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Notes -
ICE arrests superintendent of Iowa's largest public school district
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency arrested Ian Andre Roberts, who is the superintendent of the Des Moines (IA) public school district. If you've been following along with this aspect of the culture war, you probably figure he was arrested for abetting or protecting a student or faculty or staff member from them. But no; the guy is, according to ICE here illegally and was given a final order of removal in May 2024. ICE is strongly implying he never had any work authorization beyond a long-since-expired student visa. It seems to me pretty bold for someone here without work authorization to be in such a high-profile position. Even more surprising for him to be hired; the district claims to have done a background check on him; you would think this would result in them finding out he was not authorized to work and not being hired. Someone screwed up there.
Other aspects are that he had a weapons possession charge in Pennsylvania from 2021, but this was a pissant ("5th degree summary offense") thing about having his deer rifle on his seat still loaded. More serious is that he fled the ICE agents when stopped; his car was found with a loaded handgun, a hunting knife, and $3000 in cash. I don't much care about the illegal-alien-in-possession aspect; making a whole range of normal activities super-illegal based on a status offense is a tyrant's trick. But fleeing certainly seems to indicate a guilty mind rather than some sort of error or misunderstanding on ICEs part.
At first I thought they might have the wrong guy; there's an Ian Andre Roberts from Guyana who competed in the Olympics. But no, that's actually the same guy.
On reddit, /r/desmoines is up in arms... about the arrest, of course, not about the school district hiring a guy with no work authorization.
My experience with school districts is that anything Principle-level(and sometimes Assistant-Principle) and above are pure political appointees.
Old-style politics, in the form of whom you know. And if you're lucky, they're somewhat competent at thier job. If not...
So it doesn't really surprise me that he got hired. He knew the right people, and they didn't care about his bona fides.
The head of a school is a principal. A principle is an underlying idea.
I have never claimed to be a clever man.
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"Remember, the principal is your pal"
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More generally, "principal" means "first". Which I assume is the origin of principal as the head of a school, but IDK for certain.
Same origin as the word "prince" for first son, I would assume.
'Princeps' means 'first citizen' and was used as a euphemism for the institution of a de facto hereditary monarchy(same as 'imperator' which just meant 'person holding authority'). Over time it morphed to refer to a minor king which then became used as a courtesy title for a non-reigning royal.
prīnceps merely means 'first' - the prīnceps senātūs ('first of the senate') originated during the Republic, and later Augustus took the title prīnceps cīvitātis ('first of the citizens') to pretend that he was merely first among equals rather than a king.
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If the domain of a prince is a principality, does that make the domain of a principal a principalipality?
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