MONTEREY PRESIDIO, Calif. (November 23, 2022) – Monterey County honored a Presidio of Monterey family with a framed copy of the county’s Military Family Appreciation Month Proclamation during a meeting in Salinas on November 22.

Monterey County Supervisor Wendy Root Askew, herself a former military child, presented the proclamation to Nicholas Morgan, 15, Porter Youth Center’s 2021 Military Youth of the Year, and his family. The presentation demonstrated the close ties between the Presidio and the surrounding communities.

Nicholas accepted the proclamation with his father, Air Force Master Sgt. Vincent Morgan, mother Ashley, sisters Charlotte, 11, and Abigail, 3, and brother Jackson, 9. Elaine Vrolyks, the PoM School Liaison Officer, recommended the family for the honor and accompanied them to the meeting.

“The Morgan family, they’re amazing,” Vrolyks said during the presentation. “They are part of our exemplary families. Nick was an incredible youngster of the year for us.

Nicholas said he appreciates the county’s recognition of the sacrifices made by military families, such as frequent deployments and relocations.

“They’re putting their lives on the line for a greater cause,” Nicholas said, “but it’s a big sacrifice on their part and I think that should be recognized.”

Volunteering at the Porter Youth Center has been a great experience, Nicholas said, and he encourages other military youth to come to the center.

“There’s a whole community of people who understand what it is, who have been through what you’ve been through and who you can really connect to on a deeper level, and that can really open you up to new things,” said Nicholas said. “It can really open up your whole world, because one day I stepped in there and it changed my whole life.”

Vrolyks spoke a bit to the Monterey Area Military Community Oversight Board, explaining that most military families come to the area so service members can attend the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center.

“Families can be here for a year to two years, three years depending on the posting, but they come here to study and then they get into very serious situations to protect our nation,” Vrolyks said.

The resolution recognized the unique sacrifices and challenges family members make to support their loved ones in uniform.

“While no matter what rank or branch or where life has taken military families, they share commonalities of service and sacrifice,” the resolution reads in part. “While military spouses are fellow citizens and neighbors and serve their families and their country, they represent America’s true strength.”

Askew said that as a military child, she moved almost every year during a formative period in her life and appreciates the sacrifices military families make.

“It is an absolute honor and privilege for me to recognize all of our military families who pass through Monterey County, who have chosen to make Monterey County their home and who bring so much strength, experience and diversity to the rich fabric of Monterey County,” Askew said.

Staff Sgt. Morgan said he and his family had been in Monterey for about three years, and during that time Nicholas thrived at Porter Youth Center.

“It really is [Nicholas’s] efforts that have opened our family to these kinds of opportunities,” Master Sgt. said Morgana. “We’re grateful for that, but we’re just happy that he took advantage of the things that were presented to him, the opportunities that presented themselves.”

Ashley Morgan said she started homeschooling her kids when they moved to Monterey, and the Presidio of Monterey has provided a lot of support with the Porter Youth Center and homeschool co-op, which meets monthly. and provides opportunities such as field trips.

As a member of a military family, Ashley Morgan also said she appreciates the county’s recognition of military families.

“I think it’s good to be recognized when sometimes maybe [military families] don’t feel recognized,” Ashley Morgan said. “Sometimes the sacrifices go unnoticed. I think it’s good to shine the spotlight a little once in a while in a crowd that usually doesn’t like the spotlight that much.

As a Latina student at Newton College and Career Academy, Jenny Rodriguez sometimes found herself struggling with the discomfort that comes with the distinction of often being the only student of her ethnicity in a particular class.

But more than ever, she turns those challenges into leadership opportunities.

Beyond Rodriguez’s unweighted 4.0 grade point average and her internship at the MG law firm in Conyers, the senior says she is most proud of her accomplishments as a leader and tutor in the group. of NCCA entrepreneurs called Amigos Unidos.

It is a free English to Speakers of Other Languages ​​(ESOL) tutoring service and Hispanic cultural awareness club. Through this group, Rodriguez not only has the chance to deepen her pride and appreciation for her own heritage, but she can also help others do the same.

