Washington state superintendent urges districts to adopt phone limits
If Washington state school Superintendent Chris Reykdal has his way, the state’s school districts will follow Spokane’s lead and adopt new limits on the use of smart phones at school.
Reykdal on Wednesday issued a statement that urges districts and schools to develop their own policies by the start of the 2025-26 school year.
“I think the research has been clear that there’s a distraction in classrooms," he said. "What hasn’t always been clear, because it’s so new, are these interventions. Does it work to turn them off all day? Does it work better to turn them off during the period? Do you put them in little pouches and lock them up? These are relatively new interventions and we didn’t have enough evidence that they were effective to run around and tell 295 school districts to jump on one of these. We have enough evidence now.”
Reykdal says surveys show a large majority of teachers would like their districts to impose limits.
“There’s another thing happening, which is that we’re changing our learning standards. They’ll be effective in December. That also goes beyond this to talk to kids on a regular basis in school around the impacts of social media and media in general. So these are paired together," he said.
Reykdal is urging schools and districts to adopt consistent policies, rather than allowing a patchwork, classroom-by-classroom approach.
Construction industry group says Northwest builders having hard time filling job openings
The group Associated General Contractors of America surveyed construction businesses across the country to get a sense of the factors employers are dealing with.
Of 45 Washington companies that responded, nearly all said they currently have vacancies for hourly craft jobs, and two-thirds said they have salaried vacancies. In each case, about half of the responding firms said they’re having about as much difficulty filling those jobs as they did last year.
Thirty-eight builders in Idaho responded to the survey. All of them had open hourly positions, and more than eighty percent had salaried vacancies. The Idaho firms were more likely to say they’re having a harder time filling those jobs than they did a year ago.
Construction companies in both states say the difficulty comes mainly from two things: candidates who lack qualifications, and new hires who never show up, or who quit not long after they begin.
To increase their odds of success, builders said they are engaging with high school and college career programs, increasing their online and social media presence, and in some cases working with search firms to find qualified applicants.
Spokane farmer penalized for illegal water use
The Washington Department of Ecology says it has fined a Spokane County farmer $15,000 for illegally taking water from a creek near Deer Park to irrigate his crops. The agency says the fine is the latest penalty against Robert Greiff.
Officials said Greiff pumped water from a creek that feeds Dragoon Creek, which itself feeds the Little Spokane River, which has repeatedly had low flows during the dry part of the summer.
Ecology said it has tried to work with Greiff, without much success. The agency said it issued a cease-and-desist letter last year, then fined him $6,000 in June after he ignored them. Greiff has a month to pay the fine or appeal it to a state board.
Stats reveal most wildfires this year have been caused by people
Officials who deal with wildfires say it every year: most fires in the Northwest are caused by humans, not nature. Statistics reported this week back that up.
Human activity was the cause of most fires and acreage burned in Washington and Oregon this year, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center. The agency said 1,011 Washington wildfires were caused by people, burning more than 223,000 acres. Lightning sparked 190 fires that burned a little more than 71,000 acres.
The difference was even more stark when considering large fires – those larger than 100 acres of timber or 300 acres of range and brush. Humans caused 27 large fires this year; lightning was responsible for only eight.
It has been a near-record year for damaging fires in Oregon. Humans caused 1,068 of them, 43 of which were considered large fires. Lightning was responsible for 582 Oregon fires, only 28 of which were large. Preliminary year-to-date figures showed more than 1.5 million acres have been burned, putting Oregon on track for its most extensive wildfire season since 1992.
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Reporting contributed by Doug Nadvornick and Brandon Hollingsworth.