never truly got any important work done during the semester,” the student emailed Vagos. “With the end of the year being today, I realize my mistake and I’m asking you for an extended semester to make up the credits I have lost. I’m determined to work as hard and as efficiently in your course as I can, and have the motivation to participate in your class.”

Vagos responded using the student’s preferred name and said he removed a couple of “zero credit assignments” attributed to the student to pass the class. He went on to provide the student with information on detransitioners and wished the student the best of luck.

“And as much as I don’t want to interfere in anything that isn’t my business, given the P.S. of the email I thought it might be helpful for me to provide a link regarding the transitioning process that has become a recent trend among young people in the United States,” Vagos’ email read. “I typically wouldn’t do this, although you did mention that you are using an alternate name and gender outside of your parents’ presence, which tells me that this might not be the result of a consensus of agreement between you and them.”

“In any event, please forgive my presumptuousness on my part regarding this issue. But I am a firm believer in making fully informed decisions … especially when they may completely and permanently alter one’s life,” the teacher continued.

The email exchange took place in May of 2021, according to the emails. However, the district did not reprimand Vagos until a parent and student complained that the educator was not wearing a mask in the classroom and one student felt the teacher was too conservative.

Vagos underwent a formal grievance process with the district in December 2021. He was represented by the local teachers union, whose representatives use preferred pronouns in email signatures.

Jefferson County Public Schools sent Vagos a letter of reprimand arguing that he violated the district’s policy of “harassment of students based on sexual orientation.” Vagos was told he can no longer use the word “trend” when discussing transgender ideology, according to the reprimand letter.

“Your response to this student and the provision of this link imparts a lack of support and reduces a student’s self-identification as being transgendered as a “trend” rather than something real the student is experiencing,” the letter read.

A substitute teacher was provided in Vagos’ absence as he underwent a “ Gender Inclusion 101 ” training provided by the Jefferson County Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion team. Videos from the training included “ Avery’s Story ,” “ Mom, I’m Not A Girl: Raising a Transgender Child ,” and “What is a Gender Inclusive School?” Another training was provided by “ Gender Spectrum .”

Vagos has been at Conifer High School in Jefferson County for 15 years and described himself as a “fairly outspoken conservative at the school.” He is actively involved in sponsoring a Young America’s Foundation club at the school. (RELATED: America Has More Transgender Youth Than Ever, Study Says)

Jefferson County Public Schools began instructing teachers in 2021 not to inform parents if their child shows persistent signs of gender confusion, according to the district’s “ Toolkit for Supporting Transgender & Gender Expansive/Nonconforming Students .”

The guide tells educators to inform parents about persistent gender confusion “at the elementary level, though the standards shift for students in middle and high school. The guide claims that in some cases notifying a child’s parent can lead to a child being kicked out of the home.

“In some cases, notifying parents/guardians carries risk for the student, such as being kicked out of the home,” the guide reads. “Prior to notification of any parent/guardian or guardian regarding the transition process, school staff should work closely with the student to assess the degree, if any, the parent/guardian will be involved in the process and must consider the health, well-being, and safety of the student in transition.”

Jefferson County Public Schools did not respond to the Daily Caller’s request for comment.

Kāinga Ora suspends Auckland social housing project after neighbours complain

June 28, 2022 by www.stuff.co.nz Leave a Comment

Kāinga Ora has “suspended” plans to build 37 houses for people without a home in Auckland’s Millwater following an outcry from neighbours concerned for their property values.

The government agency said it was taking the time to get feedback from the public to hear its “aspirations” for the neighbourhood.

Kāinga Ora confirmed that it had met with representatives of a group of neighbours opposed to the project last week.

Regional director Taina Jones said she acknowledged many Millwater residents had felt “taken by surprise” over plans for the site.

“We realise we should have approached locals earlier to get their views. We are starting over and we have suspended any decision regarding development so we can genuinely listen to the community.”

Jones said she recognised there were “strong views” about public housing, but most of its housing “customers” had proven to be positive members of their community.

“There are also many people who we have not yet heard from and we want to understand their thoughts about a potential development.”

Kāinga Ora launched an online forum where residents could have their say and it had attracted more than 80 public comments by the time this story was published. None were in favour of social housing.

One said: “We are extremely worried about the impact it will have on our property value. This is a quiet area with like-minded people and we purchased here because it has an awesome vibe.”

