Utah, chances are good that you’re getting a sweet deal on water for your lawn and landscaping. In fact, you might be paying next to nothing for it, at least compared to nearly everywhere else in the West. Utah has a unique system of delivering irrigation water to residential yards that dates back to the 1800s, when the state was…
Month: August 2020
Utah Voters Approved Medicaid Expansion, But State Lawmakers Are Balking
Utah residents may have thought they were done fighting about Medicaid expansion last November. But when Utah lawmakers opened a new legislative session in late January, they began pushing through a bill to roll back the scope and impact of an expansion that voters approved in a ballot measure. That scaled-back version of Medicaid expansion passed the Utah House on…
States begin requiring or considering quarantine for traveling Arizonans
(The Center Square) – As Arizona’s COVID-19 case growth rate increases, residents hoping to travel elsewhere may be required to quarantine for two weeks before they arrive. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment updated their list of locations where travelers would need to quarantine for 14 days after arriving in their state. In addition to Alabama, Arkansas, and Maryland, officials added…
Hechinger Report: What online preschool looks like in Mississippi
A free online preschool pilot program is wrapping up in Mississippi, and program officials say early results are promising, indicating the new offering may boost kindergarten readiness. The pilot is run through the non-profit Waterford Institute, which launched the first online preschool offering in Utah in 2009. The program, UPSTART, received an $11.5 million Investing in Innovation (i3) grant from the…
Journalism branding: Impact on reporters’ personal identities
It’s common for a news agency to request or require its journalists to use social media to promote their work and help market the company brand. Often, reporters, editors and columnists maintain two or more accounts on social media platforms to try to keep their professional lives separate from their personal ones. In many cases, journalists have a love-hate relationship with social…
Free speech on campus means universities must protect the dignity of all students
Free speech, a staple of modern democracy, has become the focal point for political and cultural forces impacting the university. Universities thrive in an environment of open inquiry. But recent controversies in universities around the globe expose the difficulties of crafting a strong position on free speech in this polarized time. Partly these controversies are a demonstration of the external pressures created…
Medical Schools Tout High Numbers of Primary Care Grads, But the Numbers Tell a Different Story
Medical schools in North Carolina are touting the high numbers of students they graduate who go on to primary care specialties. But those numbers aren’t the whole story. By Rose Hoban As usual, the scene a couple weeks ago at medical schools across the state was one of nervous anticipation, happiness and some disappointment: in short, a typical “Match Day.”…
For a struggling Colorado school district, full-day preschool — and the unusual way it’s paid for — shows promise
Promising first-year results from a study of full-day preschool in a high-poverty suburban Denver school district have stoked optimism about a new financing approach officials are testing there. It’s called Pay For Success and has gained traction nationwide in recent years as a way to pay for social programs that yield long-term dividends but are expensive to launch. The struggling 9,600-student Westminster…
Activists and Oil Refiners Square Off Over Hydrofluoric Acid
ORRANCE, CALIFORNIA IS a tidy community of mostly mid-century homes situated between Los Angeles and Long Beach. It boasts a beautiful shoreline, an art museum, and nearly 150,000 residents who, with some bad luck, came very close to a toxic calamity in early 2015. An explosion at one of the sprawling oil refineries in the area sent an 80,000-pound piece of…
Lessons for FIFA from the Salt Lake City Olympic scandal
FIFA is in crisis. Nine current or former senior officials have been charged by US prosecutors over bribes totalling more than US$150m over 24 years. The allegations have shocked the football world. The story so far has some parallels with the scandal that engulfed the Olympics’ governing body, the IOC, in the late 1990s. The way the IOC dealt with that…