AT&T shuts down 3G service tomorrow; transition will hurt rural Americans most, especially vulnerable populations

"Starting on Wednesday, phones and other devices connected to AT&T’s 3G cellular network won’t work anymore. The company is the first major U.S. telecom provider to shut down its 3G service to free up space for faster 5G networks," Savannah Maher reports for Marketplace. T-Mobile will shut down its 3G networks on March 31 and Verizon will follow on Dec. 31.

That will disproportionately hurt rural America, it seems. More remote areas are less likely to have 4G or 5G network coverage, and even in areas that do, many rural residents don't have the money or tech-savvy to get newer devices that can catch a 4G signal. Some older 4G phones that don't support Voice over LTE will also be affected, Kristi Eaton reports for The Daily Yonder.

Some rural populations will be particularly hard-hit: the poor, the elderly, people of color, and those living on reservations. Domestic violence survivors may also be affected: "They may soon not have a working phone to be able to call 911 and ankle monitors for perpetrators may not work sufficiently because they are also on the 3G network and smaller communities may not have the resources to upgrade them," Eaton reports.

Wireless providers have warned about the change for years, and have tried to smooth the way by offering free phone upgrades, but the pandemic has complicated those efforts. Seniors, who often need technical support the most, have been leery of admitting service technicians from wireless carriers or home-alarm companies, and backed-up supply chains and a computer-chip shortage have made it difficult to replace old devices, Cat Zakrzewski reports for The Washington Post.

Phones and tablets won't be the only thing affected. Some farming and industrial equipment relies on 3G networks. "You might use it to monitor what’s going on with an oil rig or a wind turbine or an irrigation system," Carri Bennet of the Rural Wireless Association told Maher. Also affected: some cars, life-alert systems, school bus trackers, court-ordered breathalyzers, and more, Zakrewski reports. It's unclear how many Americans still rely on 3G networks; the most recent data show that nearly 20% of Americans were still on 3G networks as of 2018.

Pandemic highlights need for better rural internet access

Lack of access to health care and education during the pandemic has highlighted the need for better broadband access in rural areas, Gene Zaleski reports for The Times and Democrat in Orangeburg, S.C., pop. 13.964.

For example, many students in Orangeburg County didn't have good enough internet access to do their homework or distance learning this spring, so the county school district outfitted buses with wi-fi and sent them into neighborhoods where it was needed, Zaleski reports.

Even using data from the Federal Communications Commissions, which tends to overestimate rural broadband access, a Times and Democrat-created data map shows wide swaths of rural South Carolina with inadequate broadband access, defined by the FCC as a minimum speed of 25 megabits per second for download and 3 Mbps upload.

Other rural areas across the nation are facing the same issues; recent reports estimate that 42.8 million people in the U.S. lack broadband access, and about 70% of people with no broadband access are in rural areas, according to a 2019 study.

Verizon is testing a new LTE home internet service specifically meant to bring faster internet to rural areas, but it's still comparatively slow. "Verizon says LTE Home customers will receive unlimited data and download speeds of 25Mbps with peak speeds of 50Mbps," Monica Chin reports for The Verge. "That’s much slower than the best speeds available through Verizon’s Fios or 5G services, which promise speeds of up to 940Mbps for the top plans." Verizon does not say what upload speeds customers would receive.

A 4G home internet plan already offered by Verizon notably says it averages only 5-12 Mbps download and 2-5 Mbps upload. It's unclear if the new rural service would rely on different equipment or a more robust cell tower network in the test areas to achieve the speeds advertised.

DeVos provides few details on Trump administration push to reopen schools in the fall

School districts are grappling with how or whether to reopen schools in the fall, and though the Trump administration has called for reopening, it hasn't said how to accomplish that. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos sat for interviews Sunday on CNN and Fox News, but offered little clarity on the matter.

"Pressed on how schools in areas with high rates of the coronavirus should protect children and communities, she provided few details," Evie Blad reports for Education Week. "Also unclear: the details of repeated threats made by DeVos and President Donald Trump to withhold federal funds from schools that don't reopen, and exactly what a satisfactory school reopening would look like."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that schools limit bus riders, ensure that students wear masks, and space desks six feet apart, but DeVos stressed to CNN's Dana Bash that those are only recommendations, that no two schools are the same, and said that education leaders are smart enough to figure out how to tailor CDC prevention and outbreak-containment guidelines to each individual school, Blad reports.

