Valley school district makes a digital leap in technology

Most students stay as far from school as possible during Spring Break. So when McAllen Memorial High School Principal Rosie Larson saw a group of them huddled against the school building, tented in blankets against the unseasonable cold, she did a double take.

With a sense of triumph, Larson realized they were seeking Wi-Fi for their new school-provided iPads. The tablets, distributed across grade levels to students and teachers, give access to technology that does not exist for most homes in a district with a 67-percent poverty rate.

“At the end of the day, we can't get them out of the building,” she said. “It's amazing, and as an adult it's really been transforming for me, to see that happening.”

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Schools report STAAR issues

The first week of new state-mandated standardized tests that began March 26 sparked some confusion for students throughout Texas, including Amarillo and Canyon, who took the new writing exams.

Amarillo Independent School District had 45 to 50 students who wrote their English essays for the new State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness on the wrong answer page, district spokeswoman Susan Hoyl said.

“To our knowledge all of the errors were caught during testing or at the end of the first day of the writing exams, and in all cases students had the opportunity to transcribe their essays onto the correct answer page,” she said.

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Texas Officials Approve Radioactive Waste Site

State officials voted today to allow low-level nuclear waste from around the country to be brought to the Texas-New Mexico border for storage. As Mose Buchele of KUT News reports for StateImpact Texas, the vote put the final touches on a controversial plan approved by the Legislature last year.

The Harold Simmons Foundation is a major donor to the Tribune.

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Texas OK's Radioactive Waste Disposal Site

Radioactive waste from dozens of states could soon be buried in a Texas dump near the New Mexico border after Texas officials gave final approval Friday to rules allowing the shipments.

 Texas lawmakers in 2011 approved the rural Andrews County site to take the waste and the Friday’s unanimous vote by the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Compact Commission cleared a major hurdle to allow the waste burial.

Texas already had a compact legal with Vermont to take its waste. Environmentalists have argued against expanding the program to 36 more states, warning it could result in radioactive material rumbling through the state on trucks with few safeguards in case of an accident. They also say a problem at the waste dump could lead to potential underground water contamination.

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Texas Nears Approval of Multistate Nuclear-Waste Dump

Texas moved closer Friday to allowing low-level radioactive waste from dozens of states to be trucked in and disposed at a site in West Texas, which would become one of only four in the nation that could take low-level radioactive waste shipped from out of state.

A state agency with oversight of waste imports adopted rules Friday that help clear the way for the 1,338-acre dump near the New Mexico border, despite concerns expressed by environmentalists that such a facility may be unsafe.

ts operator, Waste Control Specialists LLC, still needs final approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, but expects to receive it within several weeks, said company spokesman Chuck McDonald. The company is majority-owned by Texas billionaire Harold Clark Simmons, one of the nation's wealthiest men and a major donor to Republican state and national political candidates.

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