School's Out for Summer!

Extreme heat in Minnesota caused the St. Paul schools to cancel classes for the remainder of the week, due to daytime temps in the low 90s with overnight temps only dropping to the 70s. Only about a third of the St. Paul's schools are air-conditioned.

The district announced the decision at about 2 p.m. Tuesday.

Carrie Peltier, a parent at Chelsea Heights Elementary, said her children learned of the decision just 15 to 20 minutes before day's end. No time for farewells, she said, nor the traditional schoolwide send-off to fifth-graders, including her daughter Anna. Students and teachers in all classrooms line up to applaud fifth-graders leaving Chelsea for the final time.

"This is just a swing and a miss for St. Paul Public Schools," Peltier said.

Schools spokesman Kevin Burns said, "We are very sorry that we are taking away those cherished opportunities and end-of-year rituals … But we have to continue to prioritize student safety and health."'

As always in newspapering today, the comments section expands the story, providing community feedback that gives readers a taste of how the story is being received.* Here, teacher's unions get blamed and compared to police unions.  

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* In years past, for example an enterprising city editor might have sent a general-assignment reporter out to cover how news of the Supreme Court's recent immigration ruling was being received in the community.  

Here in the Twin Cities, for example, I know that some on the TPS deportation list were awaiting the ruling, which might affect newcomers in our Somalian and El Salvadoran communities, amongst others.  Nowadays, if newspapers simply run wire stories reporting what the Court did and the expected effects, we can rely on  "commenters" (some reliable, some not, read at your own risk...) to localize the stories and report news that often is not cleared to appear even in local stories (ie/ victims' names and descriptions of car accidents before official reports come out;  on-the-scene updates with facts omitted from a lesser-updated story, etc.)

It also helps with the clam-up "No Snitchin'" policies that are transferring from the streets, the protected organizations like unions or heavily tenured campuses to the science laboratories and editors' meeting rooms at the papers left standing...  

"Connections" reporting today is heavily reliant on unnamed sources feeding reporters facts, but means often reporters can only print what their anonymous fact-gatherers will allow.  In many ways, the reporting has actually been outsourced, and a diverse crew of filters employed to put their bylines to what others are actually reporting -- and hopefully the bylined people are actually verifying. (?)  

Although America's First Amendment laws are strong in press protections, smaller publishers do not have the luxury of paying the lawyer bills -- or higher insurance policies -- that come in defending lawsuits.  A small-town publisher who got sued and settled on a case he would have won taught me that practicality (no, not my work being defended  It was a tale he told of a lawsuit from days past in the family business...)

I wonder how the Court's immigration decision is being received in America.  Will the immigrants... work harder, in a frenzy to convince others, and themselves perhaps, that their work really can win them legal admission which the Court denies, to accompany their legal status via the TPS program?  Will they rebel, and realize that after all these years -- of family building, assimilation, tax paying, and of course, working! -- the laws stand and they are not to become lawful American citizens despite time served here?

i don't think we will be able to do much sample population reporting, but I would like to read in the comments sections how the (mostly white) newspaper readers are receiving the news  It likely means higher prices on enforcement, and legal problems in enforcing the deportations pending if Congress does not act.