As part of our #DemDebate watch party Thursday night at the Red Carpet in Charleston, we wanted to offer a fun, interactive and digitally-driven component.
Thanks to some great code from John Keefe and the Data News Team at WNYC, West Virginia Public Broadcasting is offering the chance for those at the event (and others at home) to engage with us during the debate.
Simply follow along with the debate and fill in your card as the event goes on. Touch (or click) the space to “cover” it and yell “BINGO!” via Twitter when you’ve got five spaces in a row.
Watch the debate beginning at 8:30 on WVPB, or you can stream it here.
If you’re experiencing issues viewing your BINGO card via mobile, click here to launch the card in a new window.
PBS NewsHour will produce the first Democratic presidential candidates debate (following the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary) on Thursday, February 11. Watch it along with West Virginia Public Broadcasting at our #DemDebate Watch Party!
Join the West Virginia Public Broadcasting news team on Thursday, February 11 at the Red Carpet Lounge (308 Elizabeth Street in Charleston) as we watch PBS NewsHour co-anchors and managing editors Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff moderate the PBS NewsHour Democratic Primary Debate.
Although the #DemDebate begins at 9:00pm, drop by the Red Carpet Lounge at 8:30pm for a pre-debate conversation hosted by The Legislature Today‘s Ashton Marra that includes State Democrat Belinda Biafore, State Republican Conrad Lucas, Senator Chris Walters and Delegate Sean Hornbuckle.
The event is free and open to the public. More information at Facebook.com/wvpublic.
Can’t make it to the Watch Party? Watch the debate starting at 9:00 p.m. on WVPB television or online and tweet along with our Watch Party by tagging @wvpublic and @NewsHour.
Members of the Richwood High School Student Reporting Lab have won first and second prizes in the WVU Reed College of Media high school journalism competition.
Richwood High School is one of the PBS NewsHour Student Reporting Labs, which are classrooms, after-school programs and clubs around the country producing original, inspiring reports about how national and global issues affect local communities.
Chuck Frostick, video production supervisor for West Virginia Public Broadcasting, serves as the class’s mentor from the video production world. Frostick assisted the class by recording interviews in Charleston of students who were directly affected by the chemical spill in the Kanawha Valley.
The student advisor is Susan Johnson. Payton Kiszka, Trey Burwell, Dakota Lawson and Kendra Lipps received trophies for their student-produced stories. Not pictured are Chelsie Hagy, Emily Bennett and Tristan Legg.
The first place winner was a story about the one year anniversary of the chemical spill in Charleston. It was filmed by Tristan Legg, Kendra Lipps, Emily Bennett, Chelsie Hagy and Dakota Lawson and written and edited by Kendra Lipps and Trey Burwell.
The second place story was about the revival of the music department at Richwood High School. It was produced exclusively by junior Payton Kiszka.
The chemical spill story was produced in conjunction with WVU Reed College of Media and the West Virginia Broadcasters Association.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s often said it takes a village to raise a child, but in remote rural parts of the country, that may be easier said than done.
We have the second report from special correspondent for education John Tulenko of Learning Matters, who has been looking at the challenges in one West Virginia community.
JOHN TULENKO: Home for Jamie Mathis is in the steep hills of rural West Virginia.
JAMIE MATHIS: Hi, Sam. It’s about time to get your shoes on and your shirt.
JOHN TULENKO: Ms. Mathis, a grandmother, is raising both her grandsons here.
JAMIE MATHIS: This wasn’t what I had in mind for me when I was this age, not raising grandchildren.
But you’re getting it on your shirt, son. Look.
I have had Devon, who is 11, since he was 2 weeks old, off and on.
I told you.
Sam, I have had him since he was born, off and on.
JOHN TULENKO: This situation, grandparents raising grandchildren, is not unusual where they live. In McDowell County, West Virginia, schools estimate up to 45 percent of children are living apart from their mothers and fathers.
JAMIE MATHIS: I will be there after school.
JOHN TULENKO: Families are splintering, as the community itself unravels. McDowell County is the poorest in West Virginia, the result of a decades-long decline.
This is coal country, with mines that once employed some 20,000 workers and a prosperous county seat they called Little New York. All that’s gone. Unemployment rates here are among the highest in the state, and McDowell County ranks first in poor health, child poverty, and drug overdose. And that, more than anything else, is what accounts for so many children living apart from their parents.
What happened?
JAMIE MATHIS: Drugs and alcohol, confusion, parents not wanting to be parents. I just wanted the boys because I wanted to know that they were safe.
FLORISHA MCGUIRE, Principal, Southside K-8 School: If a child is exposed to a great deal of dysfunction, that manifests itself in behavioral problems, sometimes academic problems, that sort of thing.
JOHN TULENKO: For principals like Flo McGuire, there’s no ignoring the family upheaval that affects many of her students.
FLORISHA MCGUIRE: That’s a big issue. Kids are carrying a lot of weight today, and we want to focus on the academics, but, at the same time, you have to focus on the whole child and you have to focus on the family.
MAN: I know that there’s grants that we’re pursuing.
