NEW MEXICO
State to offer free meals for all college students
ALBUQUERQUE — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on March 27 signed laws to offer free faculty meals to all college students no matter household revenue, as New Mexico and a number of other different states look to fill the hole left by lapsed federal pandemic-era profit packages and deal with the pressure to household budgets brought on by meals costs.
The invoice cleared the Legislature in the course of the current 60-day session, with lawmakers setting apart greater than $22 million within the state funds to assist pay for this system. Extra cash will likely be used to enhance faculty kitchens so more healthy meals might be ready.
About 67% — or 309,000 New Mexico college students — are eligible to obtain free and reduced-price lunches by way of the Nationwide College Lunch Program, based on the New Mexico Public Schooling Division.
Signing of the laws may impression practically 70,000 college students who usually would have needed to pay for college meals, with division officers anticipating a 5% to 10% improve in participation in districts that function nationwide faculty lunch packages.
Legislative analysts have estimated that offering meals at no prices to college students at taking part colleges may whole between $27 million and $40 million in recurring funding from the state’s normal fund.
The brand new regulation goals to spice up the quantity of meals that comes from native growers by way of farm-to-table grants. At present, about 168 farmers, ranchers and meals companies promote regionally produced merchandise to varsities in 19 of the state’s 33 counties.
Supporters additionally hope the brand new regulation will result in much less meals waste by requiring kindergarten by way of sixth grade college students to have extra time to take a seat down and eat, and by gathering unused meals to be used by meals pantries, college students and different charitable organizations.
Police company returns to village after 3 years
QUESTA — Residents of a small northern New Mexico neighborhood will quickly see cops patrolling the streets in automobiles marked with the village’s identify for the primary time in three years.
The Questa Police Division is scheduled to reopen April 1 with 4 cops led by the village’s new police chief, Ronald Montez Jr. The Taos Information was the primary to report the police division’s anticipated return.
Residence to about 1,700 residents, Questa is a few 30-minute drive north of the favored vacationer vacation spot of Taos and serves because the gateway for the Rio Grande del Norte Nationwide Monument.
Questa has been with out a police division since 2020, when then-police Chief Nicolas Lamendola and all three of the village’s officers resigned for still-unknown causes.
To fill the hole, the Taos County Sheriff’s Workplace has been offering police providers to the village underneath a contract that ends subsequent month. Residents have stated sheriff’s deputies had been generally sluggish to reply.
Questa Mayor John Anthony Ortega started rebuilding the village’s police pressure quickly after he was sworn in final April, fulfilling a promise he had made on the marketing campaign path.
UTAH
Social media regulation means children want approval from mother and father
SALT LAKE CITY — Kids and teenagers in Utah would lose entry to social media apps similar to TikTok if they do not have parental consent and face different restrictions underneath a first-in-the-nation regulation designed to defend younger individuals from the addictive platforms.
Two legal guidelines signed by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox on March 23 prohibit children underneath 18 from utilizing social media between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., require age verification for anybody who desires to make use of social media within the state and open the door to lawsuits on behalf of youngsters claiming social media harmed them. Collectively, they search to stop kids from being lured to apps by addictive options and from having advertisements promoted to them.
The businesses are anticipated to sue earlier than the legal guidelines take impact in March 2024.
The campaign in opposition to social media in Utah’s Republican-supermajority Legislature is the most recent reflection of how politicians’ perceptions of know-how firms has modified, together with amongst usually pro-business Republicans.
The brand new legal guidelines additionally require that oldsters be given entry to their kid’s accounts. They define guidelines for individuals who need to sue over harms they declare the apps trigger. If carried out, lawsuits in opposition to social media firms involving children underneath 16 will shift the burden of proof and require social media firms present their merchandise weren’t dangerous — not the opposite manner round.
Social media firms may should design new options to adjust to elements of the legal guidelines that prohibit selling advertisements to minors and exhibiting them in search outcomes. Tech firms like TikTok, Snapchat and Meta, which owns Fb and Instagram, make most of their cash by concentrating on promoting to their customers.
Tech trade lobbyists decried the legal guidelines as unconstitutional, saying they infringe on individuals’s proper to train the First Modification on-line.
WYOMING
State bans transgender youth from ladies’ sports activities groups
CHEYENNE — Wyoming has develop into the nineteenth state to ban transgender athletes from enjoying on ladies or ladies’s sports activities groups after the Republican governor opted to not veto the laws.
Gov. Mark Gordon allowed the invoice to develop into regulation with out his signature on March 17, saying he helps and agrees with the general aim of equity in aggressive feminine sports activities. However he additionally stated in a choice letter that the ban “is overly draconian, is discriminatory with out consideration to particular person circumstances or mitigating components, and pays little consideration to basic ideas of equality.”
The regulation, which takes impact July 1, will prohibit “college students of the male intercourse from competing on a group designated for college students of the feminine intercourse.” It is amongst dozens of Republican proposals pushing again in opposition to transgender rights in statehouses throughout the U.S., together with measures to ban gender-affirming take care of minors, limit drag exhibits, and forestall transgender individuals from utilizing restrooms, locker rooms and different services related to their gender identities.
Antonio Serrano, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, stated the most recent growth was shameful as a result of it codifies discrimination.
The ACLU assertion stated the brand new regulation is unconstitutional and violates the Civil Rights Act, however the group has not indicated if it plans to file a lawsuit. In the meantime, Sara Burlingame, director of Wyoming Equality, the state’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, informed the Casper Star-Tribune {that a} lawsuit is deliberate.
The regulation applies to public faculty college students in grades 7 by way of 12 who take part in interscholastic sports activities. Gordon famous in his choice letter that there are solely 4 identified transgender college students competing at school athletics within the state.
ARIZONA
New hotline sees few calls about race-based classes
PHOENIX — Solely a handful of complaints out of a whole lot of calls to a brand new state hotline for reporting race-based classes have warranted investigation, Arizona’s prime schooling official stated on March 17.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne informed radio station KTAR Information that the Arizona Division of Schooling discovered half a dozen complaints to be credible. The bulk have been prank calls, he stated, however vowed that received’t dissuade officers.
The Arizona Empower Hotline has been in operation since March 7. It was arrange particularly for allegations of academics educating so-called essential race principle or any classes that evoke race and ethnicity. State schooling officers say the hotline up to now has obtained 2,000 emails and 600 calls and voicemails.
There was a social media marketing campaign to flood the tip line with both prank calls or messages praising academics.
Many schooling teams have accused Horne of politicizing their jobs. A bunch of academics marched in protest to Horne’s workplace on March 15.
The Arizona Schooling Affiliation just lately went on Twitter and known as on Horne to remove the hotline.
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