"Pressed by Fox's Chris Wallace on why the administration would threaten schools' funding during the pandemic, DeVos reiterated previous statements that seemed to allude to a push for a private school choice option," Blad reports. DeVos, who has been a strong proponent of private education, told Wallace: "American investment is a promise to students and their families . . . If schools aren't going to reopen and fulfill that promise, they shouldn't get the funds. Then give it to the families to decide to go to a school that is going to meet that promise."

Wallace pointed out that DeVos didn't have the authority to redirect federal funds authorized by Congress; DeVos said she is considering "all options," Blad reports.

Report: Driverless cars can't solve rural transportation woes without broadband and better-marked roads

Scanty public transportation means rural residents already have a harder time getting around without a car than people in urban areas. That gap is likely to stay the same or widen once self-driving cars become more common, according to a recent report by the Berkshire County Selectmen's Association, which represents 30 towns in far western Massachusetts. The issues there are much the same as those facing rural areas across the nation.

"Hundreds of country roads in Berkshire County will be off-limits to autonomous vehicles, unless telecommunications gaps are plugged and roads themselves improved," Larry Parnass reports for The Berkshire Eagle.

Rural residents' difficulty in getting around hampers economic development, limits access to health care, and forces schools to spend too much money on transportation, according to BCSA president Andrew Hogeland. He served on the statewide Commission on the Future of Transportation, which issued a report in December with recommendations for improving rural transportation, Parnass reports.

Both the BCSA and CFT reports say school transportation needs a makeover. School buses are a huge expense for rural school districts and sit idle for most of the day, Hogeland said. The reports also agree that the lack of public transportation in rural areas makes aging in place more difficult for seniors and makes residents more vulnerable to food deserts, Parnass reports.

Rural-urban disparity on school bus transportation costs puts some rural districts in financial bind

Like many states where rural school districts are large in area, but small in population, Iowa's rural schools are shelling out large sums of money to transport students in half-empty school buses, Sarah Boden reports for Iowa Public Radio. The state median for transportation costs is $380 per student, according to the Iowa Department of Education.

But a rural-urban disparity exists, Boden notes. For example, the Des Moines Independent School District, Iowa’s largest, "spent $193 below the state median per pupil on transportation during the 2015-2016 school year," which comes to an additional $6 million. In rural Greene County Community School District, which is the state’s eighth largest in geographic size at 388 square miles, but only has 3.35 students per square mile, the average cost is $586 per pupil. That's $206 per student above the median, or $268,111 for the entire school year. (IPR graphic: Student population density in Iowa; click here for an interactive map.)

Greene County Superintendent Tim Christensen said that if he had that extra $268,000 a year, "he could hire more teachers, which would allow him to reduce class sizes and offer more electives," Boden writes. "What’s going on in Greene County is going on all over the state. "Especially in rural school districts where populations are shrinking and districts are dissolving or consolidating at a clip of a least a couple a year."

"The state’s funding formula is primarily to blame for this inequality," Boden reports. "Each district’s general fund budget receives a set amount per student from the state. For the 2016-2017 school year the sum was $6,591. In addition to transportation costs, a district’s general fund must also budget for salaries, text books, technology, and even capital improvements."

"But it's not all the state's fault," Boden notes. "School districts also have a responsibility to keep transportation costs low, and some do a better job than others... In part to keep transportation costs in check, Greene County is moving all K-12 classes to the city of Jefferson, which is the center of the district and the county seat. That means the intermediate school is closing. The fourth grade class will move to the elementary school, while fifth and sixth graders will become middle schoolers."

'Rolling study halls' in rural South Carolina county connect students to wi-fi on school buses

Middle school student Lakaysha Governor works
on her Chromebook (AP photo by Meg Kinnard)

Students at six schools in rural Berkeley County, South Carolina now have access to broadband through a Google pilot program that equips 28 school buses with Wi-Fi, reports The Associated Press. Google "also has given the school district 1,700 Chromebooks, the stripped-down laptops on which many schoolchildren now do their class and homework."