“Putting a bunch of pōharas [poor people] in the middle of a six-figure income neighbourhood is definitely going to cause trouble. They’ll probably just commit crimes and mess up the place,” another said.

One of the most common themes touched on in feedback was that Kāinga Ora did not seem to either vet tenants or have an eviction policy for troublesome tenants.

Many were opposed to the fact the social housing would be near three schools and a playground. None considered residents of social housing might have children that would need such amenities.

When residents’ opposition to the development was last reported , Kāinga Ora had taken the position public housing was sorely needed and had to be built somewhere.

STUFF

Housing Minister Megan Woods announces a new bill to force councils to enable more dense housing. Video first published in October 2021.

There are about 8700 people waiting for a home across the whole Auckland region and 102 families from the Silverdale-Millwater area.

Asked if Kāinga Ora would abandon its plans to build social housing in Millwater if its public consultation showed the majority were in opposition, regional manager Taina Jones said it was still on the table.

Jones said: “It does not mean that we have ruled out public housing – it means we are going to engage in good faith, hear from the community and then make a decision that balances their needs and our delivery of housing.”

Housing Minister Megan Woods was asked whether the government agency ought to have to consult the public on building social housing if private developers would not be required to in the same position, especially in light of the housing crisis.

A spokesperson said Woods would not be making comment because she had been “unwell”.

Do you have an Auckland housing story that needs investigating? Contact [email protected]

“I felt like an alien before my diagnosis, I deserve love exactly as I am”

July 1, 2022 by www.newsweek.com Leave a Comment

My earliest memory of being different is from kindergarten. I would sit with my tiny hands under my legs to prevent them from erupting into the air like a volcano, because the boy next to me had noticed me moving them and poked my arm repeatedly with the sharp end of his mechanical pencil. I remember looking around the room in panic. Before then, I thought everybody flapped their hands. I assumed it was normal.

“What’s wrong with her?” I heard someone ask. Another responded, “I don’t know.”

I made sure to never act that way again.

It became clear that there was something wrong with me. I secretly suspected that I was born in a different galaxy far, far away. I fantasized about how I ended up here: I must have crawled onto a spaceship from my home planet and accidentally crash landed on Earth.

As a child, I believed I was an alien, but I knew I couldn’t let anyone discover my secret. I decided I had to learn how to be “human,” whatever it took.

Hiding “alien” traits from other humans

I hid any traits that others decided were “wrong”—which I learned quickly from their reactions to my behavior. I taught myself to laugh at jokes I didn’t think were funny, to make eye contact, to pretend I couldn’t hear the tapping of a pencil in the back of the room or the buzz-crackle-pop of electricity.

I was so good at pretending to be my idea of normal that I suspect I fooled several doctors, teachers, and two neuropsychologists: one when I was diagnosed with ADHD in second grade, after I got caught routinely doodling flowers in the margins of my empty multiplication tables and daydreaming out the window, and the second in seventh grade, who gave me a diagnosis of Dyscalculia, an obscure learning disability which meant I couldn’t comprehend numerical value.

Yet for a while, my plan to be “normal” succeeded. Until it didn’t. I was in third grade the first time someone called me a retard.

We were playing a ball game I had never played before called Four Square.

During the game, I began to think of all the ways my opponent could send the ball towards my direction. Right, left, forward, backward. I imagined what I would do when the time was right. I was so busy thinking about what could happen that I didn’t see my opponent’s smirk as she took her shot and hit my leg. I gasped and stepped back, shaken out of my stupor. She grinned, lips curled up, showing her canines. She reminded me of the Big Bad Wolf, only a much prettier version.

“You’re out, retard.” She said the word as if it were a bullet she had fired before, and she knew exactly where to aim. I didn’t know what this word meant, but I knew it wasn’t good. So I decided to try even harder to blend in. But the more this worked in my relationships, the worse I felt about myself.

Navigating sexuality as a young person

I first started to develop romantic feelings for girls at around age 9, though possibly earlier. I just didn’t understand them enough to give them a name, due to my difficulties recognizing and processing my own emotions. I had a huge crush on the bully who had called me a retard. I didn’t know why I wanted her to like me so much.

