How the Costly Digital Age is Leaving Behind PA’s Rural, Underfunded Schools

Pennsylvania’s rural school districts are struggling to provide students with reliable technology because chronic underfunding leaves them dependent on aging, refurbished laptops that frequently fail.

Students and educators report that outdated devices disrupt coursework, research projects, classroom activities, and even high-stakes online testing, creating barriers to academic success and college readiness.

The article explores how the growing reliance on technology in education is widening inequities between well-resourced and rural schools, raising concerns that students in underfunded communities may be less prepared for future educational and workforce opportunities. 

Click here to read the full article

Philadelphia Affordable Housing: Why PHA Units Cost $315K Each

The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) plans to spend $6.3 billion over eight years to preserve, redevelop, build, or acquire roughly 20,000 affordable housing units, resulting in an average cost of about $315,000 per unit.

These high costs are driven by several factors, including Philadelphia’s expensive construction market, federal regulations requiring prevailing wages for workers, limited federal funding, and the substantial rehabilitation needs of the authority’s aging housing stock.

PHA officials argue that the per-unit figure does not reflect excessive spending but rather the realities of maintaining and expanding deeply affordable housing in a city with significant housing needs and strict public-sector requirements.



Click here to read the full article

Philly Juggles Long-Term Climate Goals and Budget Plans 

Climate priorities were overshadowed during Philadelphia’s recent budget negotiations, as city leaders focus more heavily on urgent issues such as school funding despite increasingly severe climate-related events including extreme heat, flooding, and wildfire smoke affecting the city.

Environmental advocates sought greater investments in initiatives such as ending trash incineration, advancing electrification efforts, improving energy efficiency, and funding resilience projects, but the fiscal year 2027 budget included few major advances on these fronts.

While Philadelphia has reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 31 percent since 2006 and has made significant progress toward its sustainability goals, experts and policymakers warn that the city remains slightly off pace to meet its long-term emissions reduction targets because climate action continues to compete with other pressing political and budget priorities.



Click here to read the full article

Child Care Still Lags Despite Decades of Policy Change 

A recent study finds that despite 35 years of policy efforts, including higher minimum wages, expanded public pre-K programs, professionalization requirements, and pandemic relief funding, the economic status of childcare workers has improved little relative to other women workers.

The gap between childcare workers’ earnings and women’s earnings overall grew from about $20,000 annually in the early 1990s to roughly $28,000 by 2020-2025 (adjusted for inflation), even as the sector faced persistent challenges with low pay and high turnover.

Brookings Research explains how temporary pandemic-era investments offered a temporary solution, with wages returning to pre-pandemic levels and turnover rates rebounding, as well as the need for more fundamental changes to address workforce instability in childcare.

Click here to read the full article

LA County Tests a New Approach to Counting Homeless Youth

Los Angeles County replaced its traditional volunteer street count of homeless youth with a respondent-driven sampling method that pays young people experiencing homelessness to complete surveys and recruit peers from their social networks.

Officials and researchers say the approach provides a more accurate picture of youth homelessness because young people are often undercounted in traditional canvassing efforts and may be more successfully reached through peer referrals.

The new methodology identified 3,658 homeless youth in January 2026, including both unsheltered and sheltered young people, aiming to connect with hard-to-reach populations.

Click here to read the full article

AI is Being Used to Boost Medicaid Enrollment but Not Without Concerns

Kern Family Health Care in California is using an AI-powered assistant called Angelica, developed by Careforce, to help Medi-Cal members renew their coverage.

The technology is designed to support the increasing requirements for Medicaid enrollment, and schedules appointments, sends reminders, and provides multilingual support.

Reported benefits such as increased efficiency, lower administrative costs, and improved outreach to beneficiaries who might otherwise lose coverage due to paperwork barriers suggest AI may be used positively in medical settings, but also raises concerns about interactions with vulnerable populations, transparency, privacy, accountability, and the broader implications of replacing functions traditionally performed by human workers.



Click here to read the full article