The National Assn. of Realtors on Friday said it will make changes to its commission rules to settle national allegations the requirements stifled competition, a move that may reduce costs for at least some consumers.
The settlement, which still must receive court approval, could mark a major change in the housing market.
Today, sellers typically pay a 5% to 6% commission when they sell their homes, with half of that going to the listing agent’s brokerage and half to the buyer agent’s brokerage, and critics of that model say the settlement could upend that practice.
“This settlement over time will benefit home sellers and buyers greatly, eventually lowering agent commissions by tens of billions of dollars a year and helping align agent compensation and services rendered,” Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow with the Consumer Federation of America, said in a statement.
Under an existing Realtor rule, listing agents must make an offer of compensation to the buyer’s broker in order to list homes on NAR-affiliated multiple listing services, or the MLS.
Though NAR says this offer can be zero dollars, the requirement to post an offer — known in the industry as “cooperative compensation” — has reduced competition and kept commission rates artificially high, according to lawsuits filed against the Realtors. The rule has also caused buyers’ agents to “steer” their clients to homes that offer higher commission rates, the lawsuits allege.
In a news release, the national trade group said it continues to deny any wrongdoing as it relates to its current commission rule, but to settle the allegations, it will pay $418 million and prohibit offers of compensation to buyers’ brokers on affiliated multiple listing services, which also populate listings on sites such as Zillow and Redfin.
“NAR has worked hard for years to resolve this litigation in a manner that benefits our members and American consumers,” Nykia Wright, interim chief executive of NAR, said in a statement. “It has always been our goal to preserve consumer choice and protect our members to the greatest extent possible. This settlement achieves both of those goals.”
Home sellers could still offer to pay buyers’ broker commissions under the settlement if they communicated it outside the MLS, according to the National Assn. of Realtors.
But not setting the rules of the game at the outset will inject more competition into the process and open up new ways of payment that should lower costs, according to Robert A. Braun, a partner with Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll, which is representing home sellers in two of the settling cases.
Braun said sellers may still choose to pay buyers’ agents something, or buyers may pay their agents directly after negotiating a fee. They may also choose to go without an agent altogether.
Another option? A buyer agrees to pay a certain price — say $800,000 — only on the condition that the seller then pays the buyer’s agent $24,000, or 3%. “You got a free market,” Braun said.
Commission rates are a small proportion of a sales price, but they add up. For a home sold at the average Southern California price of $842,997, 6% is $50,580.
If such changes drive down commissions overall, it could have a big effect on real estate agents who are paid a proportion of the commission sent to their brokerage.
Higher mortgage rates sent home sales tumbling, reducing pay for agents who are compensated based on the number and price of the deals they transact.
In California alone, NAR lost 9,723 members from December 2023 to January 2024 — a 4.75% decline.
Not all agents are worried.
Michael Khorshidi works mostly with buyers, but sees the new requirements as an opportunity to show the value he brings to clients. Agents who aren’t able to demonstrate their worth will be the ones who lose work, he said.
“We’re always transitioning,” Khorshidi said. “This is just the latest transition.”
If the settlement ends up creating a system in which buyers pay their agents directly, it could saddle them with new costs.
However, Braun argued that buyers would ultimately see reduced costs as well because under the current system, buyer agent commissions get passed along to buyers in the form of higher home prices.
That doesn’t mean sellers make a conscious decision to set their home prices higher because they need to pay a buyer’s agent. Rather, Braun said it means fewer homes make financial sense to sell because some homeowners don’t have enough equity to pay two commissions.
If buyers paid their own agent, more homeowners could afford to sell, increasing supply and helping put downward pressure on price, Braun said.
“Going forward, there is a significant likelihood home prices will be lower than they otherwise would be,” he said.
Michael Copeland, a real estate agent in Palm Springs, doesn’t think the agreement will alter the market too dramatically.
To bring in buyers, sellers may still be incentivized to cover both commissions — just as they do today.
Recently released government data hammered home what we have known for at least a year: A national housing shortage, not broad-based price increases, is driving inflation.
Inflation over the past year was 3.1% — far less than in 2021 but still high enough for the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates elevated. However, unlike the inflation we saw soon after the onset of the pandemic, the more recent bout was overwhelmingly driven by the rising cost of what the Consumer Price Index classifies as “shelter” — including rent actually paid and the estimated rent that could be charged for owner-occupied homes.
Since the start of last year, most prices have risen very slowly or not at all. The price of goods — the tangible things we buy — remained essentially the same, rising just 0.1%. Food inflation, a source of post-pandemic pain for many households, was less than 3%. And other categories of prices actually fell: Household energy prices are down 2.4%, and the price of cars has fallen just over 1%. All told, for everything other than housing, inflation was just 1.5% — low enough that if housing prices had grown at historical rates, the Fed could have declared victory.
But housing costs have not grown at historical rates: The two-year price increase came in hotter than at any point in the past four decades. This lopsided picture tells us a lot about who is most affected by inflation and how it should be addressed.
The outsize role of shelter inflation means that homeowners and renters whose leases haven’t changed are experiencing inflation very differently from those who were more exposed to rising housing costs. Indeed, rising housing costs are a double-edged sword, increasing the wealth of homeowners even as they punish many renters. Since the beginning of 2022, housing wealth has added over $2 trillion to homeowners’ balance sheets.
This trend has important implications across generations. People under 35, with a homeownership rate roughly half that of those of retirement age, are much more likely to suffer from rising housing costs while also missing out on the resulting wealth boom. Retirees, with rising housing wealth and protection from inflation through Social Security and Medicare, are more likely to fare better.
The remedy for housing-fueled inflation is also different from standard responses to broad-based price growth. One might have expected the Fed’s interest rate hikes — which caused mortgage rates to rise with unprecedented speed — to slow down housing prices. But while prospective homebuyers did pull back from the market, residential listings were in free fall during the pandemic and have yet to recover. That means would-be buyers face tight inventories and higher prices.
The only effective long-term answer is of course to build and rehabilitate more housing — a lot more. America’s housing crisis is a big problem that requires an equally big solution, with various estimates putting the nationwide shortfall between 1.5 million and 5.5 million units.
Legislation passed by the House in 2022 would have made meaningful progress by allocating around $40 billion to supply-boosting programs such as the Housing Trust Fund, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and HOME Investment Partnerships Program block grants. Unfortunately, the bill fell short in the Senate and is effectively dead until at least the next Congress.