Plans of "rolling study halls" were released earlier this year, and with more classroom and homework assignments migrating online, Google hopes to expand the use of Wi-Fi on school buses in other rural areas around the country. Google spokeswoman Lilyn Hester told AP that they will start "in other rural areas where it already has data centers that process search queries and other information," adding that the expansions are also need-based.

The "rolling study halls" allow kids "who have commutes as long as an hour and a half to maximize the time between the classroom and home," Liza Lucas reports for WCSC Television in Charleston, S.C. The program focuses on Title 1 Schools, which receive federal assistance because of high numbers or high percentages of low-income children. Berkeley County has a poverty rate of 13 percent and only 22.3 percent of adults 25 and older have a bachelor's degree or higher, according to Census Bureau data.

Berkeley County, South Carolina
(Wikipedia map)

John Rivers, mayor of St. Stephen, which has three schools participating in the program, told Lucas, “It’s huge because in a rural area like St. Stephen, most of our students don’t have access to Internet or WiFi. You’d be surprised how many of our young people have never even left St. Stephen, this gives them a chance to explore and travel around the world without even leaving home.”

High transportation costs lead very rural Nevada school district to adopt four-day week

Three rural schools in rural Elko County, Nevada are the latest to switch to four-day weeks "to allow students in those areas more time at home and to cut down on travel," Hasani Grayson reports for the Elko Daily Free Press. The school board, which unanimously approved the decision, said school days will be nine hours, instead of seven and a half. (Wikipedia map: Elko County, Nevada)

"The four-day school week will help ease the burden on parents who have to travel long distances to drop their children off at school and for families who need the extra help from their children at home but it is also creating a new challenge for the teachers," Grayson writes.

School bus transporation costs in rural Arizona county are more than triple the state average

In rural and remote areas where the area is expansive but population is sparse, schools are racking up the miles and paying out big bucks for transportation costs to bus students to and from school. Buses for Arizona's Patagonia Union High School, 18 miles from the Mexican border, on average travel more than 600 miles per day. Buses for the Patagonia Elementary School District travel 336 miles a day, and nearby Sonoita Elementary School District run 480 miles a day, Paulina Pineda reports for Nogales International. The combined student population is 260. The school districts in Eastern Santa Cruz County are part of a transportation consortium that provides buses to all three districts.

In fiscal year 2014-15, transportation costs for students was nearly $386,000, Pineda writes. "At PUHS and Patagonia Elementary, transportation accounts for 8.7 percent of total expenditures, and at Sonoita Elementary, it’s 7.9 percent, according to an Auditor General report on school district spending." While the state reimburses each school district for miles driven, the costs per rider are triple the state average. At both Patagonia districts the cost per rider is $3,762, while cost per rider at Sonoita Elementary School District is $3,669 in 2015, up from $1,600 in 2014. The state average is $1,071, according to the Auditor General report.

"Jerome Rhoades, dean of students at Patagonia Public Schools, said one reason costs have started to rise is because the consortium now has six buses rather than three, which means there are fewer students on each route—even though the consortium is spending more money on drivers’ salaries, gas and bus maintenance," Pineda writes. "Previously, Rhoades said, the consortium transported students from each district on a single bus, but the Auditor General forced the consortium to provide a bus for each of the three districts so that each school could be reimbursed for mileage."

Buses with wi-fi keep students in high-poverty district connected outside school hours

Best Places map

The poverty rate for students at Coachella Valley Unified School District in Southern California is more than 95 percent, meaning that many of their families are unable to afford internet service at home and they have to rely on service from the schools.

When Supt. Darryl Adams found that students couldn't afford the internet, he brought it to them, with wi-fi routers on school buses. And he used the devices to serve the community, not just the students. "Eight Wi-Fi buses are now left overnight in various neighborhoods, and the school district is now turning salvaged cars into even more mobile hot spots," Carter Evans reports for CBS News.