“I strive to provide resources for Hispanics who have little guidance in their studies and struggle with language barriers in the classroom,” she said. “I also find it crucial to teach others about Hispanic culture, as I was often the only Latina in a class and it was hard to accept and embrace my difference.

“So it has become a dream and an honor to celebrate my history, my culture and the influence of previous generations by creating awareness to empower people to do the same.”

Beyond that, she enjoys her job at MG Law where she helps file documents for motor vehicle accidents and rental properties, creating entries, answering phone calls and developing research for cases. high profile, not to mention managing MG Law’s social media accounts.

Rodriguez’s fascination with legal work came from seeing how others who share his heritage often struggle with legal issues — and not always because of something they did wrong.

“I’ve always had a fascination with legal work,” she says. “This internship has just further fueled my passion for the defense of defenseless people. As a witness to the social injustices against my father, I knew I had to help others and make a difference in their lives.

Rodriguez says she narrowed her college choices to Emory University, Georgia State, the University of Georgia and Harvard College. Her list of campus involvements at the NCCA is long, including membership on the Associate Board of Directors of the NCCA, Future Business Leaders of America where she served as Vice President of Community Service and as a contributor to Newton High. School Latino Student Union.

It’s not just for resume padding, though. She uses every experience to help her achieve her greatest mission – to have maximum impact in her community of Covington and beyond.

“This kind of recognition helps promote other leaders to emerge and reside in Covington to want to make a difference,” she said. “I believe change is created by maintaining and recognizing strong individuals to collaborate in the fight for impact, and ultimately, my mission is to make a difference in the lives of others by standing up for underserved minority communities.”

A private-sector English-speaking test will be introduced to the Tokyo Metropolitan High School Entrance Examination for the first time in Japan this month, but the initiative to develop “speaking skills” is running into a backlash. strong opposition from some parents and education experts who question its fairness.

The test will be set up for the entrance examination on November 27, targeting nearly 80,000 third-year middle school students in the capital who wish to attend metropolitan high schools from next April. The scores for the speaking tests will be added to the overall scores for the entrance exams, which will be held next February.

Some parents and experts are calling for the test to be canceled due to the need for more transparency on who will be scoring it and the point deduction standard.

Meanwhile, some junior high school classes in Tokyo have started preparing for the speaking test. In mid-October, third-grade students from Konan Junior High School participated in improvisational skits in English.

“I tried to create an environment where speaking English is normal,” said Hiromi Maeda, 48, the college’s principal.

According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, the test was jointly created by the school board and education service provider Benesse Corp. Scoring will be done by local staff from a Benesse affiliate in the Philippines.

According to the board, the approximately 76,000 students who applied to take the tests represent about 95 percent of third-year junior high students in Tokyo.

Students taking the test will don headsets with microphones and record verbal responses to eight questions displayed on tablets. They will also wear earmuffs to protect against noise.

Students will be graded on a six-point scale for grammar and pronunciation, among other aspects of speaking ability, with “A” being the highest and “F” the lowest.

An “A” is worth 20 points, while an “F” would add zero to the total score for next year’s entrance exams, which include an achievement test with a possible total score of 700 and a report card with a maximum of 300 points.

For those who miss the speaking test due to illness or other reasons, scores are calculated by averaging the speaking test scores of students with the same level as the English score of the absentee at the performance test.

Worried about fairness, parents and education experts against the speaking test have launched a petition to urge the metropolitan government to halt its implementation, garnering more than 23,000 signatures as of November 11. A request for an audit has also been submitted to the local government authority.

“Who is going to mark the answers of some 80,000 students? The markers are probably not aware of the marking criteria, and I think it would be difficult to mark it fairly,” said a 52-year-old high school mother. student in the Bunkyo district of Tokyo.

Because levels of English instruction in middle schools in Tokyo vary widely, “students who have prepared well in cram schools will be at an advantage,” said another 53-year-old parent.