In the absence of major legislation in Washington, state and federal policymakers have been increasingly focused on incremental responses to the shortfall. The Biden administration recently announced a series of reforms — including grants for low-income seniors and funds to help rehabilitate manufactured homes — that will add tens of thousands of new homes to the market. An array of bills passed in Sacramento in recent years will help expedite new housing in California, where the shortfall of about 1 million units is nearly three times the next-largest state housing deficit. But the data show we still need to do much more to ease and encourage building to tame shelter costs.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the Federal Open Market Committee have made it clear that they will do whatever it takes to fight inflation. That’s an admirable and responsible position. But Congress has yet to help by addressing our national housing shortfall. If it had, pandemic-era inflation might already be behind us.
Ben Harris is the vice president and director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and was a longtime economic advisor to President Biden.
In a presentation to the L.A. Police Commission on Tuesday, LAPD Cmdr. Shannon Paulson said that the audit showed a “fundamental lack of understanding” about how the aircraft help identify and catch crime suspects.
The audit by the city controller’s office reported that 61% of flight time by LAPD helicopters was spent on “non-high priority incidents.” Paulson said that finding was based on a “highly inaccurate definition” of so-called Part I crimes set by the FBI, which include homicides, robberies and property crimes such as auto theft.
The audit ignored the fact that with a home burglary or overnight car theft, the department is “unlikely to provoke a response [from a helicopter] due to the fact that the crime is stale,” Paulson said. She noted that helicopters are often dispatched to disrupt street racing or sideshows, which are not considered Part I offenses.
Paulson, who is second-in-command at the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau, said the controller’s report also relied on “inflated” statistics related to fuel costs and burn rates, overstating the cost and environmental impact. LAPD officials also questioned the study’s methodology.
The audit, released in December by L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office, scrutinized the millions of dollars the department spends annually to maintain its aerial fleet, said to be the largest of any municipal department in the country.
Sergio Perez, chief of accountability and oversight for the controller’s office, said Wednesday that the office stood by its findings. He told The Times that the LAPD failed to “provide meaningful feedback and refused to sit down for exit meetings” with the report’s authors, and also withheld certain data that it only published with its own report.
Perez questioned the scientific rigor of an internal study by any organization “interested in defending its marquee programs.”
“This seems to be an example of an agency that found itself very unhappy with the recommendations and conclusions of an independent, objective, outside audit and now it’s trying to turn the clock back and say that the information that we included was not accurate,” Perez said.
Another contested portion of the audit dealt with the use of LAPD helicopters for non-law enforcement functions, such as air shows and flights to promote the LAPD or raise money for police-related causes. Such uses came under scrutiny by department officials in 2014 after a police chopper dropped scores of golf balls onto a golf course as part of a fundraiser. The department also recently reviewed whether its helicopters were creating confusion by flying too low over crime scenes.
LAPD officials said the helicopters used in ceremonial roles were already in the air for other purposes and would have been diverted if a serious emergency had occurred.
Beyond the audit, a group of UCLA researchers have spent months studying helicopters’ health impacts in Black and Latino neighborhoods by using highly sensitive instruments to measure noise pollution from low-altitude flights. Residents and some academics have said that the disruptive noise caused by helicopters circling overhead can cause serious health consequences, including poor sleep and anxiety. The controller’s office also released a heat-map tool that would allow users to look up the costs and pollution associated with helicopters flying over their neighborhoods.
The LAPD released data showing that the amount of time helicopters spent in certain areas was proportionate with the amount of violent crime and gun violence there.
Helicopters also allow law enforcement to more safely track suspects during high-speed pursuits, officials said, dramatically reducing the number of collisions from such chases. Some of the units are equipped with a thermal camera system that can pick up the heat signatures of suspects who are attempting to hide.
In recent weeks, helicopters have been used to monitor protests of a visit by President Biden, to track members of a burglary ring and to locate a missing hiker, officials said Tuesday, while also noting an incident in which an airship used its powerful “Nightsun” spotlight to illuminate hilly terrain near Santa Monica. And yet, officials said, such context was left out the controller’s report.
“The question is how do you put a price on saving a life,” Assistant Chief Blake Chow told the commission.
The two reports did agree on the need for better data collection about helicopter flights.
LAPD Chief Michel Moore said that the department’s helicopters have been used to safeguard his home after his family received threats, saying their “presence is a blanket of security.”
He and other department officials found a sympathetic audience in the commission, who seemed to second-guess the city controller’s study.
“How do we work with them to prevent something like this to happen in the future?” asked Commissioner Fabian Garcia.
Commission President Erroll Southers said he found it “very concerning” that the controller had cited no study that found a conclusive link that the helicopters pose a “health risk to the public.”
Much like other law enforcement technology, the LAPD’s reliance on helicopters has drawn greater interest since the 2020 police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the social justice reckoning that followed. Mejia, the city controller, ran on the promise of closely scrutinizing police spending, which has often put him at odds with the powerful Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents the city’s rank-and-file officers.
Dinah Manning, Mejia’s director of public safety, said in an interview Wednesday that it seemed the LAPD was trying to discredit the audit’s findings by suggesting it was politically motivated.
“The civil service staff, the auditors who worked on this audit are folks who were here before Kenneth Mejia, are folks who will be here after Kenneth Mejia,” she said.
UC Berkeley spent $7.8 million to deploy its own forces to wall off and secure People’s Park, the storied 2.8-acre green space that activists seized in the ’60s to serve as open space for freethinkers.
That multimillion-dollar total is expected to grow substantially as outside police agencies submit their bills to the university.
And the cost of keeping people out of the park continues to be high: The university pays nearly $1 million a month to station private security guards outside the park, 24 hours a day.
The massive dead-of-night operation to clear the park and surround it with a double-high stack of 160 steel cargo containers was executed in early January, in anticipation of the Berkeley campus being cleared to build a new housing complex.
Litigation continues to block the construction of 1,100 units of student housing, 125 units of supportive housing for homeless people and a memorial to the park south of the Berkeley campus.
University officials hope that the state Supreme Court will hear a case about the future of the park this spring, potentially ruling by summer whether to allow construction on the property, first seized and turned into open space by activists in 1969.
In response to a public records request, Berkeley campus officials revealed Wednesday that they spent $2.85 million to build the 17-foot-high perimeter around the park. Those funds went to pay for the shipping containers (at a cost of $972,000), for gates, lighting, other equipment and supervision ($1.27 million) and for engineering and surveying ($515,000.)
An additional $3.77 million went to pay, house and feed the police officers and sheriff’s deputies who cleared and surrounded the park in early January. Nearly $1.5 million of that money went to pay overtime to officers from the University of California Police Department.
The $7.8-million tally also includes $1.16 million that UC spent to move homeless people from the park to a Quality Inn, where they receive meals and other services.
Still remaining to be submitted and/or totaled are bills from the California Highway Patrol, sheriff’s departments for Alameda and San Francisco counties and from nine other UC and Cal State University police departments. A UC spokesman said “it could take several more months” for those IOUs to arrive. It’s expected that they will add millions of dollars to the cost of the park clearance.