Adams told Evans, "I would be here sometimes on Friday night and drive by school and there would be parents with kids in the car sitting there doing their homework. ... I have made the joke that I will put a router on a pigeon if I have to, and fly them around the neighborhood. Whatever it takes to get these kids connected, I will do. It is essential to education." Coachella, the first school district in the country to put iPads in the hands of every student from kindergarten through 12th grade, has already seen the benefits of increased internet access, with its graduation rate up 8 percent.

FCC changes in federal subsidy program could help poor, rural students who lack Internet at home

Perla Castro, top, uses Internet access on a school bus
in Donna, Tex. (NYT photo by Ilana Panich-Linsman)

About five million students who lack Internet service at home—many of them in rural areas—are struggling to keep up with a growing trend in education to rely on resources from the Internet for class work, Ilana Panich-Linsman reports for The New York Times. In some rural areas students go to extremes to get connected, depending on "school buses that have free Wi-Fi to complete their homework. The buses are sometimes parked in residential neighborhoods overnight so that children can connect and continue studying." In other places, children head to free Wi-Fi hotspots, such as libraries and fast-food restaurants.

Poverty-stricken rural South Texas has one of the lowest Internet access rates in the country, with as many as 40 percent of households having no Internet access, Panich-Linsman writes. The South Texas Independent School District has put Wi-Fi on more than 100 school buses to help students who do not have access at home, leading some students to take longer bus rides home—sometimes lasting several hours—to finish homework. "In McAllen Independent School District, which has 33 schools and 25,000 students, each location runs wireless hot spots 24 hours a day so that students can sit in parking lots or crouch against school walls to do homework into the night."

Help could be on the way. Members of the Federal Communications Commission are expected to vote next month on re-purposing the $2 billion-a-year Lifeline phone subsidy program to give low-income households the option to apply the subsidy to broadband Internet access, either wired or wireless. Lifeline is different from the E-Rate program, which helps schools and public libraries pay for Internet service.

Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democratic member of the FCC who has pushed to overhaul the Lifeline program, said "seven in 10 teachers now assign homework that requires web access," Panich-Linsman writes. "Yet one-third of kindergartners through 12th graders in the U.S., from low-income and rural households, are unable to go online from home. The Obama administration announced in July its own program to help address the problem, deploying free and affordable broadband into public housing."

"The Lifeline plan has drawn strong criticism from the two Republicans among the five FCC commissioners, and from some lawmakers, who say the program, which was introduced in 1985 to bring phone services to low-income families, has been wasteful and was abused," Panich-Linsman writes. "In 2008, when the commission added subsidies for mobile-phone services to discounts for landlines, some homes started double-billing the program, and the budget for the fund ballooned. Various investigations, including a government review in early 2015, questioned the effectiveness of the phone program and whether the commission had done enough to monitor for abuse. But advocacy groups for children and minorities have backed the FCC plan, saying it will be important in preventing students from falling further behind their peers."

Kelley Drye, an international law firm, is hosting a webinar from noon to 1 p.m. (EST) on Wednesday that will examine federal Universal Service Fund activities, including changes in the Lifeline program. For more information or to register for the event click here.

Major media often overlook plight of rural schools

The struggles of rural schools are often overlooked by journalists who focus on urban schools, David Gutierrez writes for Harvard Political Review. "This disparity in media coverage is understandable — the crumbling infrastructure of cities, the poverty and segregation faced by inner-city students, and the presence of a school-to-prison pipeline are all serious problems that demand reforms. But in a media market where large newspapers and television stations now compete with international media outlets, rural educational issues can be forgotten in the commotion. Many rural school districts face concerns that stem from the current demographic and economic state of rural areas, the lack of technological infrastructure, and the difficulty of hiring and retaining teachers."

Rural schools sometimes face high levels of poverty, funding disparities, transportation burdens, teacher shortages and inferior technology, Gutierrez writes. "The current state of rural education is bleak, but with a renewed scrutiny on the American education system, it is time to address all underperforming schools, regardless of their location. While the problems rural schools face are connected with larger problems of economic development, there are some things that can be done to help them. These solutions will require a concerted effort to effect substantial change and to ensure that every child, urban or rural, receives an equal opportunity to succeed."