Once, our teacher assigned us to write a poem about someone we love, and I chose her. I slowly started to notice girls in a way that other girls didn’t seem to. I would get butterflies when a girlfriend put her head in my lap, or her hand on my shoulder, and knew I had to hide these abnormal feelings. No one else seemed to feel that way, so I thought that I shouldn’t, either.

By sixth grade, I had drifted apart from any group I once belonged to and I assumed that everybody else found it just as difficult to decipher social cues, body language, and facial expressions as I did, they were simply better at hiding their weaknesses. I couldn’t tell the difference between a smile that meant someone was happy and a smile that suggested they were merely being polite after an awkward situation had passed.

But I would daydream about a future where I lived with my female best friend forever and we’d never have to marry boys. I looked around at all the straight couples in my life, then returned to my fantasy, and thought I wish real life could be like that. I knew some kids had two moms or two dads, but because I didn’t see anyone like this in my daily life, I didn’t think they could exist. I didn’t think I could exist. We were never taught about gay rights in school except as a topic of political debate. There were no books in the libraries or the classrooms about what it’s like to be gay. So, I thought being a lesbian was the worst thing you could possibly be.

I made myself “like boys.” I trained myself to want them until I believed the lie.

But deep down, I always knew I didn’t find boys attractive at all. I wanted to be accepted.

I wondered if it was because girls on Mars, or wherever I was from, liked girls the way boys did.

I continued to hide my disability and sexuality throughout middle school and in high school. I changed high school three times, which stopped once we moved from Long Island, New York, to Charlotte, North Carolina in junior year. Being the new kid earned me a much-needed social advantage. I made friends easier than I did back home. Soon they all started to have boyfriends.

Every night, I went to bed and prayed that I would wake up straight as I said the Hebrew Shema prayer. I forced myself to date a boy because he was feminine and quiet, even though I felt sick to my stomach on all of our dates. Dating felt like a chore. I viewed romance as a mandatory script you had to follow to reach happily ever after.

I became paranoid that others might catch me staring at a girl and forced my attention towards him. I broke up with him without any real explanation why. But, I knew the truth. I liked girls.

Finally receiving an autism diagnosis

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I had never been able to truly connect with people. I worried I might never be able to.

Outside of my friend group, I struggled to interact with other human beings. I believed I was inexplicably, irreversibly damaged. In social interactions, I felt like a tourist who had been dropped off in a foreign country and expected to speak the native language like a local without a translator and handed a map I couldn’t understand. Somehow, I survived until high school graduation.

My parents knew I was socially awkward, quirky, and anxious, but they just thought I was an “old soul.” Then, in my freshman year of college, I was diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

The accessibility services director had suggested I get tested after we began to meet weekly to discuss my struggles adjusting to university life. I didn’t eat in the cafeteria because I experienced panic attacks as the wave of smells and sounds overwhelmed me. I heard the clang of silverware, the screech of chairs being moved, the crash of dishes being loaded onto the rotator belt. I couldn’t stand the crowds. I ate alone, and rarely left my room except to go to class or the library. I hated sudden change, like classes being canceled or assignment due dates being changed.

Discovering you’re autistic as an adult is a lot like rereading a mystery novel and chastising yourself for all the obvious clues you didn’t put together sooner. I learned that women were often misdiagnosed, diagnosed late, or not diagnosed at all. Had this staff member not figured it out, I likely wouldn’t have received the closure I needed to answer the question I’d been asking nineteen years: Why am I like this?

Coming out as gay and embracing neuro-diversity

After my autism diagnosis, everything about me finally made sense and shortly after, during a COVID-19 quarantine in 2020, I came out as gay.

The pandemic allowed me to fully process my feelings rather than hiding or ignoring them to please others. I didn’t have to pretend to be a stranger anymore. I finally took off the mask I wore and met the girl behind it. I cut all of my long hair off.

I flapped my hands again.

Since my life-changing diagnosis, I’ve taken a new approach to the way I view relationships, both friendship and romance. I now view my difficulties in friendships as part of my disability.

I try not to be harsh on myself when I don’t have anyone to hang out with on weekends or during breaks. I also want different outcomes in a relationship than most people. I value stability and a soulmate over a temporary fling and I’ve deleted dating apps that I thought I needed to use.

As a neuro-diverse individual, I’ve had to explain how my disability affects me to potential friends or partners. This process can be emotionally exhausting, which is why it’s frustrating to meet people I think I would get along great with, only to have them invalidate my experiences.