In a letter accompanying the figures, UC Berkeley spokesman Kyle Gibson explained in a statement that the extraordinary operation, cloaked in secrecy, was designed to avoid the sort of conflict that had prevented the university from developing People’s Park for more than half a century.
“Our highest priorities for the closure were safety, avoidance/deterrence of conflict, and the minimization of disruption for students and neighboring residents,” the statement said.
The letter described the “vandalism, violence and other unlawful activities” that occurred when the university tried, and failed, to take control of the park in August 2022. That prior experience “necessitated extraordinary measures, precautions and expenditures” when UC moved in January to secure the park, Gibson’s letter said.
Activists who fought for years to keep the park said they were outraged but not surprised at the high cost of the university’s takeover.
“The recklessness with which UC spends the public’s money is well known to this community,” said Andrea Prichett, a member of the People’s Park Council and Berkeley Copwatch. “Think of other things that could have been done with that money. It’s a tragic waste.”
Park activists have complained, in particular, that the university disrupted a community of homeless people who were supporting one another on the property, which lies just steps to the east of Telegraph Avenue.
But university officials insist that the unhoused residents are better off in the Quality Inn, with food and services provided by community groups and removed from the crime that at times went unchecked in the park.
Although opponents call the steel barricade a “monstrosity,” university officials said it had helped keep the park clear — and ready for construction — for the first time since community members planted flowers and trees there, in 1969.
As we’ve been reporting on all the fun surrounding the Super Bowl and Taylor Swift‘s A-list squad, Blake Lively‘s AH-Mazing outfit didn’t go unnoticed by fans! The 36-year-old showed up to the big game alongside her BFF Tay and rapper Ice Spice to cheer on Travis Kelce. She came dressed to the nines with a gorg curly hair look and a super fun Adidas tracksuit in Kansas City Chiefs red — all paired together with some chunky gold jewelry that sparkled under the VIP suite lights.
The golden dazzlers weren’t just costume gems, though! Apparently Ryan Reynolds‘ wife dropped some SERIOUS dough on her bangle bracelets, thick chain necklace, and dangly earrings!!
At Allegiant Stadium, per Page Six, the actress and momma of four had a number of Tiffany and Elsa Peretti pieces on her. They included a silver chainlink necklace valued at $18,500, a gold graduated link necklace valued at $62,000, and a diamond pavé necklace worth the most at a whopping $78,000. That’s nearly $159,000 ON HER NECK ALONE!
Moving to her wrists, the Gossip Girl alum wore 14 different bracelets — with the cheapest one being well over a thousand dollars! She had on two link bracelets of the same design in different styles for $12,500 and $26,000 respectively, as well as a series of an Elsa Peretti cuff that goes for $12,300 and a doughnut bangle for $29,000. She stacked up two diamond and white gold bangles for $56,000 in total.
And if you thought she was done, you thought wrong! Her accessories continued with two Tiffany bangles valued at $7,500 and $7,800 — and she tacked on two diamond versions of those bangles as well for $27,000 and $39,000! Taking a break from all the gold jewels, Blake decided to mix in some silver with a $42,000 lock bangle, a half pavé white gold bangle for $17,000, and another Elsa Peretti knot bangle covered in diamonds which retails for $54,000.
The least expensive wrist accessory of the night was valued at $1,825 — being a simple sterling silver bangle — leaving the total value of her wrists alone at $304,925. WILD!!
Blake’s two sets of earrings were a simple pair of Tiffany Solitaire diamonds which retail for $1,650 and some Elsa Peretti snake danglers valued at around $4,000 — but to Swifties, that subtle nod to the forthcoming rerecording of Reputation (Taylor’s Version) is priceless! Take all that together and The Shallows star wore $469,075 worth of jewelry on her person at the game. Nearly half a MILLION bucks worth of accessories all paired with a tracksuit! Iconic!
Pacific Gas & Electric Company will be penalized $45 million for its involvement in one of the largest and most destructive wildfires in California history under a settlement reached recently between the utility and state regulators.
The Dixie fire, which burned nearly 1 million acres and destroyed more than 1,300 homes, ignited July 13, 2021, after a Douglas fir tree fell and struck energized conductors owned and operated by PG&E. The blaze became the first known wildfire to burn from one side of the Sierra Nevada to the other.
The California Public Utilities Commission announced the settlement Thursday and said the penalty includes $40 million in shareholder funding for an initiative to transition some of the utility’s hard-copy records to electronic records.
The initiative “will support public safety by enabling more accurate recording of information and immediate awareness of the condition of PG&E’s assets, thereby improving the timeliness of inspections and preventive maintenance, and assisting the CPUC in conducting future audits and investigations,” the regulatory agency said.
PG&E will also pay $2.5 million in fines to the California General Fund and $2.5 million to tribes affected by the Dixie fire. PG&E will distribute those payments to the Greenville Rancheria and Maidu Summit Consortium, a nonprofit representing a number of Mountain Maidu tribes and organizations, the CPUC said.
Flames from the Dixie fire crest a forested hill
(Noah Berger / Associated Press)
The settlement was reached under a relatively new enforcement tool known as an administrative consent order, which was established in 2020 to “better serve Californians through streamlined enforcement actions” in lieu of a more formal investigation, according to the CPUC.
In its own report submitted to the agency soon after the Dixie fire started, PG&E said a worker responded to an outage in the Feather River Canyon area of Plumas County around 7 a.m. that day, but that he was not able to reach the site until after 4:30 p.m. Once there, he found found two blown fuses and a tree leaning into a power line conductor. A fire was burning at the base of the tree, which soon grew out of control.
PG&E officials on Thursday said the utility accepts that a tree falling onto their power line caused the fire, but it denies any fault or negligence.
“PG&E believes we acted as a prudent operator. There is no evidence that PG&E consciously and willfully disregarded a known risk with regard to the ignition of the Dixie fire. We followed the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) requirements when inspecting, maintaining and operating our system,” read a statement from the agency.
“We share our regulators’ commitment to improve safety,” the statement said.
The utility said it will not request rate recovery for the settlement expenses — meaning the costs will not affect customers. However, “the agreement does not preclude PG&E from receiving cost recovery for costs related to the fire, including from the state’s Wildfire Fund.”
In this long exposure photo, embers light up hillsides as the Dixie fire burns near Milford in Lassen County, Calif., on Aug. 17, 2021.
(Noah Berger / Associated Press)
It is not the first time PG&E has been held accountable for its connection to a California wildfire. In recent years, the electric company reached a $150-million settlement with the CPUC for its role in the Zogg fire, which killed four people, and a $125-million settlement for its role in the 2019 Kincade fire, among other agreements.