School transportation directors spotlight passing of buses picking up or dropping off children

Vehicles continue to commit stop-arm violations—illegally passing school buses that have stopped to pick up or discharge passengers. A National Association of State Directors of Pupil Transportation Services one-day survey, involving 102,371 buses in 26 states, found 78,518 illegal passes occurred, Aaron Mudd reports for the Bowling Green Daily News. Some school districts have begun using cameras to catch motorists illegally passing buses.

Kentucky wasn't part of the survey, but Mudd reports that Warren County (Family Search map) has an unusually high rate of stop-arm charges. County schools Transportation Director John Odom said that since school opened Aug. 11, the district has reported 15 violations. In the Bowling Green independent district, Transportation Director Michael McCloud said stop-arm violations are “almost a daily occurrence.-

Warren County, with a population of 120,000 in a state of 4.3 million, had 23 of the state's 62 stop-arm charges through July, Mudd writes. It also had disproportionate shares in recent years.

McCloud, who said "drivers should stop when they see lights flashing on a bus and not proceed until the flashing ends," told Mudd, "It really comes down to people not paying attention or not being aware of the rules regarding school buses.” (Read more)

Schools, local police using cameras to crack down on motorists illegally passing school buses

School districts and local law enforcement across the country are teaming up to use technology to catch motorists illegally passing school buses, an issue that is particularly bad in rural areas where roads are more dangerous and pedestrians are more exposed to be struck by a vehicle. (National Coalition for Safer Roads photo: A camera equipped to a school bus)

The Bartow County School System in northwestern Georgia, which has mounted a driver's side camera on 17 school buses, issued 853 tickets for illegally passing a school bus during the 2014-15 school year, up from 574 tickets in 2013-14, Donna Harris reports for The Daily Tribune News in Cartersville. Drivers face a $300 fine for the first offense, $750 for a second offense and $1,000 for a third offense within five years.

Transportation Director Jody Elrod said the tickets are sending a message to drivers to obey the laws around school buses, Harris writes. Elrod told her, “I believe [the program is] making a difference. I have spoken with several folks that have received tickets, and they all say it won’t happen again, and they certainly will use more caution when approaching a school bus that is loading/unloading students. Stopping the violations and, therefore, making the bus stops safe is the goal we are looking to achieve.”

A similar program has been launched in Kanawha County, West Virginia. Keith Vititoe, director of security at Kanawha County Schools, said a survey in April showed that 90 motorists passed a school bus in one day in Kanawha County, Wade Livingston reports for the Charleston Gazette. Vititoe told him, "That’s just one county. You consider that with every district in the state; it’s a pretty pervasive problem.”

The district is hoping to team up with local law enforcement to cut down on violations, Livingston writes. Vititoe told him, "I understand that law enforcement doesn’t have the time to run around and do a full investigation of every traffic violation. It’s just not possible. But if we are in a position to provide basically everything to them on a silver platter, then that would decrease the investigation time. And, hopefully, we’ll have more charges filed—and more convictions.”

Studies estimate that 50,000 drivers in New York illegally pass school buses ever day, reports WNYT in Albany. On April 16 the state had an initiative to ticket motorists illegally passing school buses and gave out 1,186 citations. In Gwinnett County, Georgia, which includes rural and urban centers, 12,000 citations were written this year through May, Aungelique Proctor reports for Fox 5 in Atlanta.

School bus transportation costs too steep in rural Midwest; districts dipping into education budgets

Transporting children to and from school in the rural Midwest—especially in remote locations, or in school districts that are spread out because of consolidation—is too expensive and is forcing districts to use funds from education budgets to pay for bus costs, Maya Rao reports for the Star Tribune.

Some rural superintendents "say that bringing children to school costs far more than state transportation aid and siphons money that could go to classroom instruction," Rao writes. "With some facing declining enrollment, it’s even tougher to cover the expense."

Bemidji Area Schools has nearly 80 school buses to cover 828 square miles to transport more than 5,000 students, Rao writes. Superintendent James Hess "said the district loses about 14 teachers a year and he can’t pay to keep them because he’s spending money on transportation. Teaching and textbooks are also getting short shrift, according to Hess." (Best Places map)

In some states, like Iowa, where schools receive a set amount per student, districts are struggling with decreasing enrollment, with 60 percent of the state's schools seeing a decline in enrollment, Rao writes. Jeff Corkery, superintendent in the western Dubuque district, said he has had to spend an extra $1 million over the past six years because of a lack of state funding for 45 bus routes that carry 3,200 students 4,5000 miles per day. Transportation costs $700 per pupil—twice the state average.

