Our weekly Top Five feature offers big stories or views from the past week with policy and legislative implications.
1. Supreme Court to continue oversight on education reform, The Post and Courier, Sept. 21, 2016
From a Tuesday order by the S.C. Supreme Court involving a 23-year-old education funding reform lawsuit brought by poor school districts:
“We commend the defendants on their efforts and await, with anticipation, reports on further implementation of the findings and recommendations. On that note, we opt to continue to monitor the progress towards a constitutionally compliant education system.”
2. State’s new grading scale could cost $50 million a year, The State, Sept. 21, 2016
“About 6,000 more S.C. high school students could be eligible for S.C. lottery scholarships because the state recently moved to a 10-point grading scale. Eventually, that could cost S.C. taxpayers up to $50 million a year.”
3. State agency’s rule against recording meetings might not survive courts, The Greenville News, Sept. 21, 2016
“State Attorney General Alan Wilson’s office believes a court would be reluctant to uphold a recent rule by the state Department of Disabilities and Special Needs Commission forbidding commissioners from tape recording public meetings, according to an opinion by the office issued last week.”
4. How to make hydrogen from sewage sludge to power cars, Taylor Wofford in Quartz, Sept. 20, 2016
“Using wastewater is arguably the greenest way to make hydrogen, especially for big cities, where there are a lot of people who produce a lot of sewage, and most of that sewage, after it’s been treated, is discarded. In the case of sewage sludge, it’s usually dumped in landfills, and in the case of biogas it’s most often burnt. In other words, there’s no downside to using it to produce hydrogen instead.”
5. Five ways to make U.S. elections less hackable, Patrick Tucker in Defense One, Sept. 1, 2016
One expert offers five ways to make electronic voting machines more secure, including changing laws to allow researchers to probe voting machine software:
“To protect against bugs or vulnerabilities researchers need to be able to investigate the machines for design flaws in code, but that means researchers poking around in code that is deemed proprietary under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. “
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