In 2019, PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection to shield itself from tens of billions of dollars in potential liabilities due to its role in previous state blazes. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2020 with officials promising improvements, including plans to bury 10,000 miles of power lines in high-risk areas where strong winds, downed trees and other factors can lead to fires. Only about 600 miles have been buried so far, officials told The Times in November.
Last year, PG&E avoided criminal prosecution for the Dixie fire as part of a separate settlement agreement with six Northern California counties in which it admitted no wrongdoing. The utility agreed to pay about $55 million over five years in civil penalties, among other terms.
The CPUC’s five-member committee approved the settlement agreement in a meeting Thursday. Commission President Alice Busching Reynolds noted that “it’s not the only action taken by us or by other government agencies with respect to the fire. “
“When taken as a whole, and viewed in light of the broader circumstances, I do support this negotiated settlement agreement and its related resolution,” she said.
Busching Reynolds said PG&E has since instituted a power line safety program to detect problems on distribution lines — such as fallen trees — which then de-energizes the lines. Unfortunately, she said, “this program was not in place to prevent the Dixie fire.”
The fire, which was contained on Oct. 21, 2021, cost the state $637 million to suppress, CPUC officials said. It was the second-largest wildfire on record in the state.
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Microschools have become a hot topic over the last few years. Their big appeal is that they promise to do a better job catering to students’ and families’ individual needs and interests. But right now, they only serve about 2 percent to 4 percent of U.S. students. So, could microschools eventually become the new normal in schooling?
Well, let’s see what innovation theory has to say about this question. To start, we first need to take a quick dive into the history of the steel industry (and yes, and I promise it relates).
From the mid 1800s until the 1960s, steel came from massive integrated mills. These large mills did everything from reacting iron ore, coke, and limestone in blast furnaces to rolling finished products at the other end. It would cost over $12 billion to build a huge, new integrated mill today.
Then in the 1960s, a new type of steel mill called the minimill entered the scene. Unlike their giant predecessors that needed large blast furnaces to process raw ore, minimills made new steel products by melting scrap steel using a new technology called the electric arc furnace.
These minimills transformed the economics of steel production. Whereas an integrated mill today might cover two to four square miles and would cost around $12 billion to build, minimills are less than a tenth the size of an integrated mill and only cost around $800 million.
But early minimills had a problem. Because the scrap steel they recycled varied in its chemical makeup, they could only make certain steel products like rebar.
But from the 1960s to the 1990s, as the technology improved, minimills were gradually able to produce more and more of the products made in larger and more expensive integrated mills. First angle iron, then structural steel for buildings, then finally sheet steel for things like soup cans and cars
What does this have to do with microschools?
Microschools are small, independent schooling programs. They often have students of mixed age groups and one or two educators who facilitate the learning experiences.
Just as minimills operate at a smaller scale compared to integrated mills, microschools are much smaller than conventional schools. They typically only serve around 15 to 40 students—much smaller than the typical school with hundreds to thousands of students.
As with minimills, the physical facilities of most microschools are also small and lean. Whereas most conventional schools have large, expensive campuses with multiple buildings, playgrounds, and athletic fields, microschools often operate out of homes, churches, retail space, or office buildings, and use nearby public parks for their outdoor facilities.
Also, just as minimills keep their costs down by recycling scrap steel, microschools take advantage of community and online resources to keep their costs lean.
Whether microschools become mainstream alternatives to conventional schooling remains to be seen.
Just like minimills had to improve their technology over time to offer a wider array of steel products, microschools will have to evolve if they hope to serve a wider array of students and families.
Today’s microschools aren’t for everyone. They’re limited in their ability to provide diverse social interactions, extracurricular activities, and specialized support for unique educational needs, making them an unproven and un-enticing option for many families.
So what’s the takeaway? Microschools may someday disrupt conventional schooling just like minimills disrupted integrated mills. They definitely have some of the key ingredients. But we’ll have to wait and see whether they can evolve to become compelling alternatives to conventional schooling.
Thomas Arnett, Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute
Thomas Arnett is a senior research fellow for the Clayton Christensen Institute. His work focuses on using the Theory of Disruptive Innovation to study innovative instructional models and their potential to scale student-centered learning in K–12 education. He also studies demand for innovative resources and practices across the K–12 education system using the Jobs to Be Done Theory.
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Thomas Arnett, Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute
California is set to adopt regulations that will allow for sewage to be extensively treated, transformed into pure drinking water and delivered directly to people’s taps.
The regulations are expected to be approved Tuesday by the State Water Resources Control Board, enabling water suppliers to begin building advanced treatment plants that will turn wastewater into a source of clean drinking water.
The new rules represent a major milestone in California’s efforts to stretch supplies by recycling more of the water that flows down drains.
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“We’re creating a new source of supply that we were previously discharging or thinking of as waste,” said Heather Cooley, director of research at the Pacific Institute, a water think tank in Oakland. “As we look to make our communities more resilient to drought, to climate change, this is really going to be an important part of that solution.”
Water agencies in many areas of California have been treating and reusing wastewater for decades, often piping effluent for outdoor irrigation or to facilities where treated water soaks into the ground to replenish aquifers.
The regulations will enable what’s known as “direct potable reuse,” putting highly treated water straight into the drinking water system or mixing it with other supplies.
Cooley and other water experts say it’s inaccurate to call this “toilet to tap,” a term that was popularized in the 1990s by opponents of plans to use recycled water for replenishing groundwater in the San Gabriel Valley. They say the sewage undergoes an extremely sophisticated treatment process, and scientific research has shown the highly purified water is safe to drink.
“This is really about recovering resources, not wasting precious resources,” Cooley said. “This is really, I think, an exciting opportunity for helping to realize that vision of a more circular sort of approach for water.”
The process of developing the regulations, which was required under legislation, has taken state regulators more than a decade. It included a review by a panel of experts.
“We wanted to absolutely make sure that we put public health first priority, so that the public had confidence,” said Darrin Polhemus, deputy director of the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water.
“We have a very thorough set of regulations,” Polhemus said. “It has broad support, and we think we’ve gotten it to a point where everybody is comfortable with what it presents.”
Building plants to purify wastewater is expensive, and it’s likely to be several years before any Californians are drinking the treated water. But Los Angeles, San Diego and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California are all planning to pursue direct potable reuse as part of ongoing investments in recycling more wastewater.
The regulations detail requirements for infrastructure, treatment technologies and monitoring, Polhemus said, and ensure “triple redundancy for each of the areas we’re treating for,” including bacteria and viruses as well as chemicals.
The water will go through various stages of treatment, passing through activated carbon filters and reverse-osmosis membranes, as well as undergoing disinfection with UV light, among other treatments.
