Things to read this week

 Here are some tabs I have open that I'd recommend reading: 

• When we do facilities in the college class I teach, one thing my students most often remark on is the disparities among play space outdoors: who has a playground? who has access to grass?
  UC Davis is doing some interesting work measuring heat in school playyards, which particularly an issue for urban schools, where often the only play space is a patch of asphalt, and in a warming world. 
  
  
• You may have caught headlines about Alpha Schools, the chain that claims kids can spend just two hours a day with their generative AI "tutoring" overseen by adults who are not teachers. I urge you to read Wired's extensive piece on the actual experience of families, who are now pulling their kids out due to how their children were treated. This particularly matters as the chain is expanding across the country, funded in many places by vouchers.
  
  
• Reports this morning that Louisiana officials hid the whooping cough outbreak for months that killed two infants combined with this ProPublica piece reporting from Idaho, which now bans vaccine mandates, and where advocates hope to spread such laws, continues the trend towards what were preventable illnesses that kill, and particularly kill children, coming back full force. 
  It also increases the urgency of Massachusetts following Connecticut, New York, and Maine in barring religious exemptions.

I really like this red shed and tree across from
one of the elementary schools in East Longmeadow