In Minnesota, where transportation is required for all elementary school students living at least one mile from school and all other students at least two miles away, Rep. John Persell (DFL-Bemidji) "introduced a bill this month that would funnel about $3 million to the hardest-hit districts in Minnesota to offset the gap in state transportation funding." Rural school superintendents are not pinning their hopes on the bill, considering they have been calling for similar action in recent years, with few results. (Read more)

School District in Kansas exemplifies challenges faced by rural schools across the nation

Syracuse Unified School District in southwest Kansas is experiencing many of the changes and challenges faced in rural school districts across the country, Celia Llopis-Jepsen writes for The Topeka Capital-Journal. Syracuse's school district covers almost a thousand miles, and the bus travels for an hour and a half just to make four stops. The district includes about 550 students, which is the state's media enrollment.

Challenges include low enrollment, travel distance to school, teacher recruitment, housing shortages and changing demographics. The difficulties have spurred some to move to larger towns and cities. "When you talk about how many students in western Kansas that we educate—they're not staying here," Sally Cauble, a member of the Kansas State Board of Education, said. "They will be our leaders. We better have them educated."

Some students take advantage of the perks of attending a smaller school. For example, they have the opportunity to participate concurrently in a variety extracurricular activities, Llopis-Jepsen writes. The teachers carefully schedule practices so that enough students can participate in each one. Mallory Horton, a junior, is a cheerleader, a track and cross-country athlete and a member of the honors society and the academic quiz team. Lora Horton, Mallory's mother, said, "Being in a small school and having the opportunity to be able to be in different things—I feel like that has taught them how to multi-task and schedule."

Unfortunately, because of the recession, Kansas education funds per student had to be cut from $4,400 to $3,937 over a two year time period. Kenneth Bridges, superintendent in Syracuse, said, "What happens in Syracuse next is we lose programs—art, music—start charging fees for athletics. The next step is to eliminate teachers and increase class sizes." To prevent negative outcomes, the school is considering changing to a four-day week—saving an estimated $100,000 to $120,000 per year—and postponing textbook purchases as well as combining two bus routes into one.

Rural school districts "spend more per pupil, however, than towns do, have smaller student-teacher ratios and are less likely to have full-time superintendents," Llopis-Jepsen writes. The media student-teacher ratio in rural areas is 12:1, compared to 15:1 in towns, 17:1 in suburbs and 16:1 in cities, according to state data.

Another change is increasing diversity. "The English language learner challenge is going to get harder," said Shelly Billig, who leads rural research at the Denver-based education lab REL Central, Llopis-Jepsen writes. Many teachers in Syracuse have taken English as a second language courses on their own time with only partial reimbursement. "We do the best that we can," said Becky Clark, principal at Syracuse Elementary, "but still, we're missing a level of support." (Read more)

Farm Safety and Health Week begins Sept. 21; farming is the most dangerous profession

National Farm Safety and Health Week, observed since 1944, runs from Sept. 21-27, and this year's theme is “Safety Counts—Protecting What Matters,” says a press release from the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety, which offers a list of resources for story ideas.

The U.S. Agricultural Centers' YouTube channel "features more than 40 videos available for Extension agents/educators, agricultural science teachers, producers/owner/operators, first responders and agricultural families," says Wisconsin Ag Connection.

Agriculture has the highest rate of fatalities of any profession in the U.S., reports the Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2013, "fatalities decreased 6 percent to 479, the third straight year of declines. However, the sector’s injury rate was 22.2 fatal injuries per 100,000 workers in 2013, far ahead of transportation (13.1/100,000) and mining (12.3/100,000)."