The regulations require such thorough purification that at the end of the process, the water will need to have minerals added back so that the water will regain a taste and chemistry resembling typical drinking water.
“This will be by far the most well-treated, highest-quality water served to the public,” Polhemus said. “It’s an incredible amount of treatment.”
Once the regulations are approved by the State Water Board, they still need to be approved by the Office of Administrative Law, which is expected next year.
The treatment technology is similar to the process used for desalinating seawater, but recycling wastewater requires less energy and is less costly than turning saltwater into freshwater. Polhemus said the costs for purifying wastewater will probably be about half the costs of desalinating ocean water.
Direct potable reuse has been done for years in other water-scarce parts of the world, including Namibia and Singapore. Some communities in Texas are also doing it. Colorado has rules in place allowing potable reuse, while Arizona and Florida are developing regulations.
In California, some agencies have for years been doing indirect potable reuse, in which highly treated water is used to replenish groundwater, and is later pumped out, treated and delivered as drinking water.
Orange County, for example, has its Groundwater Replenishment System, the largest project of its kind in the world. The system purifies wastewater using a three-step advanced treatment process, and the water then percolates and is injected into the groundwater basin, where it becomes part of the water supply.
While Orange County plans to stick with indirect potable reuse, Polhemus said, other water districts are looking at direct reuse as an approach that saves costs by using existing infrastructure rather than building separate systems for recycled water.
This strategy also offers cities and water agencies a new route for reducing reliance on imported supplies and scaling up the use of recycled water — a source that water managers view as relatively drought-proof.
“Our communities are always going to generate wastewater even in the worst drought. And having this available can really augment that supply and add resiliency,” Polhemus said.
Recycling more wastewater also brings other environmental benefits, reducing the amount of treated effluent that flows into coastal waters.
“It’s easier on the environment you’re taking the water from, it’s easier on the environment you’re discharging it to, and sets us up to be better stewards of our environment overall,” Polhemus said.
The complexity and costs of the treatment plants will mean that large, well-funded agencies will adopt the technology first, Polhemus said. Direct potable reuse also is suited to coastal areas, he said, because the reverse-osmosis treatment, like a desalination plant, generates brine that can be discharged offshore.
As for how much purified water might be used, Polhemus said if some coastal communities are able to get 10% to 15% of supplies from treated wastewater during a drought, that would represent a significant improvement in diversifying supplies.
“Someday, it could be 25% to 40% of some communities’ water supply,” Polhemus said. “At some point, we could recycle the majority of wastewater that now flows to the ocean just as treated wastewater.”
The Metropolitan Water District plans to start doing direct potable reuse as part of its Pure Water Southern California project, building a $6-billion facility in Carson that is slated to become the country’s largest water recycling project.
It’s scheduled to deliver its first treated water as soon as 2028. Initially, the district says the supplies will be used largely to replenish groundwater basins for later use, with some water also going to serve oil refineries and other industrial users.
By 2032, MWD officials plan to be producing 115 million gallons of purified water a day. Of that, they expect to send 25 million gallons per day directly to a plant in La Verne to be mixed with other supplies from the Colorado River and Northern California, and delivered as drinking water throughout the region — an amount that’s projected to increase to 60 million gallons a day once the facility is operating at its full capacity of 150 million gallons daily.
Depending on how wet or dry a year is, the district will be able to store more water in aquifers or send more purified water directly into the distribution system, said Deven Upadhyay, the MWD’s executive officer and assistant general manager.
“We’re building that flexibility into the design of this program,” Upadhyay said. “If you needed to push more into direct potable reuse, you would be able to do that and back off of your deliveries to the groundwater basins.”
He said that flexibility is valuable as California deals with more extreme droughts fueled by climate change.
“Our view is that over time, those imported supplies will decline. And we want to take the water that is used, and reuse it as much as possible, and try to close that cycle of water use,” Upadhyay said. “Because it’s such a drought-proof supply, it really creates another degree of resilience for us.”
The Metropolitan Water District functions as Southern California’s wholesaler, delivering supplies to cities and agencies that serve 19 million people in six counties.
Currently, about 450,000 acre-feet of wastewater is being recycled in Metropolitan’s service area, an amount equivalent to the water use of about 1.3 million households.
The MWD’s water recycling project, as well as Los Angeles’ Operation Next project and San Diego’s Pure Water project, will dramatically increase the use of recycled water once they are built out, Upadhyay said.
“We should expect a doubling of recycled water that Southern California is producing and drinking by the time those three projects are completed,” Upadhyay said.
And part of that will come thanks to the state’s new regulations that enable direct reuse, he said.
“It’s a major milestone for the state,” Upadhyay said. “This is going to lead to water agencies throughout the state starting to plan for potable reuse projects in a way that results in a more resilient California water future.”
In the Bay Area, the Santa Clara Valley Water District also plans to pursue potable reuse.
In a study last year, researchers at the Pacific Institute said California currently recycles about 23% of its municipal wastewater, and has the potential to more than triple the amount that is recycled and reused.
Cooley said some portion of that will come through direct reuse where it pencils out for communities.
“It’s just part of the puzzle in terms of helping us to realize the full potential for recycled water,” Cooley said. “This is an important piece of helping make our communities more resilient.”
There has been growing public acceptance of recycling water as people have experienced more severe droughts and seen recycling projects expand, Cooley said.
Still, she said, acceptance isn’t universal, and “it’s important to really address openly concerns that people have as communities consider this as an option.”
She said reusing more water is one of multiple strategies that California should adopt, along with capturing more stormwater and improving water-use efficiency.
Peter Gleick, the Pacific Institute’s co-founder and president emeritus, pointed out that the water-recycling technologies in use today are fundamentally the same approaches used by astronauts on the International Space Station.
“It’s not toilet to tap,” Gleick said, adding that it’s better described as “toilet to an unbelievably sophisticated system that produces incredibly pure water to tap.”
In his book “The Three Ages of Water,” Gleick wrote that reusing water provides a valuable new supply, and should be part of a set of solutions for long-term water sustainability.
“High-quality water produced from wastewater is an asset,” Gleick wrote. “We have the ability and technology to produce incredibly clean water from any quality of wastewater, and we should rapidly expand the capacity to do so.”
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Costco Wholesale Corp. engages in the operation of membership warehouses through wholly owned subsidiaries. It operates through the following geographical segments: United States, Canada, and Other International Operations. The company was founded by James D. Sinegal and Jeffrey H. Brotman in 1983 and is headquartered in Issaquah, WA.
A group of 51 stocks in the benchmark equity index swept to record finishes on Tuesday, the most since April 20, 2022, according to a tally from Dow Jones Market Data.