Some also call the treatment of students who skip the test due to illness or other reasons unreasonable. They say students may think it better not to prepare and receive a “virtual” score by skipping the exam.

The opposition to the English-speaking test recalls when the government postponed the planned introduction of English proficiency tests in the private sector as part of Japan’s standardized university entrance exams launched in the 2020 financial year.

At this time, critics said the use of private sector testing would discriminate against students living in remote areas and questioned the lack of supports for disadvantaged households.

The Iwate Prefectural Government previously introduced an English conversation test on entrance examinations for prefectural-run high schools in fiscal year 2004. However, it was canceled after three years due to long wait times. waiting for students taking the tests.

The Fukui Prefectural Government also experimentally tested students using the Benesse English exams in fiscal 2018 and 2019, but decided to wait to officially adopt them due to issues such as the considerable time required for to note.

Rebutting the opposition, the Tokyo board of education said it had “regularly” prepared for the tests by holding three mock exams.

Regarding grading, an education board official said fairness would be ensured because “several people will mark the exams, and if the grading differs, an older person will make adjustments.”

Misato Usukura, an associate professor at Tokyo Gakugei University who specializes in English language teaching, said that to improve students’ English skills, teachers must first undergo training to improve the way the language is taught in schools.

If Anglophone tests are to be incorporated into high school entrance exams, “they should allay concerns by making scoring open, for example by publishing the sample answers for each assessment,” she said.

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Related coverage:

Japanese public elementary school offers rare English immersion program

FEATURE: Esports English lessons attract kids stuck at home amid pandemic

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This article was co-published by Chalkbeat Indiana and WFYI as part of a collaboration for the 2022 school elections.

Three of Indiana’s seven school districts with ballot questions to approve property tax levies for operational funds failed to receive voter approval Tuesday in the midterm elections.

Leaders of Brown County Schools in Brown County, from Delphi Community School Corp. in Carroll County and Medora Community School Corp. in Jackson County were unable to convince their communities to bear the additional cost of real estate bills.

The three rural districts have warned of staff and program cuts, and an increase in the number of students in classrooms if funding is not approved. Brown County Superintendent Emily Tracy also said wages and salaries would be frozen across the district.

Education leaders and advocates had warned that the new language required on the ballot could give voters the wrong idea of ​​how much property tax they could face. Last year, a law was enacted that requires the ballot question to include the estimated average percentage increase in property tax paid to the school district if the levy is approved.

Unofficial results reported by county election offices:

Brown County SchoolsBrown County: 52.9% voted against the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.1200 per $100 of assessed value for eight years.

Delphi Community School Corp.Carroll County: 55% voted against the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.2032 per $100 of assessed value for eight years.

Medora Community School Corp.Jackson County: 74.49% voted against the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.50 per $100 of property assessment for eight years.

Monroe County Community School Corp.Monroe County: 67% voted yes in the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.1850 per $100 of assessment for eight years.

Allen County Southwest MSD, Allen County: 69.1% voted yes in the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.15 per $100 of property assessment for eight years.

Southern Wells Community Schools, Wells County: 71% voted yes in the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.127 per $100 of property assessment for eight years.

Westfield Washington Schools, Hamilton County: 67.76% voted yes in the operations referendum for a property tax rate of $0.17 per $100 of property assessment for eight years.

Results were not available early Wednesday for a capitol referendum requested by Wabash County School Corp’s MSD. in Wabash County. Voters were asked to approve a new property tax of $115 million as part of a plan to build a new high school and renovate other buildings.

This story will be updated.

Contact Eric Weddle, WFYI’s Education Editor, at [email protected] or call (317) 614-0470. Follow on Twitter: @ericweddle.

When: Lancaster School District Council Meeting, Nov. 1.

What happened: The percentage of McCaskey students of color taking advanced courses continues to rise, and that increase should help the district meet a diversity goal by 2025.

Quotable“We’re excited about what we’re seeing from our students and faculty,” McCaskey principal Justin Reese told board members.