Once, I was asked out by a girl I really liked, unaware other members of her sorority would join us at the restaurant. I had thought it was a date because she had asked me out to dinner and a bookstore just the two of us. I hadn’t realized it was recruitment week. These sorority girls bombarded me with extremely personal questions, their eyes drifting towards one another after each answer I gave. I then had to listen to her giggle and say she thought she might be autistic too based solely on TikTok videos she sent me that she found funny. I didn’t laugh. When I asked her not to make fun of my disability, she canceled our plans. Another peer I thought was my friend posted videos on Snapchat showing him flapping his hands in an over-exaggerated fashion and giggling. In his caption, he appeared to brag that he was “stimming” along to a song.

This person doesn’t have an autism diagnosis. Stimming is a coping mechanism. I stim to process overwhelming emotions, be it happiness, sadness, anger, fear; not for fun.

I’ve seen some videos on TikTok that say: “If you get nervous around people a lot, you’re autistic.” This isn’t true. It’s misinformative. I have also seen neurotypical (non-autistic) peers hijack autism specific symptoms like “executive dysfunction” and “sensory overload” without any idea of what they really mean.

Seeing people who have what I’ve always wanted: a normal life and the ability to form human connection, suddenly claiming to have a disability that was long my biggest source of shame, hurts.

They don’t understand the pain that comes along with the words they use, or the reality of what it’s like to be autistic. Whenever this happens, it feels like they’re mocking me. I wish I could tell them that Autism is not a trend or a quirky personality trait. I’ve learned to accept who I am and embrace it because I have to. I’ve realized that my sexuality and disability will always be essential to the way I conceptualize the world and the people in it.

I am 21 now, and I am aware that I find it difficult just to take care of myself even as a “high functioning” woman, so I doubt I’ll be able to handle children in the future, which I no longer feel guilty about. I also recognize that it may take me longer to find love since I’ve always been a little behind people my age in terms of maturity. But I no longer adhere to society’s timeline for how to live my life.

Most importantly, I’ve realized that I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not to find joy, or success. And neither should anyone else. I know that I deserve love exactly as I am.

In the future, I hope I can make connections where I can truly be myself.

Lara Boyle is a writer based in Charlotte, North Carolina. You can follow her on Instagram @laraboylewrites and Twitter @laraboylewrites

All views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

CM makes surprise visit to government home for Boys in Ranipet

June 30, 2022 by www.thehindu.com Leave a Comment

Tamil schoolteacher L. Selvaraj, at the Government Middle School inside the Government Home for Boys in Ranipet, got an unexpected visitor on Thursday.

He was teaching students of Classes VI-VII when Chief Minister M.K. Stalin stepped in around 9.45 a.m. He was nervous and quiet before the Chief Minister, when the latter had asked him about the class strength. “I really did not know how to react when I saw him. However, he was very polite and enquired about the students in a caring way. It all happened in 5-10 minutes,” says Mr. Selvaraj.

The government home is maintained by the Department of Social Welfare and has 42 boys in the age group of 6-18. They reside in a common dormitory inside the campus, which also has a middle school. The armed reserve (AR) wing of the district police is also stationed inside the premises. The government home has been in existence since June 1924.

Accompanied by Minister for Public Works, Buildings, Highways and Minor Ports E.V. Velu and Minister for Handlooms and Textiles R. Gandhi, Mr. Stalin was heading towards the new Collectorate building before he stopped at the home. When his convoy stopped at the Superintendent’s office in the home, the Superintendent G. Vijayakumar was not present. Headmistress Gomathi was also not present during the Chief Minister’s visit.

Officials said Mr. Vijayakumar was on his weekly off, leaving another staff in-charge for the day. Both the Officer In-charge and the headmistress were stuck in traffic at the time of the Chief Minister’s visit. “An explanation has been sought from the staff at the home, who were not present during the Chief Minister’s visit. Further action will be based on the explanation,” Ranipet Collector, D. Bhaskara Pandian told The Hindu.

Mr. Stalin asked the children their names, native, living conditions and interests before leaving.

At present, the home has only three teachers for its middle school and four home masters. Students of higher classes go out to study and return in the evening.

