Rural News
Rural population grows in counties witrha lower digital divide
Daoly Yonder | Posted on April 19, 2018When they live in remote rural areas, millennials are more likely to reside in a county that has better digital access. The findings could indicate that the digital economy is helping decentralize the economy, not just clustering economic change in the cities that are already the largest. When looking at only rural counties (what the OMB classification system calls “noncore”) divided into five equal groups or quintiles based on their digital divide (1 = lowest divide while 5 = highest divide), the figure at the very top of this article shows that rural counties experienced an increase in millennials where the digital divide was lowest. (The millennial population grew by 2.3 percent in rural counties where the digital divide was the lowest.) Important to note is that this same pattern occurs in metropolitan and small city counties as well.
AG Jeff Sessions halts free legal assistance program for detained immigrants
Dallas News | Posted on April 19, 2018U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has suspended a free legal assistance program for detained immigrants who need basic advice as their cases wind their way through court. "Every day this program is not in operation puts family unity at risk, harms our communities, and infringes on the right of all people to make informed decisions about their legal claims," the Vera Institute said in a statement Wednesday. It said the program was cost-efficient and helped curb the record backlog of nearly 700,000 cases in the nation's immigration courts. They also called the program a "lifeline for many immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and green-card holders —some who are fighting for their lives — who would otherwise not know the rights they have or the odds they face."
Why More School Districts Are Holding Class Just Four Days a Week
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on April 19, 2018The public school in Campo, Colorado, hasn’t required all its students to come to class on Fridays for nearly two decades. The 44-student district dropped a weekday to boost attendance and better attract teachers to a town so deep in farm country that the nearest grocery store is more than 20 miles away. “I think the four-day week helped us, initially, in recruiting teachers,” the superintendent, Nikki Johnson, said. “Now that so many districts are on four-day, that’s not much of an incentive.” In Oklahoma, for instance, where teachers recently staged a walkout to demand more school funding, cash-strapped districts have been using four-day weeks to cope with a teacher shortage and state budget cuts. Last school year, 97 districts of 513 ran on the compressed schedule, nearly twice as many as the previous year. Shorter school weeks are generally popular among families, students and teachers, and many school districts say the change saves money and makes it easier to recruit teachers. But the research is inconclusive: Shorter school weeks save only a little, according to education policy researchers. The impact on staffing hasn’t been well studied, and results are mixed on whether cramming a week’s worth of learning into four days helps or hurts students’ learning. And the changes aren’t universally popular. Critics say four-day weeks hurt working families who have to scramble to find child care and could prevent children from accessing free or low-cost meals five days a week. A recent study found that juvenile crime rates were higher in parts of Colorado where schools didn’t meet on Fridays.
Rural Poverty & Well-being
USDA | Posted on April 18, 2018ERS research in this topic area focuses on the economic, social, spatial, temporal, and demographic factors that affect the poverty status of rural residents. Sections in this topic include the following: Poverty over time, including a historical look at metro/nonmetro poverty rates and deep poverty. The geography of poverty, including analysis of poverty in a regional context, maps of the incidence/severity of poverty, and the geographic persistence of poverty over decades. The demographics of poverty, including the breakdown of rural/urban poverty by race, family structure, and age. Background information and definitions (a note about data sources and how is poverty defined?).
Farm bill? Rural America doesn’t have the time.
The Food & Environment Reporting Network | Posted on April 17, 2018The farm bill was the missing topic during a 45-minute session recently with farmers in southwestern Missouri, recalls Sen. Roy Blunt. “The farm bill never came up.” Instead, growers talked about threats to farm exports, over-regulation and the need for rural broadband. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says low commodity prices, the slump in farm income, attacks on corn ethanol and, most of all, anxiety about a possible trade war are the top concerns in farm country. There is no additional money for major changes in grain and soybean subsidies in the farm bill. So the biggest change the farm bill can offer grain and soybean growers would be the chance to switch to the Price Loss Coverage program, which is constructed like traditional farm supports, from the insurance-like Agricultural Risk Coverage program. The PLC approach is more valuable during a period of low commodity prices. Glauber said the traditional urban-rural alliance for passage of a farm bill is fraying, too: “Farm program proponents may need urban/suburban votes to get a farm bill passed but I don’t think the same is true for SNAP [supporters] since their programs don’t sunset after five years. Particularly, there is little in it for urban/suburban voters if the bill contains poison pills” on SNAP.
