HOMELESSNESS | Mary Otto, editor of Street Sense, reflects on the sad trend of homeless individuals’ lives being cut short by disease, addiction, and violence. (Street Sense, 1/11)
EDUCATION | According to Education Week’s annual survey, Maryland public schools are the best in the nation – a ranking held now for four consecutive years. Virginia isn’t far behind with fourth place, but D.C. is scraping the bottom at number 49. (WaPo, 1/12)
WORKFORCE | The DC Fiscal Policy Institute has created a resource map that locates workforce development services in the District. Here’s a blog post that explores the map. (CFNCR, 1/11)
LOCAL | The Post takes a deeper look at how Harry Thomas took money from the city. In particular, the article details how $110,000 was directed away from the D.C. Children and Youth Investement Trust Corporation by its former executive director – from a city fund for drug prevention and at-risk children – to fund an inaugural ball.
Amid the fallout, current Trust executive director Ellen London remains focused on the thousands of District youth that the organization serves. “It is more important than ever that this work continue,” she said. (WaPo, 1/12)
WWW… | Get ready for a digital identity crisis. Due to concerns over the ease of securing a .org domain name – which frequently leads to fraud – oversight groups are pushing for nonprofits to adopt a new and more secure suffix - .ngo – instead. The change would have a lot of consequences though. (Chronicle, 1/12)
ARTS | Thanks to the Cafritz Foundation’s Michael Bigley for pointing out this article that runs some numbers to answer the question, How Good Is D.C. to Artists, Musicians, and Writers? (Atlantic, 1/3)
NONPROFITS | Budget Cut Could Curtail Oversight of National-Service Programs (Chronicle, 1/12)
TRANSIT
- A WTOP investigation has uncovered hundreds of dashboard camera videos from Metro buses that show reckless driving, accidents, and even pedestrians being hit. (WTOP, 1/11) And also, remember how great this movie was?
- D.C.’s streetcar program has hit another snag. (WBJ, 1/12) Ancient proverb: Don’t lay down streetcar tracks until you actually have streetcars, a power supply, a turnaround point, and the money to pay for everything.
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In case you have a good chunk of free time to ponder ethical questions, here’s one for the digital age courtesy of The Atlantic: How much does file sharing resemble stealing – and does it matter?