Objective: More than 30% of McCaskey students of color will enroll in and successfully complete advanced coursework by June 30, 2025, Reese said.

Numbers: For International Baccalaureate classes, this fall brought 145 additional students, and 47.7% of that increase came from students of color. Advanced Placement courses saw an increase of 101 students this year. Students of color made up 43.4% of new enrollments.

ETC: The school’s vocational and technical training program has also seen an increase. Career and technical education classes increased by 144 new students, and 53.9% of that increase came from students of color, Reese said.

Book program: The district is updating book titles for 9th and 10th graders to better teach English/language arts goals and provide choices that resonate with teens, said Karen Wynn, who directs educational programming and professional development for the district. Novels and non-fiction books join the regular program.

Quotable“We want our kids to see themselves in these books,” Wynn said after the meeting. Students, parents, teachers, administrators and two board members formed a curriculum committee that held book club meetings.

Details: The group looked at the diversity of characters and book authors, as well as sexual preferences, Wynn told board members.

Ninth: Freshmen will continue reading “The House on Mango Street” by Sandra Cisneros, which can be paired with a new selection, “#NotYourPrincess,” an anthology of Native American female voices. Ninth graders will also read The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, a Shakespearean play that the students read a few years ago. Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” will remain on the list, while the young adult version of Bryan Stevenson’s “Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption” will be another new offering.

Tenth: The district will test a student favorite called “Station Eleven” in one or two classrooms because administrators are concerned the text structure will be too difficult, Wynn said. The fantasy novel, by Emily St. John Mandel, deals with the effects of an influenza pandemic.

More information: Students will continue reading the play “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, “The Kite Runner”, a novel by Khaled Hosseini and “Night” by Elie Wiesel.

Next: The school board will meet at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, November 9. The public can view the meetings and register to comment on the district’s website.

“Decolonizing Accent in English Teaching”

This month’s Spotlight comes from a member of Language, Culture and Hub Mingy Li. Mingyi holds a Ph.D. student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. For her master’s, she explored how Western influence affected Chinese doctoral students’ understanding of the West before they arrived in Canada, as well as their decision to choose Canada as a destination to advance their academic careers..

The Language, Culture and Justice Hub recently hosted a webinar that explored related issues. Entitled “Towards Linguistic Justice in Higher Education,” the event featured Hub members Marguerite Lukes, Vijay Ramjattan and Shawna Shapiro. Watch a recording of the webinar here.

In this Projector piece, I would like to present a small part of my master’s thesis from OISE. The main objective of this dissertation was to examine the identity formation of Chinese international students – born in the 1990s and having spent considerable time living in China and Canada – as they negotiate their understanding of race, nationality, values ​​and beliefs through their journey of settlement in North American countries. This Spotlight aims to present how the language learning experiences of Chinese students before their arrival in the West can modify their behaviors when they settle in the West.

The results of my study indicated that all of the participants received training in the “Standardized North American English Accent” at varying levels while in China. The impacts of accent training were different for each participant. According to participants’ accounts, the native speaker ideology was deeply embedded in the professional thinking and activities used by their English teachers while studying in China. For example, one participant recounted:

I don’t think we have a choice to have the “Chinese accent” when speaking English in the Chinese education system. We can only have the North American accent or the British accent. I remember our elementary and secondary English programs were all in North American English. My high school English teachers asked us to rehearse after all kinds of North American radio stations. We had to do our best to have the same pronunciation and speaking habits as white people.

Another participant shared a very similar story:

All of my elementary school English teachers and after school English classes have played for us on North American and UK radio. They wanted us to have the same accents as those broadcasters. I think the accuracy of English expression was highly emphasized in the English class in China. We tend to find the most accurate pronunciation [of English]. I can’t even have the same pronunciation as Chinese broadcasters when I speak Chinese, which is my mother tongue. How is it possible to have the exact pronunciations like the English broadcasters?