Equities have been in a year-end rally mode, driven higher by tumbling benchmark yields that finance much of the U.S. economy and expectations of coming interest-rate cuts.
The 10-year Treasury rate BX:TMUBMUSD10Y
fell to 4.2% on Tuesday from a high of about 5% in October.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA
on Tuesday ended at its third-highest level on record, while the S&P 500 index SPX
and Nasdaq Composite Index COMP
added to a string of new closing highs for 2023. The Dow finished 0.6% away from its record close logged almost two years ago, while the S&P 500 was only 3.2% below its close from the same period, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
The push higher for stocks followed inflation data for November that showed price pressures continued to ease from peak levels, but still were above the Fed’s 2% annual target.
The consumer-price index pegged the annual rate of inflation at 3.1%, down from 3.2% in October, with the “last mile” of inflation expected to be the hardest part to tame.
Investors now will be focused on Wednesday’s Federal Reserve decision. Short-term interest rates are expected to remain unchanged at a 22-year high, but the central bank is expected to update its “dot plot” forecast of rates over a longer time horizon.
“Although the market will focus on the timing of rate cuts, we suspect Chair Powell will be keen to strike notes of caution to avoid financial conditions easing too much further to ensure the Fed continues to see encouraging progress on inflation,” said Emin Hajiyev, senior economist at Insight Investment, in emailed comments.
The U.S. Census Bureau released the 2022 American Community Survey this week. The survey, which looks at demographic data in five-year increments, introduced several new detailed tables and demographic breakdowns. We looked at some trends in the data.
Nearly 6 million people 65 and older live in California, a figure that is slowly growing. In the last five years, 716,000 people became senior citizens in the state. That number will nearly double by 2030. Los Angeles County is home to roughly a quarter of the senior citizens in the state.
As the cost of living increases, the number of Golden State senior citizens in poverty is also rising, with nearly 14% of Los Angeles County senior citizens living below the poverty line. The national poverty rate declined significantly to 12.5% during the five-year period from 2018-22.
Across the country, housing costs continue to rise. Financial planners advise that no more than 30% of household income be spent on housing costs. The latest data show that is far from the reality for 41% of homeowners with a mortgage in Los Angeles County. For homeowners without a mortgage, roughly 16% are house burdened. It’s also not easy for renters. More than half of renters spend more than 30% of their household income on housing costs.
The data also point to how the pandemic changed the way people work. In Los Angeles County, the number of people working from home tripled from more than 270,000 to 810,000 in just five years. That number tracks with the rest of the state’s pool of people working from home, which tripled from 1 million to more than 3.2 million. For those having to commute into the office daily, the mean travel time to work has stayed the same with most L.A. County residents getting to work in 30 minutes (although most L.A. city residents would laugh at this figure.) The number of unemployed people in the county has gone down by 4% since 2017 with roughly 300,000 without work.
The new American Community Survey includes updated race data. They show the county has grown in its Asian and Latino population. Roughly 1.4 million people identified as Asian in Los Angeles County, up 2.4% from a decade ago. Those who identify as Latino and Hispanic account for nearly half of the population of the county. The county lost 80,000 Black people over the last decade.
Stock futures pointed higher Friday as Wall Street returned for a
shortened trading session following the Thanksgiving holiday. Retailers will be in focus on Black Friday, which marks the unofficial start to the Christmas shopping season.
A congestion-busting idea to toll many of Tauranga’s main arterial routes has been labelled “ludicrous” and “unfair” by people who could be forced to pay more to drive to the supermarket.
Others worry it would push the cost of living higher and one business owner says it might prompt him to move.
In one scenario of how a variable road-pricing idea being considered by Tauranga City Council might work, commuting between the CBD and Pāpāmoa in peak hours five days a week could cost more than $2400 a year.
A council commissioner, however, says that example was “illustrative” and the council was only seeking feedback on whether it should further investigate the potential issues and benefits of the “SmartTrip” road-pricing idea.
Tauranga was looking at a variable road-pricing system, with a report presented to its council suggesting a system of access and distance-based charges for using certain roads in and out of the city centre could be a potential solution to traffic congestion.
It would have more than 100 entry and exit points, require up to 100 cameras and would first need a law change to take effect.
Priced roads included State Highway 2 and SH29A, plus local roads such as Turret Rd.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that set a first-in-the-nation minimum wage for healthcare workers, three words in a bill analysis foretold potential concerns about its cost: “Fiscal impact unknown.”
Now, three weeks after Newsom signed SB 525 into law — giving medical employees at least $25 an hour, including support staff such as cleaners and security guards — his administration has an estimated price tag: $4 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year alone.
Half of that will come directly from the state’s general fund, while the other half will be paid for by federal funds designated for providers of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, according to Newsom’s Department of Finance.
SB 525 is one of the most expensive laws California has seen in years and comes as the state faces a $14-billion budget deficit that could grow larger, if revenue projections continue to fall short.
The costly legislation — promoted by unions as a way to curb the healthcare worker shortage and in turn improve patient care — was signed into law even as Newsom has warned about the state’s shaky financial future, vetoing dozens of bills last month in the name of cost savings.
“With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty, it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications, such as this measure,” Newsom said repeatedly in veto messages, rejecting some bills that had far lower cost projections than SB 525.
Newsom officials declined to give The Times a cost estimate reflecting those amendments when the governor signed the bill last month. But the amendments were expected to significantly soften the immediate financial impact to the state and hospitals, since gradual wage schedules were introduced in lieu of an instantaneous increase for all.
Despite the unknowns, Democrats in the state Legislature — including some who were first hesitant about potential costs — were quick to pass the legislation after a deal was made between powerful interest groups.
The bill originally aimed to increase the minimum wage to $25 per hour for all healthcare employees starting Jan. 1. The opposition estimated that would have cost up to $8 billion annually.
While leaders of appropriations committees killed bills based on cost in September, rejecting measures that cost millions less than SB 525, the healthcare minimum wage bill cleared that key fiscal hurdle even as the Department of Finance opposed it, citing “significant economic impacts.”
It’s unclear whether other state programs will be cut to make room for the wage hikes, but expect state lawmakers to rush to write bills when the Legislature returns in January to try to address some financial concerns.
Unlike a law passed in 2016 that mandated a $15-per-hour minimum wage statewide, the healthcare worker bill does not currently include any mechanism that allows the state to delay wage hikes during economic downturns.
“This is an important law to ensure California has a robust healthcare workforce. We’re working with legislative leadership and stakeholders on accompanying legislation to account for state budget conditions and revenues,” Newsom spokesperson Alex Stack said on Friday when asked about cost concerns surrounding the bill.
The $4-billion estimate could change when the Legislative Analyst’s Office releases its annual fiscal outlook expected later this month. The cost is only expected to grow in the future, as more groups of workers become eligible for raises.