The Agony of Rural America's Inescapable Broadband Gap
Pacific Standard | Posted on April 17, 2018Telecom giant T-Mobile received a sharp reminder on Monday from federal regulators: Its system still needs some work, and it can't just pretend otherwise.
The wake-up call came in the form of a $40 million settlement to address the Federal Communications Commission's claims the company used false ringtones to disguise issues of faulty calls. The use of phony ringtones, which "cause callers to believe that the phone is ringing at the called party's premises when it is not" per the FCC, was banned back in 2014, even though Reuters notes that T-Mobile had used the system since as far back as 2007.
But the settlement is also a reminder of the dismal digital divide that persists between rural and non-rural communities across America. Of the 11 percent of Americans who currently do not use the Internet, nearly a quarter (22 percent) are rural, according to March of 2018 from the Pew Research Center; another fifth (19 percent) have an annual income below $30,000, a significant barrier to access.
T-Mobile fined $40 million for faking ringtones and failing calls in rural areas
BGR Media | Posted on April 17, 2018T-Mobile will pay the US Treasury $40 million to settle a dispute with the FCC over failed calls and faked ringtones for rural areas. The FCC annouced the fine, following a years-long investigation into actions that took place starting in 2016. The complaint broadly concerns how T-Mobile treats rural calls, specifically problems T-Mobile has with connecting calls to rural areas and the length of time taken to establish a call. The most significant problem appears to be that T-Mobile injected fake ringtones onto the line before the phone on the other end of the line started ringing, something that helps mask how long T-Mobile was taking to connect calls, but is also against FCC rules. “The investigation also revealed T-Mobile’s practice of injecting false ring tones into certain calls. T-Mobile reported that it had done so on hundreds of millions of calls and admitted that its actions violated the Commission’s prohibition of injecting false ring tones on any calls.”
How a rural electric co-op connected a community
High Country News | Posted on April 16, 2018Molly Byrnes, 34, and Jesse Hofmann-Smith, 35, can’t reliably make phone calls on their cellular network from their cozy apartment on the outskirts of Taos, New Mexico, but they can host real-time webinars and build websites online for clients across the country. Their casita is one of about 6,300 homes and businesses in northern New Mexico connected to a high-speed fiber-optic internet network run by an unlikely source: the local electric cooperative. An increasing number of rural electric cooperatives in the U.S. are launching locally run fiber-optic internet networks, a model researchers cite as a way to bring New York City-speed internet to rural areas ignored by major telecommunications companies who can’t make enough return on investment. Of the roughly 900 electric cooperatives in the U.S., 60 offer fiber-optic internet access. Kit Carson Electric Cooperative in Taos, since 1944 the sole electric provider in much of northern New Mexico, was one of the first. It took 10 years and three tries at federal funding to reach where Kit Carson is today: nearly 3,000 miles of fiber-optic cables entrenched underground, strung along mountainous highways and dangling over an 800-foot-deep river gorge, reaching 6,300 customers to date with a waitlist of 12,000 more.
Opioid misuse in rural Iowa
Wallace's Farmer | Posted on April 13, 2018The opioid crisis has hit rural America especially hard where workers tend to have higher injury rates with many jobs requiring physical labor and involving more risk. A December survey by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that as many as 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid crisis. The opioid crisis has hit rural America especially hard where workers tend to have higher injury rates with many jobs requiring physical labor and involving more risk. A December survey by the National Farmers Union and the American Farm Bureau Federation found that as many as 74% of farmers have been directly impacted by the opioid crisis.According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, opioids were a contributing factor to 59 deaths in Iowa in 2005 and 608 admissions for opioid treatment across the state. In 2016, the figures jumped to 180 opioid-related deaths and 2,274 treatment admissions.
How Ponce's law will help protect Florida pets
https://www.clickorlando.com/news/politics/how-ponces-law-will-help-protect-florida-pets | Posted on April 12, 2018Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill into law that will help prevent animal-abuse offenders from owning pets. Ponce’s Law is named after Ponce, a Labrador retriever puppy found beaten to death in Ponce Inlet last year. The puppy’s owner, Travis Archer, is awaiting trial on felony animal cruelty charges. What the animal-cruelty law does do is allow judges to bar offenders from owning a pet for a court-ordered period of time.The law also increases the chances of offenders receiving a sentencing that includes jail time. Ponce’s Law increased the severity ranking of an animal abuse-related crime. For example; before Ponce’s Law, an offender would have scored a Level 3 offense, which carries 16 points. After the law that same offense is a Level 5, with 28 points, meaning if a person is convicted on an animal cruelty charge they are more likely to do jail time.