Rain forces Florida bus routes to be canceled, leaving rural students with no ride to school

Rural students in one school district in the Florida Panhandle are having a hard time getting to school. Bay District Schools refuses to send its buses down dirt roads or roads that might be under water. As a result of recent rain, 204 students at Waller Elementary School in Panama City stayed home Thursday, Jacqueline Bostick reports for The News Herald. It's the second time this school year that students skipped school because an active bus stop was too far away and they lacked alternate transportation. (Wikipedia map of Bay County)

Bob Downin, director of transportation, said 16 bus routes, all in the northern part of Bay County "were affected by the school district’s decision not to go down dirt roads or roads underwater," Bostick writes. Downin told her, "We sent out alerts to parents saying that we will not go down any dirt roads, we will not go down any roads that were covered in water for the safety of the kids and they would have to get their kids to school." (Read more)

Farm Safety and Health Week kicks off Monday; farming is the most dangerous profession

It's time to celebrate safety. National Farm Safety and Health Week, observed since 1944, runs from Sept. 15-21, with the theme this year being "Working Together For Safety in Agriculture," says a press release from the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety. This year's theme "is one that hits home and reminds us that it is everyone’s responsibility for safety both on the farm and the rural roadways of America," states the press release. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, agriculture is the most dangerous profession in the country, with 475 fatalities last year, or 21.2 deaths per every 100,000 workers. (Read more) (University of Missouri Extension photo by Emily Kaiser: The slow-moving-vehicle emblem is 50 years old)

Leading up to safety week, University of Missouri Extension has been publishing a series of safety and health stories on its website. Karen Funkenbusch writes about the slow moving vehicle emblem, which is now in its 50th year of use, and she also writes about grain bin safety. John Worden has a story about how parents and students should periodically review bus safety rules. Zoe Martin has a story for Iowa Farmer Today about how educating at a young age can eliminate bad farming habits before they form. Allan Vhynalek of University of Nebraska Extension, offers some added tips for traveling through rural areas in a story for The Banner Press in Butler County, Nebraska.

Some states are focusing this year on specific safety measures, with the Kansas Farm Bureau making tractor safety its goal for the week, according to a story in the Daily Rx. There are plenty of stories to write about farm safety and health, and we encourage journalists to seek out ones that would be of local interest.

California legislature restores school transportation budget, but just for this year

Cuts to school bus transportation in California started Jan. 1, hitting rural schools especially hard. School officials, parents and students in rural districts rallied, though, and Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the state legislature restored $248 million to the school transportation budget.

Senate Bill 81 will affect all districts, regardless of location or size. In order to restore funding, lawmakers agreed to cut per-student funding across the board by $42. "We're very happy because at least the cut is being done in a more equitable manner," said Edgar Zazueta, the Los Angeles Unified School Board's chief lobbyist. The district filed a lawsuit against the state when cuts were announced last year to have its funding restored. In Death Valley, students are bused more than 2 hours to school every day, and school board member Debra Watterson said the restoration of funding was a big relief. Restoration could be very short-lived, though: Gov. Jerry Brown has eliminated the school transportation budget in his 2012-2013 budget. (Read more)

Rural students in California are hit hardest by school transportation cuts

Rural schools in California will be hit especially hard by school transportation funding cuts beginning Jan. 1 because for some students, buses are their only way to and from school. The cuts are in effect for the remainder of the fiscal year to help alleviate the state's debt, reports Teresa Watanabe of the Los Angeles Times. Next year, they will likely get nothing. (Wikipedia map)

Nowhere are the cuts felt more than in the Death Valley Unified School District, Watanabe reports. Nine students living in the Native American village of Furnace Creek must ride 120 miles to their school in Shoeshone. According to the California School Boards Association, the district spends $3,500 per student per year on transportation, compared to $26 in more populated districts. State funding is based on transportation costs, and some rural districts lose about $200 per student. Districts must find money to transport students or stop busing them. In Death Valley, 85 percent of students are low-income and their families can't afford personal transportation. (Read more)

Educators have said transportation cuts are "particularly unfair" to small and rural districts. They are trying to reverse the cuts with legal action, letter-writing campaigns and legislative lobbying. Some say if cuts are necessary, they should be distributed equally across districts. The Southern Humboldt Unified School District in northern California is organizing a protest in the state capital nest Tuesday, Virginia Graziani of the Redwood Times reports.