The process of having students mimic North American and British accents formed a colonized mentality within the language classroom. He divided students into accent hierarchies based on the level at which they could speak so-called standard English. As a result, the colonized mentality has led to alienation and estrangement, which is often accompanied “by the internalization of deficit views towards self and community, inherently shaped by contempt, hostility and resentment of the dominant elite towards a subordinate population” (Darder, 2018, p. 12). One participant in this study explicitly indicated that because of her training in Standard English in China, she was always very aware of her own accent when speaking English. Although she fully respects the various accents of English, she still critically judges her own accent and grammar whenever she speaks English in public.

This particular finding in my study reflects a widespread phenomenon in the language classroom, where monolingual ideologies still dominate teaching practices and where there is a lack of critical awareness. As language educators, we should neither destroy nor devalue the dignity of students and their cultural backgrounds; rather, we should increase their cultural confidence through teaching English and enable them to deconstruct, critique, reform and reconstruct the ideological foundations of knowledge and culture.

WALLINGFORD — In an effort to improve communication between the district and the community, the Board of Education has announced a redesign of the Wallingford Public Schools website.

Karen Veilleux, director of information technology for Wallingford Public Schools, said the updated website went live on October 17.

“We are delighted that parents and community members can find up-to-date information in an easily accessible format,” Veilleux said.

The website update process began in April 2022.

“The process was a months-long initiative designed to provide the most user-friendly and up-to-date communication platform for our families and communities,” said Wallingford School Superintendent Danielle Bellizzi.

Veilleux said the staff was focusing on a theme/design and how the website data would be organized.

“Most of the work was done over the summer and early fall,” Veilleux said.

It has been many years since the schools’ website had a major overhaul, Veilleux said.

“We focused on organizing the information in a way that would be easy for community members to access,” Veilleux said. “Schools were also organized with the same menus/drop-downs so there was consistency across the district.”

School board president Tammy Raccio said the district has always used a vendor for the website. Bellizzi said the one-time redesign fee was $6,700 in addition to the website’s annual renewal cost of $26,220.

With this update, Veilleux said each school in the district has its own website, homepage, URL and branding, which includes its school’s colors and images.

“Our old website only had one website,” Veilleux said. “Each school had a ‘page’ on the main site, mostly links to other information.”

Moreover, thanks to Weglot, a translation tool, the website can be translated into different languages ​​so that families can read the information in the language of their choice.

“Our parents speak many different languages, it’s important that they can access this information in their native language,” Veilleux said.

Raccio said the old website had no machine translation, so the district had to wait hours to get a message from the superintendent translated.

“It’s much easier to just have it on the website,” Raccio said. The superintendent “posts a message, boom. You choose the language you want and she simply translates it.

While Bellizzi is thrilled the website is being updated, she said ease of access is what’s most important.

“This is an exciting, updated look on our website,” Bellizzi said. “Most importantly, it will make accessing school and district information even easier and more user-friendly for our community.”

[email protected]: @jessica_simms99

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by River L Starliper | published on October 22, 2022

War. Genocide. Drugs. Violence. All things that students are exposed to in multiple subjects, but sex is where many draw the line.

In the United States, a very small percentage of middle schools and high schools — 18 and 43 percent respectively — teach material that covers key topics in sex education as defined by the CDC.

Additionally, only 18 of the 50 US states require that the information taught in sex education be medically accurate. Other states teach abstinence-only education, in which students are taught exclusively to avoid sex altogether.

Students are not taught about sex, and this educational deficit goes beyond the mechanics of sexual intercourse. Contraception, reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and domestic violence are all subjects neglected by schools lacking sex education.

For students who identify as LGBTQ+, the mental and physical risk may be even greater.

The demand for diversity

Chelsea Proulx, a public health researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, studies the impact of inclusive sex education on student mental health and well-being.

In 2019, Proulx conducted a study looking at schools offering LGBT-inclusive sex education programs and determining whether or not their students had better mental health outcomes.

Proulx’s model found that schools that had LGBT-inclusive sex-ed programs experienced lower rates of depression and suicidality among heterosexual LGBTQ+ and cisgender students, as well as lower rates of bullying and harassment .