A girl fled her war-torn homeland, but found more trauma in San Francisco

June 4, 2022 by www.sfchronicle.com Leave a Comment

The morning began like most in the Saleh family’s tiny studio six floors above Turk and Hyde streets in the Tenderloin. The four children rose from their mats on the floor as their parents emerged from the closet where they share a small mattress.

Abu Bakr Saleh, the father and sole earner in the family of refugees who fled the war in Yemen, rushed to begin a 16-hour double shift at a grocery store and a KFC. His wife, Sumaya Albadani, began an isolating day of cooking, cleaning and waiting for the others to return.

The kids — Ahmed, 16, Asma, 15, Raghad, 12, and Maya, 10 — rode a rickety elevator down to one of the city’s most distressed blocks, before fanning out to their four schools.

But on Sept. 29, 2021, Raghad didn’t reach hers.

The sixth-grader at Francisco Middle School in North Beach — who had suffered a major trauma the year before, when an immigration fiasco forced her family to leave her with strangers in Egypt — lingered on the 400 block of Larkin Street while Ahmed ran into a shop to do an errand.

Just then, a woman in a wheelchair approached, yelling incoherently and spouting Islamophobic statements about the girl’s hijab, according to the girl and police. Raghad, still learning English, only caught portions of the diatribe, but heard three words very clearly: “Are you scared?”

“After that, she came close to me, and she hit me,” the girl told me a few months later. “She punched me in the head. I felt dizzy after that. I couldn’t believe it.”

Ahmed witnessed the attack and rushed to help. A security guard called 911. Police responded and arrested the woman on suspicion of committing assault, child endangerment and a hate crime. After getting checked out by paramedics, Raghad spent the day at home.

She hasn’t been the same since, her family said. She spends long hours playing games on her phone and watching YouTube videos. She’s listless. She cries more. She’s still fearful, saying she’s seen the woman several times since the attack despite a protective order to stay away.

The attack was shocking, but only to a degree, in a neighborhood with one of the city’s highest assault rates. And it would ripple outward: In November, the episode would become one focus of a letter that Tenderloin families delivered to Mayor London Breed, pleading for help.

“We are immigrants and refugees. We are children and mothers and fathers,” began the letter, penned by staff at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District and signed by 400 neighbors. “We are the Tenderloin, and you have failed us.”

The Salehs had one wish: to escape their $2,050-a-month studio for a bigger apartment in a safer neighborhood. More broadly, they sought the American dream in a city that proclaims itself a refuge.

But while San Francisco officials furiously debated what to do about a crisis of homelessness, addiction and mental illness in the Tenderloin, no one talked much about reducing harm to the many families stuck in one of the last semi-affordable stretches of the city.

In many respects, the Saleh family was living a dream life in Yemen. Abu Bakr, now 38, supported his family as an accountant for the finance ministry. Their six-bedroom home in Ibb, a city in western Yemen, was surrounded by lush gardens.

But the country’s war that began in 2014, when Houthi rebels took control of the northern part of Yemen, brought devastation. A military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States entered the fight, and it has dragged on since. The United Nations estimates 377,000 people have been killed, 70% of them young children. Millions more, including the Salehs, have been displaced.

Abu Bakr made it to San Francisco in 2016 to join his parents, who were already living in Mission Bay. He planned to get settled and then send for his wife and four children, who had fled to Egypt. Finally, on March 1, 2020, the family received visas to travel to the United States — all but Raghad. To this day, it’s not clear why.

As they waited, they faced a deadline — the July 1 expiration date of the visas — and a pandemic obstacle: The Trump administration suspended visa services at all U.S. embassies and consulates in March 2020 and, in June, banned most immigration to the U.S. through the end of the year.

So Sumaya and her other children made the excruciating decision to fly to San Francisco while they still could, depositing Raghad with a Yemeni family in Cairo they barely knew.

“All the time in the airplane,” Sumaya recalled, “I was crying because I left my daughter.”

The Saleh family became one of 23 plaintiffs challenging President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions in court. The Chronicle told their story on July 29, 2020, and the next month, the U.S. Embassy in Cairo granted Raghad — who’d been stranded for six weeks — a visa.

But their new life was far from what they had envisioned.

“Thank you, my God, to bring my family here,” Abu Bakr said. “I’m happy I’m here because it’s too much problem in Yemen. No salary, no power, no water, no food. It’s war. But I work too hard because it’s expensive here, you know? I can’t save money, and I stay in a bad location also.”

