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Denver schools swell with more than 2,000 new migrant students as district scrambles to meet kids’ needs

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

Nadia Madan-Morrow found herself in a bind Tuesday morning. She was short 11 teachers.Some accompanied fifth-graders on an overnight trip into the mountains, while others called out sick because they had COVID-19 — a sign that three years after the pandemic began, both the virus and the statewide shortage of substitute teachers continue to plague schools.But the principal of Denver’s Place Bridge Academy wasn’t just scrambling to staff classrooms last week. She faced another problem: The lunch period for seventh- and eighth-graders has swelled to more than 200 students — too many to supervise all at once — after an unprecedented number of migrant children enrolled in Place Bridge since the start of the school year.“This influx of kiddos is happening on top of all of the other challenges schools are facing after the pandemic,” Madan-Morrow said.Her school, which serves preschoolers through middle schoolers in southeast Denver, is on the frontline of the city&#...

Tensions flare in Denver neighborhoods with migrant shelters, but residents also find ways to help

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

A recently shuttered migrant shelter in a former school building heightened tensions in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood for months.An Nguyen said that, after the facility opened late last year, “there wasn’t any trouble” — at least, not initially. The owner of Savory Vietnam Restaurant in a plaza across the street, off West Alameda Avenue, empathized with the people staying there, most of them arrivals from Venezuela. Her parents immigrated to the United States as Vietnamese refugees, so Nguyen understood the feeling of coming to a new country with few possessions.But as spring turned into summer, Nguyen noticed more people gravitating from the shelter to the business plaza’s parking lot. Then, she found human feces on the side of her building, and tents popped up nearby. Her customers asked questions about the people loitering outside.Walking to her car at night, Nguyen said, “I did not feel safe.” The disruptions strained the Athma...

Denver-based Scholars Unlimited uses fun to boost kids’ literacy

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

When the most experienced flag football players in the game are in second grade, enthusiasm far outweighs skill.One player went the wrong way, nearly scoring a touchdown for the other team. Another was skipping far from the main fray. There was an injury timeout when a boy tripped over his untied shoelaces.The Denver Post Season To Share is the annual holiday fundraising campaign for The Denver Post and The Denver Post Community Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Grants are awarded to local nonprofit agencies that provide life-changing programs to help low-income children, families and individuals move out of poverty toward stabilization and self-sufficiency. Visit seasontoshare.com for more information.It doesn’t look much like literacy instruction, but it’s a vital part of Scholars Unlimited’s approach to bringing kids who are struggling with reading up to grade level, said Jennie Merrigan, the program’s senior director of programs and learning, as s...

Submit your own name idea for San Jose’s BART extension tunneling machine

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

It’s not every day that you get to suggest a name for a ginormous mechanical worm beneath your feet that’s creating the largest single-bore tunnel in the world.Now, here’s your chance.Until Nov. 26, The Mercury News is accepting submissions to name San Jose’s BART extension tunneling boring machine, or TBM, which will be carving out a 4.6-mile subterranean pathway below the city and creating a ring of transit around the Bay Area. Cities across the country undergoing similar infrastructure projects have historically named their TBMs after women of local significance. In 2012, Seattle named its device “Bertha” after their first female mayor, Bertha Knight Landes.Valley Transportation Authority purchased the custom-made, $76 million machine from Germany last week, and it is set to arrive in the South Bay in pieces before being assembled. Work is expected to start between the San Jose airport and Santa Clara University in 2025.What should Silicon Vall...

Wish Book holiday campaign celebrates 40 years of helping our neighbors

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

When Mercury News readers opened their newspapers on Sunday, Dec. 4, 1983, they were greeted with something beyond the big news of the day — a special section called Holiday Wish Book.Though it was designed like an upscale department store catalog, it didn’t showcase popular gifts like the new VCR or Ewok plush toy of the time. Instead, the inside pages were filled with touching stories about people in the valley who needed help and offered readers a way to make a difference.“This Wish Book is an unusual thing for a newspaper to publish,” then-Publisher Tony Ridder wrote in an introductory letter, “but these times demand that we all do what we can to alleviate suffering and to encourage those who are working in the front lines on the problems of the helpless, the hungry, the lonely and forgotten.”So much has changed in the valley over the past 40 years, but that suffering still lingers — and in some ways has become even more dire, as many struggle to re...

How a Stanford professor aims to organize the hunt for alien life

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

On a cold December night in 1977 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, a mysterious hovering object was reported to be flying overhead. Then a luminous hot molten rock fell to earth.What was it? Where did it come from? No one knows.But Stanford University immunologist Garry Nolan suggests one possible theory: It was a discarded part of a UAP, or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” the formal government name for objects previously called UFOs.Undaunted by the risk of professional stigma, the biotech entrepreneur is urging the creation of a “Stardust Repository,” where this and other pieces of mysterious materials of unknown origin would be stored for analysis.At a first-of-its-kind symposium on Friday and Saturday, hosted by Stanford, Nolan unveiled plans to bring scientific rigor to a realm that has long been home to kooks and wackos.“We’re here to professionalize and normalize this,” Nolan told a standing-room-only crowd of physicists, data scientists, tech entrepreneurs and others, representing s...