This research included statistics describing the prevalence of same-sex couples in an area as a control value to mitigate the effects of experiencing more diverse or inclusive environments outside of school.

Across the study, more than twice as many LGBTQ+ students reported “prolonged feelings of hopelessness or sadness” as their heterosexual peers, and LGBTQ+ youth were five times more likely to attempt suicide.

Additionally, LGBTQ+ students were more likely to report bullying, harassment, and feelings of insecurity in their school environment.

Although schools may have gay-straight alliances or gender-sexuality alliances (GSAs), only a limited number of students actually attend these meetings. Students who may engage in homophobic or transphobic behavior are generally not part of these organizations.

By including LGBTQ+ topics in mainstream curricula, all students are exposed to these issues and can gain greater awareness and understanding of the different types of gender relations and expression around the world.

“[Inclusive sexual education] uses very open and tolerant language, and more inclusive definitions. »

If there is so much data to support these positive claims and results, why aren’t more schools adopting an inclusive curriculum?

think about children

Many are familiar with laws such as Florida’s HB 1557, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The law prohibits any discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, or “in a manner that is not age or developmentally appropriate.”

Proponents of these bills argue that they protect students from grooming and predatory behavior by instructors, and question why kids this young need to discuss sex in the first place.

Discussions of LGBT topics go far beyond sex, and general sex education covers much more than sex itself. So what might LGBT-inclusive sex education look like?

“It uses very open and tolerant language, and more inclusive definitions,” Proulx said.

This could mean using anatomical terms instead of gendered ones, or having neutral conversations about pregnancy. Many elementary schools already provide early sex education by teaching students about menstruation and their changing bodies, and most sex education programs are built around topics appropriate to the development of an age group.

“Kids this age are also old enough to understand what relationships look like,” Proulx said.

At this point, inclusive sex education can be as simple as teaching boys about rules as well as girls, teaching all students about different body types, and including same-sex couples in relationship discussions.

As children progress through their schooling, so does the material considered “developmentally appropriate”.

Sex education in a secondary school could include teaching about how pregnancy and childbirth work, birth control methods, and STI prevention. It can also cover vital information on how students can self-screen for breast cancer and testicular cancer.

“When we get to high school, I think about talking about what safe sex looks like for young gay people… [benefits] young heterosexuals too,” Proulx explained.

Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a drug that can be taken by people at risk of contracting HIV to avoid contracting the disease, sexually or otherwise. Similarly, post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) can be taken as an emergency measure after an individual has potentially had intimate contact with someone living with HIV.

However, PrEP and PEP are usually not mentioned during a sex education program aimed at heterosexual youth, as they are more commonly used by members of the LGBTQ+ community.

This is just one example of how including medically accurate and appropriate LGBTQ+ topics in sex education can also provide beneficial resources for heterosexual cisgender youth.

However, the policy barrier remains, and with some states actively opposing the establishment of such programs in schools, the task of ensuring equal education for all becomes more complicated.

An educated future

There is a gap in American education and inclusive, expansive, and medically accurate sex education provides students with resources to make informed decisions about their sexual health and activity.

Most school curricula are set at the state level, placing decisions about youth sex education in the hands of state legislators and education officials instead of doctors or sexual health experts .

“Talking about what safer sex looks like for young gay men… [benefits] young heterosexuals too.

Nor does inclusion stop at sex education. LGBTQ+ history and culture is a part of the United States that is often overlooked in material taught in schools.

“Sex education can be a difficult subject to defend…if we can integrate [LGBTQ+ topics] in any program, we are making progress,” Proulx said.

And what can we do when high school sex education leaves lingering questions?

“Sex education doesn’t stop at high school…Colleges should also think about making their communities inclusive with sex education resources,” Proulx said.

All RIT students have access to services offered by the Student Health Center, including safer sex kits, birth control, STI screenings, and gender transition resources.

So get informed, get tested, and bridge that gap as we work towards a country of inclusive sex education, for all.