Walking a few blocks with Raghad one day last December, from a Muni stop to her home, I saw what her dad meant. We strolled past a strip club with the sign “Where the Wild Girls Are.” Past people slumped unconscious in bus shelters. Past a woman screaming gibberish. Past a woman doing drugs on the sidewalk, her face bloodied. Past piles of trash and feces.

“This neighborhood is so scary,” Raghad said, moving quickly and nervously adjusting her hijab.

At night, the Salehs don’t leave their studio. Still, they have trouble sleeping with the sounds of gunshots, fights and sirens.

“We don’t go to the window in case the gun comes,” Maya said, holding her fingers in the shape of a pistol.

Sumaya, speaking Arabic through an interpreter, said she was shocked when her picture of America didn’t match the reality of her new home. “From the pictures, I thought it would be really clean, and now, when I walk up the street, it’s really, really painful to see all these things,” she said.

“If you walk a little bit far away from here,” Sumaya added, “you can say, ‘Yes, this is the United States I know.’”

More than two months after Raghad was attacked, her mother brought her and her brother to a mid-December meeting with Breed in the city’s Main Library to discuss conditions in the Tenderloin. The mayor barred journalists, but according to an audience member’s recording, she told the families she was frustrated by the neighborhood’s “horrible conditions.”

“You’re dealing with the concern of whether you might get robbed or hit over the head or attacked or spit on,” Breed told them.

People in the audience said the city was looking the other way as drug dealers created misery. And that cops just drove past rather than walking the beat. Several shared stories about their businesses being robbed, strangers attacking them, hate crimes proliferating and being forced to huddle with children at playgrounds as men brandished guns outside the gates.

Breed promised big changes. She would deploy more officers to the Tenderloin like she had in Union Square after heists at Louis Vuitton and other luxury stores weeks before.

After the meeting, Raghad said she was upset she didn’t get to share her story of being attacked before the mayor abruptly left. “There are a lot of people who are struggling in this area and facing the same problem I did,” she said.

But the family was encouraged. The mayor had promised help.

Four days later, Breed assembled the news media at City Hall to announce a state of emergency in the Tenderloin meant to end “all the bulls— that has destroyed our city.” She said residents would see far more police and that they’d crack down on drug dealing, gun violence and the resale of stolen goods.

But that pledge of a Union Square-like police presence in the Tenderloin never materialized. More officers came months later — Breed said the delay owed to understaffing and the omicron variant — and only during the day.

Drug dealing continued unabated, signaling that purveyors of fancy handbags were more important to the city than low-income families like the Salehs who were left to deal with the fallout.

The family occasionally witnessed overdoses from their window. After Maya started talking about seeing “dizzy” people “laying on the floor,” it became clear she meant people passed out on the sidewalks after using drugs.

“Everybody is scared here,” Maya said. “If I walk with myself, my brain says, ‘Maya, don’t be scared. Everything will be OK.’”

Though Raghad’s visa crisis was unique, her family’s path from Yemen to the Tenderloin was not.

Jehan Hakim, chair of the Yemeni Alliance Committee, a group calling on the United States to cease military involvement in Yemen, said her father moved her family here in the mid-1970s in pursuit of better education and more opportunities.

Word of mouth brought more families from Yemen, and eventually hundreds settled in two low-income buildings on Turk and Jones streets. Today, there are two mosques in the neighborhood and a community group that provides immigration help, but almost no other services specifically for Yemeni immigrants, Hakim said.

“We don’t have anything with wraparound social services that’s focusing on supporting Arab people coming from other countries,” she said.

Aseel Fara, a 22-year-old outreach coordinator at the Tenderloin Community Benefit District, said the Saleh family’s story sounded like his own. When his family left Yemen, it packed into a studio apartment on the same block as the Salehs, lured by the cheapest possible rent in the city.

“We’re limited to areas such as the Tenderloin,” Fara said, “which are neglected by the city and neglected by society.”

There’s no good data on how many Yemeni people live in the Tenderloin — Arab people are supposed to mark themselves as white in the U.S. census — but Hakim guesses as many as 2,500 live in the neighborhood now.

Even the richest families from Yemen are poor in San Francisco, Fara said, because any money they’ve saved buys so little here, and their education and work experience back home counts for next to nothing. Men from Yemen who settle in the Tenderloin often work as janitors or grocery store clerks, he said, and the women often stay home alone during the school day.

