Education category, Page 67
Pittsburgh Public Schools announces new equity task force, lays out plans for return to buildings
Pittsburgh Public Schools on Tuesday announced the development of a new task force to recommend and influence policies that combat racial disparities in school safety. “I can share with you with great certainty that our district will not bring Black students back to live and learn under the same racially-biased...
Pandemic plagued schools in 1st semester, likely to continue after holidays
While the end of a tumultuous first semester is in sight, school districts plagued with uncertainty and ever-changing situations brought on by the coronavirus pandemic are far from in the clear as record-breaking cases are continually reported, leaving no set plans going into the spring months. As the first semester...
Pittsburgh schools delay in-person instruction
Students in the Pittsburgh Public Schools will remain in remote instruction Monday, upon their return from winter break. Superintendent Anthony Hamlet announced Friday on the district’s Facebook page that he and the district’s board of directors are still finalizing plans to bring students back to buildings. A small number of...
California governor offers plans to reopen in-person schools
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday encouraged schools to resume in-person education next year, starting with the youngest students, and promised $2 billion in state aid to promote coronavirus testing, increased ventilation of classrooms and personal protective equipment. The recommendation was driven by increasing evidence that there...
Court: Parents of Cincinnati child who killed himself can sue educators
CINCINNATI — The parents of an 8-year-old student who killed himself after being persistently bullied can move forward with a lawsuit against the Cincinnati school district that alleges wrongful death and other charges, a federal appeals panel ruled Tuesday. The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court Appeals said...
Group of Greensburg Salem students call for end of senior projectsVideo
A group of Greensburg Salem High School seniors is calling on the district to cancel senior projects because of the coronavirus pandemic. Student Tyler Allen uploaded a video on the subject to YouTube Tuesday. It had been viewed over 6,000 times as of Sunday morning. “It’s been held over everyone’s...
Champions of Learning awards honor local educators
Jennifer Neill has been a teacher long enough that she’ll soon be seeing her former students’ children coming through her classroom at Laurel Highlands Middle School, and her students know what to expect from her. “I’m like your school mom,” she said. “You’re not always going to like what I’m...
Mississippi former Gov. Winter dies; pushed education reform
JACKSON, Miss. — Former Mississippi Gov. William Winter, a Democrat who pushed to strengthen public education in one of the poorest states in the U.S. and to improve race relations across the nation, has died. He was 97. Winter, who was governor from 1980 to 1984, died Friday night at...
UNC suspends 3 fraternities that feds linked to drug ring
RALEIGH, N.C. — The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced Friday that it has suspended three fraternities that have been linked to a drug trafficking ring that federal prosecutors say funneled large amounts of drugs into three college campuses. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Greensboro announced on Thursday...
Pitt cardiologist sues school after backlash to his article on affirmative action
A University of Pittsburgh cardiologist who faced backlash over an opinion piece he wrote criticizing affirmative action is suing his employers, the American Heart Association and the company that published and then retracted his article, alleging that he was demoted and defamed because his views were unpopular. Dr. Norman C....
Duquesne University cutting faculty to reduce costs
Duquesne University is moving forward with faculty cuts, informing some non-tenured instructors this week that their contracts would not be renewed. The university had announced measures to reduce faculty as early as Dec. 4, according to an email shared with the Tribune-Review. “As a first step, Duquesne has offered a...
Gmail, YouTube down briefly as Google suffers brief outage
Google users in the U.S., Europe, India and other parts of the world were briefly unable to access their Gmail accounts, watch YouTube videos or get to their online documents during an outage Monday. Thousands of complaints popped up around 7 a.m. along the East Coast of the U.S. “We’re...
Pa. officials still leave covid restrictions up to school districts
A day after Gov. Tom Wolf announced a suspension of all school sports and extracurricular activities, Pennsylvania’s Acting Secretary of Education Noe Ortega and Deputy Secretary Matt Stem doubled down on the state’s approach of leaving the ultimate reopening decisions up to individual school districts. “We recognize there is no...
Kindergarten at Saint Bede Catholic moves online after covid case
The kindergarten class at Saint Bede Catholic School in Point Breeze will move to remote learning following a positive covid-19 case. School administrators discovered Thursday that a person involved with the class tested positive for covid-19. The move to remote learning will be in effect Dec. 10 through Dec. 18,...
‘Health tops education’: Hempfield Area school officials explain remote learning call during virus surge
More than 350 people tuned in to a virtual Hempfield Area School Board meeting on Monday to hear the rationale for why the administration chose to move students to remote learning until after the holidays — a decision made days after the board reaffirmed students would return to the hybrid...
Speakers call for Pittsburgh Public Schools to cut police, security spending
The 30 people who provided testimony Monday during a virtual budget hearing focused on eliminating police, safety and security items from the 2021 Pittsburgh Public Schools budget. The district spends just over 1% of its budget on school safety measures like police and security guards. In 2021, the school safety...
NYC again reopens schools to in-person learning
NEW YORK — It’s back to school again for some New York City schoolchildren, weeks after the schools were closed to in-person learning because of rising covid-19 cases. The nation’s largest public school system, which shut down in-person learning last month, on Monday brought back preschool students and children in...
Virginia Military Institute removing Confederate statue
LEXINGTON, Va. — The Virginia Military Institute began work Monday to remove a prominent statue of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, an effort initiated this fall after allegations of systemic racism roiled the school. A crew was inspecting the statue at the public military college in Lexington, poised to haul...
Colorado student, scientist named Time’s ‘Kid of the Year’
LONE TREE, Colo. — A 15-year-old Colorado high school student and young scientist who has used artificial intelligence and created apps to tackle contaminated drinking water, cyberbullying, opioid addiction and other social problems has been named Time Magazine’s first-ever “Kid of the Year.” Gitanjali Rao, a sophomore at STEM School...
School closings threaten gains of students with disabilities
Without any in-school special education services for months, 14-year-old Joshua Nazzaro’s normally sweet demeanor has sometimes given way to aggressive meltdowns that had been under control before the pandemic. The teenager, who has autism and is nonverbal, often wanted no part of his online group speech therapy sessions, and when...
Serra Catholic High School to resume in-person classes, athletics suspended
Serra Catholic High School in McKeesport will resume in-person instruction on Wednesday, according to Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh officials. However, all athletic and extracurricular activities are suspended due to possible covid-19 exposure. Spokesman Bob DeWitt said the school has also taken other student action out of an abundance of caution....
Pittsburgh Promise gives 10,000th scholarship
Vanessa Thompson remembers feeling stunned as she sat with her mother when they received that first college tuition bill in the fall of 2008. Thompson was attending Chatham University, the first in her family to go to college. “We’re both crying like ‘how are we going to pay this bill?’”...
Former Lehigh University student admits poisoning roommate
EASTON — A former Lehigh University student on Monday admitted poisoning his roommate’s food and drink with a heavy metal substance. Yukai Yang, 24, pleaded guilty to attempted murder. Under terms of a plea agreement, the Northampton County District Attorney’s Office will withdraw other charges in two seperate cases against...
U.S. colleges mull new virus protocols for students’ return
COLCHESTER, Vt. — St. Michael’s College managed to keep coronavirus cases at bay for almost two months this fall with students tested upon arrival and once every three weeks. But in mid-October, cases at the small Vermont school started to climb. The outbreak was linked to an ice rink more...
Kiski Area High School reopens, district introduces online covid tracker
Kiski Area High School reopened Monday after a week-long closure, allowing students to attend class in person for up to four days a week. Students had moved online last week after seven cases of covid-19 were reported among students and staff. The school district had just reported two new cases...