DP World Tour Championship Scores

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

SundayAt Earth CourseDubai, United Arab EmiratesPurse: $10 millionYardage: 7,706; Par: 72Final RoundNicolai Hojgaard, Denmark (2000), $2,764,46167-66-70-64—267Tommy Fleetwood, England (896), $838,55369-66-66-68—269Viktor Hovland, Norway (896), $838,55369-66-66-68—269Matt Wallace, England (896), $838,55372-68-60-69—269Thriston Lawrence, South Africa (429), $313,30671-64-70-66—271Matthieu Pavon, France (429), $313,30667-69-68-67—271Jon Rahm, Spain (429), $313,30672-66-67-66—271Victor Perez, France (300), $221,15773-69-64-66—272Ewen Ferguson, Scotland (254), $184,29772-67-64-70—273Jeff Winther, Denmark (254), $184,29772-66-64-71—273Tyrrell Hatton, England (201), $140,98870-67-72-65—274Rasmus Hojgaard, Denmark (201), $140,98874-66-65-69—274Romain Langasque, France (201), $140,98871-68-68-67—274Antoine Rozner, France (201), $140,98868-67-70-69—274Tom Kim, South Korea (173), $108,50569-71-68-67—275Min Woo Lee, Australia (173), $108,50571-70-65-69—275Dan Bradbury, England (162), $101,36470...

Zaïre-Emery set to miss PSG’s last 2 group games in Champions League with ankle injury

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

PARIS (AP) — Teenage midfielder Warren Zaïre-Emery looks set to miss Paris Saint-Germain’s last two group games in the Champions League with a right ankle injury.The 17-year-old Zaïre-Emery sustained the injury when he became France’s youngest goal scorer on his international debut, in a record 14-0 rout of Gibraltar in European Championship qualifying on Saturday. A defender trod on his ankle as he was shooting into the top corner.Coach Didier Deschamps said that tests showed no fracture but that Zaïre-Emery will need time to recover.“It’s still a significant injury that will certainly take several weeks (to heal),” Deschamps told French television show Téléfoot on Sunday. “You never want to lose players in matches like this. It could have been more serious.”PSG has lost two of its four Champions League games in Group F and is in second place, one point behind leader Borussia Dortmund and one ahead of AC Milan in third. PSG hosts Newcastle at Parc des Princes on Nov. 28...

DP World Tour Championship Par Scores

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

SundayAt Earth CourseDubai, United Arab EmiratesPurse: $10 millionYardage: 7,706; Par: 72Final RoundNicolai Hojgaard, Denmark (2000), $2,764,46167-66-70-64—267-21Tommy Fleetwood, England (896), $838,55369-66-66-68—269-19Viktor Hovland, Norway (896), $838,55369-66-66-68—269-19Matt Wallace, England (896), $838,55372-68-60-69—269-19Thriston Lawrence, South Africa (429), $313,30671-64-70-66—271-17Matthieu Pavon, France (429), $313,30667-69-68-67—271-17Jon Rahm, Spain (429), $313,30672-66-67-66—271-17Victor Perez, France (300), $221,15773-69-64-66—272-16Ewen Ferguson, Scotland (254), $184,29772-67-64-70—273-15Jeff Winther, Denmark (254), $184,29772-66-64-71—273-15Tyrrell Hatton, England (201), $140,98870-67-72-65—274-14Rasmus Hojgaard, Denmark (201), $140,98874-66-65-69—274-14Romain Langasque, France (201), $140,98871-68-68-67—274-14Antoine Rozner, France (201), $140,98868-67-70-69—274-14Tom Kim, South Korea (173), $108,50569-71-68-67—275-13Min Woo Lee, Australia (173), $108,50571-70-65-...

Health workers evacuate 31 ‘very sick’ babies from Gaza’s largest hospital

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 09:00:31 GMT

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Thirty-one premature babies were safely transferred from Gaza’s main hospital to another in the south on Sunday, and will be moved to Egypt, health officials said, as scores of other critically wounded patients remained stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound.The fate of the newborns at Shifa Hospital had captured global attention after the release of images showing doctors trying to keep them warm. A power blackout had shut down incubators and other equipment, and food, water and medical supplies ran out as Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants outside the hospital.World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media that the “very sick” babies were evacuated, along with six health workers and 10 staff family members. He said they were taken to a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Rafah where they are receiving urgent care.A WHO team that visited the hospital on Saturday said 291 p...