Restoration vs. New Construction: How to Make the Right Decision

Restoration or new construction? That is a dilemma that educational leaders, particularly superintendents and school business officials, have had to wrestle with for years. In the past, state regulations often dictated whether school buildings should be renovated or torn down to make way for new construction. State reimbursement guidelines favored new construction over restoration for public school development by either withholding funds or denying the full state support for restoration projects. In fact, some states established complex formulas that mandated new construction if the cost of restoration exceeded approximately two-thirds of the new construction costs. Reversing the mindset among many educators and legislators that new construction is always the best option for districts has not been an easy sell for designers, preservationists, and school architects. However, restoration of school properties has been on the rise in recent years, fueled by citizens’ interest in maintaining community landmarks, by districts’ recognition of the importance of preserving existing schools as important community institutions, and by demonstrating that the restoration of aging buildings can be a cost-effective way to preserve history and create safe and exciting educational facilities

School Vouchers: Blessing or Curse for Catholic High Schools?

The voucher debate has thus far focused almost exclusively on elementary schools. Since Catholic and private high schools tend to be more expensive to operate than elementary schools, this article hypothesizes about the potential future impact of voucher programs on Catholic high schools

\u27Divertual\u27 Learning in Education Leadership: Implications of Teaching Cultural Diversity Online vs. Face to Face

What are the consequences of this teaching-learning situation when graduate students in a Department of Educational Leadership are enrolled in a course on cultural diversity? Might the words on the computer screen be completely unrelated to the humanity, personality, style, interpersonal behaviors, and dispositions of the student writing them, as Menand suggests? Or, might the detachment provide a security in which the most honest and unadulterated discourse can be shared between teacher and students, as some proponents hope? In this chapter we explore responses to this dilemma. We attempt to capture this situation in our label: divertual learning, a neologism coupling diversity with the virtual reality of the learning situation

School Vouchers: Blessing or Curse for Catholic High Schools?

The voucher debate has thus far focused almost exclusively on elementary schools. Since Catholic and private high schools tend to be more expensive to operate than elementary schools, this article hypothesizes about the potential future impact of voucher programs on Catholic high schools

School Vouchers: Blessing or Curse for Catholic High Schools?

The voucher debate has thus far focused almost exclusively on elementary schools. Since Catholic and private high schools tend to be more expensive to operate than elementary schools, this article hypothesizes about the potential future impact of voucher programs on Catholic high schools

Effective Policy Formation: A New Challenge

School business officials (SBOs) must, in many respects, serve as all things to all people in their workplaces. Put another way, SBOs must be knowledgeable about a wide range of legal issues ranging from contracts to setting policy to state biding laws let alone constitutional matters involving the rights of students and teachers. Aware of the fact that issues involving the law are at the heart of many of a SBO’s duties, the chapters in this edited book have been written by a diverse array of individuals with experience as educational leaders in schools and/ or who possess significant expertise in the school law. In light of the need to keep SBOs up-to-date on many issues in the ever changing world of Education Law, this volume is divided into two parts. The first section deals with issues that primarily impact on the management of schools while the second deals with the rights of students and teachers. More specifically, each of the chapters is designed to examine a specific area about which SBOs need information. While no single book can ever hope to cover all of the myriad of legal topics that SBOs and other educational leaders must master in their professional lives, this book will serve as an up-to-date and ready source of information to help keep them abreast of the many changes in the ever evolving area of school law

Lousy and lovely jobs: the rising polarization of work in Britain

This paper argues that skill-biased technical change has some deficiencies as a hypothesis about the impact of technology on the labor market and that a more nuanced view recently proposed by Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) is a more accurate description. The difference between the two hypotheses is in the prediction about what is happening to employment in low-wage jobs. This paper presents evidence that employment in the UK is polarizing into lovely and lousy jobs and that a plausible explanation for this is the Autor, Levy and Murnane hypothesis

Influenza transmission dynamics quantified from RNA in wastewater in Switzerland

INTRODUCTION: Influenza infections are challenging to monitor at the population level due to many mild and asymptomatic cases and similar symptoms to other common circulating respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. Methods for tracking cases outside of typical reporting infrastructure could improve monitoring of influenza transmission dynamics. Influenza shedding into wastewater represents a promising source of information where quantification is unbiased by testing or treatment-seeking behaviours. METHODS: We quantified influenza A and B virus loads from influent at Switzerland’s three largest wastewater treatment plants, serving about 14% of the Swiss population (1.2 million individuals). We estimated trends in infection incidence and the effective reproductive number (Re) in these catchments during a 2021/22 epidemic and compared our estimates to typical influenza surveillance data. RESULTS: Wastewater data captured the same overall trends in infection incidence as laboratory-confirmed case data at the catchment level. However, the wastewater data were more sensitive in capturing a transient peak in incidence in December 2021 than the case data. The Re estimated from the wastewater data was roughly at or below the epidemic threshold of 1 during work-from-home measures in December 2021 but increased to at or above the epidemic threshold in two of the three catchments after the relaxation of these measures. The third catchment yielded qualitatively the same results but with wider confidence intervals. The confirmed case data at the catchment level yielded comparatively less precise R_e estimates before and during the work-from-home period, with confidence intervals that included one before and during the work-from-home period. DISCUSSION: Overall, we show that influenza RNA in wastewater can help monitor nationwide influenza transmission dynamics. Based on this research, we developed an online dashboard for ongoing wastewater-based influenza surveillance in Switzerland.ISSN:1424-7860ISSN:1424-399