Delaware
Delaware schools to pilot cell phone pouches with new state funding
Southern Delaware high schools craft their own phone policies
With schools vary in their cultures and teaching approaches, schools in southern Delaware have approached phone policies differently particularly at the high school level where students are more mature and responsible for their decisions.
Brandywine High School and the Smyrna School District are among the latest schools to implement cell phone policies for the upcoming school year separate from the legislative pilot project.
At Sussex Central High School, there is no school-wide policy on phones, but a few classrooms have implemented their own rules.
“The teachers at my school, we have the autonomy to create our own cell phone policies,” said Jeff Gartman, who teaches media and technology. “The administration gives us that freedom to make our own decisions and they trust us to do what’s best for our classroom.”
A number of teachers at Sussex Central use phones as a tool to foster discussions or facilitate research among students. Yet, after 20 years of teaching, Gartman recognized the devices can also pose a distraction that needs to be addressed in his classroom.
“It piles up to lost time, lost engagement and getting kids being less productive and the whole environment being less effective,” he said. “Personally, I have been struggling with this for years, trying different ways of managing it and I was just not successful with really fighting off the distraction that the phones are to students when they have them in their possession.”
What works for him and other teachers in his building is eliminating cell phone access, a policy he started last spring. This decision prompted him to purchase a hanging storage organizer with little pouches. Each pouch is assigned to a student with their name for every period throughout the day.
“Students come into my room and there’s a pouch hanging on the wall with a bunch of individual pouches. They’ve got their name on one of them. They come in, they put the phone in there,” he described. “I’ve even got it rigged up so they can charge their phone while they are in class, about two minutes before the bell rings at the end of class I allow them to come get it.”
After two months of implementing the policy, despite initial concerns, he now feels accomplished and pleased with the positive feedback from parents and students. He has noticed a noticeable improvement in his students and the overall classroom environment.
“For the most part taking the distraction away just added to the whole environment and kids were more productive, less distracted, and got more done,” said Gartman.
State Sen. Paradee says the phone pouches test pilot may not be ready in time for this school year since the state Department of Education is just drafting its regulation. He says the goal is to have the funds available for schools by the middle of the school year.
He encourages parents, guardians and caregivers to give the test pilot a chance. “My message to all the parents, grandparents, caregivers: hang in there, give it a shot and we’ll work through this.”
Dewey Beach restaurants and bars on gloomy Memorial Day weekend
As they say at The Starboard, “When it rains, we pour.”
No, Taylor Swift was not in Dewey Beach this weekend.
However, there was a little truth to the rumors that pervaded social media.
Travis and Jason Kelce were invited to a wedding in Dewey this weekend, Starboard owner Steve “Monty” Montgomery said.
“The groom played football with them at Cincinnati and is close with those boys,” Montgomery said.
The Starboard is one of Dewey’s most iconic bars and restaurants and has offshoots across town, such as Starboard RAW and Starboard Sauced.
Montgomery said he did close Starboard RAW for the wedding party May 29, but the professional football-playing brothers and Travis Kelce’s ultra-famous fiancée, Taylor Swift, did not end up attending the wedding.
Reach Shannon Marvel McNaught at smcnaught@gannett.com or on Facebook.
MUNCIE, Ind. — Indiana State Police is investigating an officer-involved shooting that took place in Muncie early Sunday morning.
According to ISP, around 12:13 a.m., officers from multiple agencies were called to an event in the area of Bunch Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on reports of a person shot.
A Delaware County Sheriff’s Deputy arrived at the scene and approached on foot. While the deputy was walking, he made an encounter with a vehicle and discharged his sidearm at the vehicle.
The circumstances and reason behind why the deputy fired his weapon remain under investigation.
The gunfire struck the vehicle, but no one was injured during the course of the incident.
The ISP Criminal Investigations Division is investigating the deputy’s use of force. Once the investigation is complete, the findings will be used by the Delaware County Prosecutor’s Office for review.
The investigation remains active and ongoing; no additional information is available at the time of this article’s publication.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.
A new study released by the Delaware River Basin Commission says PFAS contamination remains widespread throughout the Delaware River Basin, raising continued concerns about drinking water, wildlife and long-term environmental health across Pennsylvania and neighboring states.
The report, released Wednesday, summarizes more than 20 years of research into PFAS — commonly known as “forever chemicals” because they break down extremely slowly in the environment.
The study is especially significant for Northeastern Pennsylvania because several counties either fully or partially fall within the Delaware River Basin, including Pike, Monroe, Wayne and parts of Carbon County, where many communities rely directly on Delaware Basin waterways for drinking water and recreation.
Other NEPA counties with portions connected to the basin include Lackawanna, Luzerne, Susquehanna and Wyoming counties.
Major waterways tied to the Delaware River Basin in Northeastern Pennsylvania include the Lehigh River, Lackawaxen River, Brodhead Creek, Tobyhanna Creek and portions of the Lackawanna River watershed, along with numerous streams throughout the Pocono region.
Researchers found PFAS contamination consistently present in surface water, sediment, fish and blue crab tissue samples collected at 21 locations throughout the basin.
Officials said contamination levels increased as the Delaware River moved downstream toward Delaware Bay, suggesting ongoing pollution sources such as industrial facilities, wastewater discharges and stormwater runoff.
“Safeguarding water for over 14 million people requires science-informed management actions,” DRBC Executive Director Kristen Bowman Kavanagh said in a statement.
PFAS are used in a wide range of products because they repel water and oil. They have been linked to a variety of health concerns and environmental risks.
The study identified different PFAS compounds in different sample types, highlighting what researchers described as the complexity of contamination throughout the river system.
“The Delaware River Basin is a global hotspot for PFAS pollution,” said DRBC Senior Chemist and Toxicologist Jeremy Conkle, who led the study.
The commission said continued monitoring will focus heavily on the tidal Delaware River and tributaries impacted by development and population density.
Officials also announced the launch of a new interactive online mapping tool that allows the public to explore PFAS contamination data across the Delaware River Basin, including local watersheds.
The tool combines information from federal and state agencies along with other organizations to provide a regional look at known contamination sites.
The DRBC will also host a public webinar on June 15 to review the study’s findings and demonstrate the new mapping application.
The Delaware River Basin provides water resources to more than 14 million people across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and New York.
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