Moving from a conservative Muslim country to the anything-goes Tenderloin can be shocking, Fara said. And it can be frightening for women to walk the streets in hijabs, which sometimes draw stares and bigoted remarks.

But despite the hardships, Fara is glad his family moved to San Francisco.

“I don’t want to take away from what America has provided us,” he said. “The opportunities are endless.”

And indeed, the Saleh children have their dreams.

Ahmed, who goes to Galileo High, told me he wants to study computer science and work as a web developer. Asma, in a program at San Francisco International High designed for recent immigrants, hopes to be an interpreter and plans to tackle Spanish after perfecting her English. Maya, a bright-eyed girl who attends Tenderloin Community Elementary, imagines becoming a doctor.

Raghad, rarely as animated as her siblings, said she isn’t sure what her future will bring. She acknowledged that she still feels depressed. She went to the counseling office at school once, but said the social worker wasn’t there, and she never tried again.

“Sometimes I dream my house from Yemen is here in the USA,” Raghad said, explaining this would be the best of both worlds.

About six weeks after Breed declared her Tenderloin emergency, the Salehs told me they felt their block was a little safer and cleaner, partly thanks to ambassadors from Urban Alchemy, the nonprofit group hired by San Francisco to calm the city’s troubled core.

The blocks to the north seemed worse, so they often walked south instead — to the fields and playgrounds in Civic Center Plaza.

“Sometimes I feel sad,” Abu Bakr said, sitting on a bench during a rare day off as his daughters played. “I worry too much. I can’t save more. I can’t see my children.”

Ahmed, sitting at his father’s feet, said he’d told one of the mayor’s staff members at the library meeting about Raghad’s attack — and the family’s wish to leave the Tenderloin — but that no help had come through.

After I started asking questions, the Mayor’s Office and District Attorney’s Office pledged housing and mental health assistance for the Salehs. But eight months after the attack, none has materialized.

Finding publicly funded therapists taking new clients has proved difficult because of pandemic-fueled waiting lists, and finding an Arabic-speaking therapist is nearly impossible, explained Kasie Lee, chief of the D.A.’s Victim Services Division. The office was able to locate an Arabic-speaking therapist in private practice and is trying to secure money to pay for sessions, but Raghad still hasn’t talked to a professional about her trauma.

Obtaining a new apartment is also difficult. Lee explained that relocation assistance from the District Attorney’s Office and a state victims compensation fund would typically help the family cover a security deposit and first month’s rent. The problem is finding a larger, safer apartment the family can afford, long term, on its own. The family can apply for affordable housing programs, but the wait lists are notoriously long.

Moving out of the city proved daunting because the family had no car and no job lined up elsewhere and couldn’t easily scrape together moving expenses.

Nothing much has happened in the case of Raghad’s alleged attacker. District Attorney Chesa Boudin charged Tinesha Scott, 48, with felony child endangerment and felony assault with a hate crime enhancement.

Boudin’s spokesperson, Rachel Marshall, said the office filed a motion to detain Scott, but a Superior Court judge denied it. The courts issued a criminal protective order, but Raghad said she has seen Scott several times since the encounter — including beneath her studio window. She said she was terrified when Scott waved at her.

“Next time,” Raghad said, “she could be holding a knife.”

Phoenix Streets, a public defender representing Scott, said his client had experienced a mental health crisis that September morning and received care at a hospital. Eight months after the attack, Scott has not received long-term treatment, which Streets blamed on “the underfunding of our mental health care system.”

And so, all these months later, everybody involved remains in pretty much the same position: the Saleh family stuck in a tiny studio on a ragged block. Raghad anxious and scared. Scott’s mental illness unaddressed. The city of San Francisco seemingly no closer to helping the families of the Tenderloin — which is no longer in a state of emergency, at least officially.

But there is one big change: Sumaya is expecting her fifth baby — a boy — in September. He’s one more reason to find a bigger apartment. One more reason to strive for a better life. One more reason to dream.

Heather Knight is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @hknightsf

Editor’s note: After the initial publication of this story, the Tenderloin Community Benefit District established a fund to raise money to help the Salehs find a new home and move out of the neighborhood. Information about the fund can be found here .