The latest estimated cost to the state reflects pay raises expected to go to half a million healthcare workers who provide services to Medi-Cal patients, plus 26,000 employees at state-owned facilities.
But the cost to the state could decrease if hospitals pay a bigger share of labor costs, said Tia Orr, executive director of SEIU California, who was involved in shaping the policy. She pointed to billions already set aside for Medi-cal providers through revenue from a tax on managed healthcare organizations as one way to “help manage the impact of increased labor costs.”
“SEIU California has committed to working with the administration and the Legislature to ensure safeguards are in place to guarantee that this critical measure is taken in a way that preserves California’s fiscal health, just as we did when negotiating the last statewide minimum wage increase,” Orr said. “This is how you make progress — through flexibility and compromise in achieving shared goals.”
In a statement, David Simon, spokesperson for the California Hospital Association, which ultimately supported the bill, called the plan that Newsom signed a “better, more measured” approach to raising wages than past efforts, which the organization worried would hurt rural hospitals already struggling financially and potentially pass costs onto patients.
Like Orr, Simon signaled more work to come.
“As far as any future work related to this issue, we are committed to working with the Legislature and the governor to advance the joint goals of SB 525: investing in our state’s healthcare workforce and preserving access to healthcare,” Simon said.
Under the law, workers at large healthcare facilities will earn $23 an hour starting in June, $24 an hour in 2025 and $25 in 2026. That applies to all staff, including launderers and hospital gift shop workers.
Employees at independent rural hospitals and facilities that serve high rates of Medicare and Medi-Cal patients will see $18 an hour next year and won’t reach $25 an hour until 2033. Other smaller workplaces are required to pay employees $21 an hour next year, reaching $25 an hour in 2028.
Newsom supporters see the legislation as bold national leadership amid labor unrest and worker strikes across industries, and as a more organized way to address local demands for $25 per hour already moving ahead in cities across California. His critics question if he approved it too soon without a concrete plan in order to gain political favor.
Labor unions have long held outsize power in the California Legislature, but their wins this year were remarkable. Their influence in state politics is undeniable: the Service Employees International Union pumped nearly $4 million into eight independent expenditures alone to get their Democrats of choice elected to the Legislature this year.
Michael Genest, founder of Capitol Matrix Consulting who served as a budget director for former Gov. Arnorld Schwarzenegger, pointed to union power — and pressure — as one reason why Newsom may have moved too soon.
“This is no time to start adding really major costs to the state budget when it’s very possible we could go deeply in the wrong direction,” he said, noting the state’s economic uncertainty. “There’s always a reason to spend money, but some people care more about the reason than they do about what’s in the bank account.”
H.D. Palmer, Newom’s Department of Finance spokesperson, has also acknowledged the state’s financial unknowns but was confident in the governor’s budgeting.
“The governor is required under the state Constitution to present a balanced budget by Jan. 10 of next year, which he will do,” he said. “There are any number of actions that can be done to balance a budget. Obviously the major thing right now is: where are revenues going to go?”
No, you don’t need to spend $4,500 on that 157-piece Le Creuset cookware set from Costco COST, -0.83%.
The pricey package has become an everyone-is-talking-about-it sensation, owing largely to social media. A post about the set on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that has now been viewed some 21 million times seems to have been the initial source of the buzz. It noted that the Costco offering has “probably every kitchen item you will ever need.”
In turn, that post generated more social-media chatter, along with articles in publications including the New York Post and the Delish website.
Now the set is apparently so popular, you can’t even get it. In several parts of the country, the Costco site doesn’t even list it as being available. MarketWatch reached out to the retailer for details but did not receive an immediate response.
Perhaps it’s just as well that home cooks won’t be tempted to spend all that money. When MarketWatch spoke with several prominent New York chefs and restaurateurs, they all said the set was overkill, even if it represented a savings compared with buying the items individually.
If anything, these culinary pros noted that purchasing so many pieces not only poses a storage issue, but it can also create confusion in the kitchen, especially for the home cook.
“I don’t even have one-tenth of that set,” says veteran chef Konstantinos Kvasilava, who works at Kyma, a high-end Greek restaurant in New York, and who previously was at Geranium, a Michelin-starred establishment in Copenhagen.
So what are the items you should buy for your kitchen? Here are five rules chefs say you should keep in mind.
Stick with the basics
The Costco Le Creuset set includes several pots and pans, plus bakeware, dinnerware and more. Let’s presume you already have some plates and utensils in your kitchen. Beyond that, chefs generally recommend a small number of pieces — think in terms of as few as four and as many as 10, says Franklin Becker, chef and owner of the Press Club Grill and Point Seven restaurants in New York. His must-have list includes 8-inch and 10-inch nonstick pans, a high-sided stainless-steel sauté pan and 1-quart, 4-quart and 8-quart pots. “Those are the essentials,” says Becker, explaining that such items will cover your needs depending on what you’re cooking — the nonstick pans are great for eggs, he notes — and how many people you’re cooking for. The 8-quart pot will work if you’re entertaining a crowd and need to make a big dish.
Other chefs’ must-haves include a cast-iron pan, often a preferred method for cooking steaks; a casserole dish, which is good for casseroles, naturally; and a Dutch oven. It’s always best to think of items that can be used in multiple ways. Rose Noel, executive chef at New York’s Peak restaurant, likes a cast-iron pan, for example, because it can go into the oven and can also be used on an outdoor grill. “It carries everywhere,” she explains. And, she says, a decent-sized casserole dish can double as a roasting pan for, say, cooking a chicken.
Add extras, depending on what you eat
One you have those basics, look at your daily diet and buy items that fit your own needs. Simon Kim, proprietor of Cote Korean Steakhouse, which has locations in New York and Miami, says he doesn’t make eggs at home for breakfast, but he always makes smoothies, so a powerful blender is a must for him. And he eats a lot of rice, so he has a rice cooker, which he says is much better than an everyday pot when it comes to preparing that staple.
Buy quality
It’s always tempting to go the cheap route, but chefs say you’ll pay for it in the end by having cookware that doesn’t last as long and doesn’t cook as well. Becker notes that aluminum cookware, which typically costs less, should be avoided at, well, all costs.
In terms of brand preferences, chefs mention many higher-end names, such as T-fal , All-Clad and Le Creuset. And when it comes to that blender for his morning smoothies, Kim says he swears by his Vitamix.
Avoid sets
The problem with buying any cookware set, even one with as few as 10 pieces, is that it often means duplicating items you already have, chefs say. Plus it doesn’t allow you to mix and match brands and take advantage of the fact that certain brands may be better than others for certain items.
Noel suggests you purchase cookware for your kitchen the same way you purchase clothes for your wardrobe. “Buy pieces to fill in what you’re missing or need to update,” she says.