Strong communication skills

Presence

Critical mind

Compassion

Resilience

Jim Mansfield Jr fell into debt with the Kinahan Cartel after accepting 4.5 million euros in cash from drug traffickers to invest in real estate as the family businesses went bankrupt.

Byrne’s testimony about Mansfield Jr’s ties to criminals led to his conviction last February for attempting to pervert the course of justice.

His testimony on Thursday helped the Criminal Assets Bureau (Cab) seize a £2million house at 10 Coldwater Lakes in Saggart, Dublin, which was handed over to Daniel Kinahan in partial payment of the debt. He is now in a witness protection program.

Byrne traced Mansfield Jr’s Faustian pact back to Good Friday 2009. He watched Dublin mobsters Kavanagh and Freddie Thompson and others get the VIP treatment at a private party at the family hotel. The next day he saw two suitcases being unloaded from a van at Tassagart House and brought inside.

“The next afternoon, I got a call from Jimmy. He asked me to bring the Mercedes home and pick him up… When I walked into the office, Jimmy Jr opened one of the suitcases, which had wads of cash inside.

Mansfield Jr told him there was “approximately 4.5 million euros in cash in the two suitcases”.

“He said it was paid for by the group of guys who were at the hotel the night before. He joked about it and said that even though he partied, he still made money.

According to Byrne, Mansfield Jr planned to use the money to complete the convention center [at the Citywest hotel] and a “Saudi” project – at the time it planned an English language school for Saudi students.

However, by 2010 the Mansfield family businesses were in receivership. Pressure was put on Mansfield Jr to honor the debt.

Byrne claimed that it was only then that he learned that Kavanagh was a middleman for the Kinahan Cartel.

“At this point there was a lot of pressure on Jimmy Jr to pay off the €4.5m debt,” Byrne said. “Lee Cullen acting on behalf of Bomber Kavanagh asked Jimmy if he had given away that house [at Coldwater]this would erase the majority of this debt.

Kavanagh lost faith in Mansfield Jr, according to Byrne, and turned to Mansfield Sr, who he believed would be “fair”; but he was then in his early 70s and seriously ill.

“Jim Mansfield Sr told me in December 2011 that he had been getting regular calls from a guy called Kavanagh about the failed deal for the property they paid for at Saggart Lodge Court,” Byrne said.

“Jim Sr told me he was feeling nervous as the calls had become more threatening and abusive. He then told me he was talking to several people and asked if there was any chance I make contact and deal with Kavanagh on behalf of the Mansfields.

Byrne agreed. He added: “One evening in early January 2012 I received a call from Jim asking me to come to Tassagart House and get a call from the Kavanaghs. Around 6:00 p.m. I got home and about 20-30 minutes later Jim got a call from the Kavanaghs.

“I picked up the phone and asked who I was talking to and if it was possible to arrange a debt meeting. They didn’t give their names. They agreed to meet at the parking lot of the red cow and said both Jim Sr and [his other son] PJ had to be there.

The next evening, Cullen phoned Byrne and asked to meet for coffee at Citywest. That’s where Cullen outlined the plan, Byrne said.

“I had to drive Jim Sr and PJ and park at the back of the main entrance to the Red Cow Hotel. I had to leave the car and Jim and PJ had to sit in the front and I had to go to the reception where Lee would be waiting for me.

“At that time, two Kavanagh representatives would get into the back of the car and meet with Jim and PJ for 10-15 minutes to work out an agreement that the Mansfields would stick to, to make payments on the debt.”

It is understood that the meeting has taken place. Two years passed before the drug cartel secured the keys to 10 Coldwater lakes in April or May 2014. When Cab attacked Coldwater in 2015, Daniel Kinahan’s boxing associate Matthew Macklin was in the property.

They also found Daniel Kinahan’s passport, his brother’s laptop, and receipts related to Kinahan’s convicted shooter, James Quinn.

The High Court has been told Daniel Kinahan, an exile in Dubai, had ‘sanctioned a number of murders’ in the Hutch-Kinahan feud. He did not respond to Cab’s efforts to contact him by phone and email.