TALAS E-newsletter – August 5

Roma ISD School Board approved stipend for employees that are fully vaccinated by Sept. 1, according to a press release.

The board approved a one-time $350 stipend for employees that receive whichever of the three vaccines available, Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson and Johnson.

“Although vaccination is always a choice, we want to encourage employees who can be vaccinated against COVID-19 to be vaccinated,” said Roma ISD Superintendent Carlos Guzman.

Among the 100 or so people taking part on Day 1 of a Texas voting rights march styled after the Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights marches in Alabama was an 80-year-old Tejano music superstar better known by his stage name, Little Joe.

Little Joe, whose full name is José María de León Hernández, has pushed for equality for much of his more than six decades in entertainment. He has joined protests for farmworkers and was active in civil rights protests of the Chicano Movement.

Jessi Silva remembers going to the grocery store in Marfa, Texas, as a child, tagging along while her mother went to get a shopping cart. But there was a problem.

“A white lady was gonna take the cart,” Jessi, now 72, said. “My mother was there first. The Anglo lady gave my mother a dirty look. My mother let her have the grocery cart. And I thought to myself, why is she doing that?”

How are you feeling about your career right now? According to a the Gallup 2021 Global Emotions report, 2020 was officially the most stressful year on record. If you want to create a new experience in 2021, maybe the time is right for you to move up in your career. However, getting promoted isn’t only about having a positive attitude or doing a great job. Lots of folks are conscientious and dedicated – so what makes you stand out above the rest? Being smart about landing a promotion means internalizing how advancement really works. While every company is different, your next promotion happens inside of a context. Understanding that context, plus being great at your job, can help position your career for success.

On Nov. 28, 2020, the COVID-19 infection rate in Washoe County, Nevada, crested at 113 new cases per 100,000 residents. What that grim statistic meant to residents of Reno, Tahoe and the county’s other small cities depended greatly on their socioeconomic status. 

Employment on that day, for instance, was down 1 percent over January 2020 — low, but also deceptive. Employment among middle-income workers, those making $27,000 to $60,000 a year, was flat.

When the pandemic first struck, many child well-being advocates worried that the massive shift to remote school would spur an uptick in a troubling behavior: online bullying.

According to new research from Boston University, however, virtual learning may have had precisely the opposite effect.

During online school, “there’s no increase in cyberbullying, and in fact, there appears to be a decrease,” co-author Andrew Bacher-Hicks told The 74.

The timing couldn’t be worse: Just as schools reopen, a super-contagious COVID-19 variant, Delta, is infecting people nationwide at alarming rates. Unvaccinated people are particularly vulnerable, but even the inoculated can fall victim to this aggressive new strain.

It’s particularly important right now to use all the mitigation strategies you can to protect students and staff. But protecting them isn’t just about what you do; it’s about how you think. Here are four key things to consider.

Pareen Mhatre, 21, is set to graduate sometime next year. A biomedical engineering major at the University of Iowa, she’s hoping her degree will lead to a career developing medical devices, particularly for rural populations.

“Before the pandemic, I was actually a volunteer there, and I was able to witness the top-tier care that the hospital staff provided to the patients along with the technology that is used,” she says. “I want to be able to help these populations get the medical care that they deserve.”

When Jaylyn Suppah was a high school student, she had a lot of questions for her civics teacher.

Why were their lessons on Native Americans about tribes from the Midwest, with no mention of regional tribes like hers, the Warm Springs, Wasco, Shoshone-Bannock, and Yakama? Why did the textbook only spend a few pages on their history? And why were critical topics, like the forced assimilation of Native American children at U.S. boarding schools, missing?