Take care of what you own
Even the best cookware won’t measure up if you don’t treat it properly. Becker says it’s important to wash pots and pans pretty much immediately after each use so that food and grease don’t harden and become difficult to remove. And when it comes to that cast-iron pan, Becker suggests that it be seasoned and cleaned with salt before being oiled lightly to seal it.
The practical constraints on teachers’ time present a significant obstacle to the wider adoption of team teaching
To make team teaching viable, we need innovations that can dissolve these practical constraints and facilitate efficient and sustainable collaboration within existing cost structures
See related article: Teacher burnout persists, but solutions are emerging
For more news on teacher burnout, visit eSN’s SEL & Well-Being page
Teacher burnout is a real and growing challenge for US K–12 schools. Last year, school district leaders reported a 4 percent increase in teacher turnover according to a nationally representative survey from RAND. In some states like Louisiana and North Carolina, Chalkbeat found that total departures surged to more than 13 percent. This unsettling trend, coupled with the increasing pressures on those who remain, is a problem we can’t afford to ignore.
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A new survey of K-8 teachers and students from LEGO Education found that nearly all (98 percent) of students say purposeful play helps them learn and the majority (96 percent) of teachers believe it’s more effective than traditional methods
Anthony Salcito, Chief Institution Business Officer at Nerdy, touches upon the impact of the pandemic on education, the role of teachers, the evolution and challenges of tutoring in the education landscape, and, of course, the potential of AI in education.
Tom Lamont is the painting and design technology instructor at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School (BVT), in Upton, Massachusetts. Mr. Lamont offers his vocational high school students a unique hands-on opportunity to learn about the design industry and to prepare for jobs in the workforce.
While some of the recent efforts focused on recruiting more teachers of color have paid off, keeping those teachers in our schools and classrooms is an urgent challenge.
You’ve heard all the news about kids using ChatGPT to cheat, but there’s another side to this story. Just as the internet revolutionized education, AI will be the next game-changer.
Education is changing because the world is changing. During the pandemic, teachers and students rapidly adopted new tools to pivot to remote and hybrid learning.
Now in his 10th year of teaching, John Arthur’s students have gained national recognition as champions for children and immigrants like them through music videos and other digital content they create and share across platforms.
I believe that the low supply of STEM professionals can be attributed to significant barriers to entry originating in educational settings–this is to no fault of teachers and administrators, but how the educational system is structured.
The benefits of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education are numerous, and one would be hard-pressed to find a school district that doesn’t have a project, initiative, class, or lesson with the acronym in its title.
Prior to the pandemic, reading achievement had been showing little to no growth. Scores have continued to decline, in part because of pandemic-related learning interruptions.
Two Cincinnati animation firms, Pixel Fiction and Lightborne, joined forces to support Mindful Music Moments, Cincinnati non-profit The Well’s signature program that brings world-class music in combination with daily creative, calming prompts to schools and classrooms in Greater Cincinnati and far beyond.
The Well’s Director of Music and Arts Programs, Bryce Kessler says “We heard from a lot of our teachers that students need support in focusing their attention. As a small non-profit, we needed to find a dynamic, cost- and time-effective way to create daily video content in addition to daily audio content for all 300 schools and national partnerships we serve. Kessler continues, “we innovate and learn directly from our school partners and lean in to our 50+ schools in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky to make sure we are always supporting the ever-changing environment.”
Create your Free Account to Continue Reading
eSchool News is Free for qualified educators. Sign up or login to access all our K-12 news and resources.
Please confirm your email address
More News from eSchool News
Tom Lamont is the painting and design technology instructor at Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School (BVT), in Upton, Massachusetts. Mr. Lamont offers his vocational high school students a unique hands-on opportunity to learn about the design industry and to prepare for jobs in the workforce.
While some of the recent efforts focused on recruiting more teachers of color have paid off, keeping those teachers in our schools and classrooms is an urgent challenge.
You’ve heard all the news about kids using ChatGPT to cheat, but there’s another side to this story. Just as the internet revolutionized education, AI will be the next game-changer.
Education is changing because the world is changing. During the pandemic, teachers and students rapidly adopted new tools to pivot to remote and hybrid learning.
Now in his 10th year of teaching, John Arthur’s students have gained national recognition as champions for children and immigrants like them through music videos and other digital content they create and share across platforms.
I believe that the low supply of STEM professionals can be attributed to significant barriers to entry originating in educational settings–this is to no fault of teachers and administrators, but how the educational system is structured.
The benefits of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education are numerous, and one would be hard-pressed to find a school district that doesn’t have a project, initiative, class, or lesson with the acronym in its title.
Prior to the pandemic, reading achievement had been showing little to no growth. Scores have continued to decline, in part because of pandemic-related learning interruptions.
Indiana is in the midst of an enormous undertaking to improve literacy rates. The approach: Align state standards, curriculum, and teacher training programs with practices rooted in the science of reading.
When it comes to digital equity, U.S. schools are well-positioned to help families get online with low-cost, high-speed internet options through the federal government’s Affordable Connectivity Program
Costco Wholesale Corp. engages in the operation of membership warehouses through wholly owned subsidiaries. It operates through the following geographical segments: United States, Canada, and Other International Operations. The company was founded by James D. Sinegal and Jeffrey H. Brotman in 1983 and is headquartered in Issaquah, WA.
Costco Wholesale Corp. sells lots of things you wouldn’t expect from a big-box retailer: caskets, caviar, six-pound tubs of Nutella. Add to that list one-ounce bars of gold, which the company on Tuesday said were selling out within a matter of hours.
“I’ve gotten a couple of calls that people have seen online that we’ve been selling one-ounce gold bars,” Chief Financial Officer Richard Galanti said on Costco’s COST, +2.45%
quarterly earnings call on Tuesday. “Yes, but when we load them on the site, they’re typically gone within a few hours, and we limit two per member.”
Costco did not immediately respond to a request for more information about the types of gold bars it sells, how much they cost or the factors behind the demand. On Wednesday, the site showed a price of $1979.99 per ounce for the bars. Shares of Costco were up 1.3% on Wednesday.
Gold is generally seen as a safe-haven investment and a hedge against inflation. Buying by central banks, lingering worries about a deceleration in the economy and jewelry purchases have helped prop up prices, according to data tracker Goldhub. But higher interest rates have acted as a counterweight, and some analysts have wondered whether more volatility is on the horizon for gold prices.
Costco’s quarterly results, reported Tuesday, topped expectations. Analysts have said the retail chain remains attractive to customers who are looking for a break from higher prices.
Shares of the company are up 23.8% so far this year. The S&P 500 Index SPX
is up 11.4% over that period.