JOHN TULENKO: Efforts to support families are under way, the result of an initiative called Reconnecting McDowell. It’s bringing state agencies, private companies, the teachers unions and other, groups that once worked alone, together in a new partnership.
BOB BROWN, American Federation of Teachers: We see ourselves as conveners. We need to bring services that families in crisis need inside the schools. We want to turn the schools into the center of the community
JOHN TULENKO: Bob Brown of the American Federation of Teachers is leading the partnership, which plans to provide school-based medical, dental, and mental health services for children and their parents.
BOB BROWN: It’s not just what happens in the school. I can tell you, if you add up the hours that a child spends in school between kindergarten and 12th grade, it’s about 9 percent of their life. We need to be concerned about the other 91 percent of their life. What’s going in the other 91 percent? And that’s what this is about.
JOHN TULENKO: The Reconnecting McDowell partnership includes the schools, which are helping out with a support group for grandparents raising grandchildren.
AMANDA FRAGILE, Title I Director, McDowell County Schools: You probably feel lots of feelings, that you just kind of feel like some days…
JOHN TULENKO: Jamie Mathis is a regular at the sessions.
JAMIE MATHIS: I have somebody that I can go to if I have questions and are willing to be there for a listening ear.
AMANDA FRAGILE: It’s not your fault. You didn’t raise your children to be addicts or irresponsible parents.
JOHN TULENKO: For Amanda Fragile, the school administrator who runs the group, one of the goals is to help grandparents come to terms with their feelings, especially feelings of guilt.
AMANDA FRAGILE: It’s completely a myth that some of our grandparents have that they did something wrong with their children.
We all have 20/20 hindsight. We all could have done some things differently.
Then they get through some resentment, because they planned for retirement.
Frustrated would be a word, I would imagine.
And they go through some loneliness because they feel they’re all alone. And until they get in a group like this, they don’t realize there’s tons of other folks in their area that are going through the same thing.
JOHN TULENKO: But most of those grandparents aren’t coming. There were just four on the day of our visit, though they say attendance is normally around 20.
There are hundreds of grandparents raising children in this area.
BOB BROWN: Yes. There is a stigma associated with coming out, if you will, that you are raising your grandchildren because your children won’t raise them. We just need to get people to feel comfortable coming.
JOHN TULENKO: But just getting to the meetings can be hard. The county roads are another problem.
CINDY ROSE, Save the Children: There’s nothing like these mountains. It’s a very isolated area, and, like I said, we don’t have a lot of resources here.
JOHN TULENKO: So, Cindy Rose makes visits to grandparents and also younger parents. She’s what’s called a home visitor for Save the Children, a nonprofit that’s another partner in Reconnecting McDowell.
CINDY ROSE: My personal feeling is that if education — if you can do this early education, that is the key to getting the poverty.
This is it.
JOHN TULENKO: Ms. Rose makes home visits to about 20 children a week. Her first stop of the day was to a home literally perched on top of a mountain.
CINDY ROSE: Uh-oh. He wants to read it himself.
JOHN TULENKO: Checking in on 2-year-old Jackson and his mother, Estella Crabtree.
ESTELLA CRABTREE: I love being a mother, but in McDowell County, being a mother is a lot different than being a mother somewhere else. It’s very remote. So it’s not like we can take our children to the library and just let them have a heyday.
JOHN TULENKO: Cindy brings books?
ESTELLA CRABTREE: Cindy brings books. Cindy brings lots of books. Cindy brings activities for me.
CINDY ROSE: Look at that nose.
ESTELLA CRABTREE: And, you know, he’s with me all day, so he’s ready, willing, and waiting, you know, for Cindy to come through that door because that’s somebody different.
CINDY ROSE: How did it go?
JOHN TULENKO: Before she’s done, Ms. Rose will talk about the baby’s health and offer to help arrange doctor’s appointments.
Then it’s back to McDowell County’s twisty roads to visit some of her harder cases.
CINDY ROSE: Well, I have a great-grandmother that’s raising a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old. And she doesn’t read. She doesn’t drive. That’s — that’s really my worst, my hardest right there.
JOHN TULENKO: For that great-grandmother, how much can you really do?
CINDY ROSE: A lot. I can give her a lot of ideas to work with the children, show them the pictures, the colors. She can look at the pictures and her and the child make up the story as they go from the pictures. She doesn’t have to sit and read out of a book.
JOHN TULENKO: Ms. Rose and two other home visitors see about 60 families a week, but just like the grandparents group, there are hundreds more spread out across this remote corner of the state that she and others in the Reconnecting McDowell partnership are not likely to reach.
BOB BROWN: There’s no question. This job is much more difficult than I thought when we originally started.
But we take our successes in small doses. We’re not going to turn this around in five years, and maybe not 10 years. But we’re going to chip away at those issues. We’re going to chip away.
How does the fight over highway funding in Washington affect people living in rural West Virginia?
The PBS NewsHour recently traveled to Logan County to show how the funding fight could bring construction on a four-lane upgrade of W.Va. 10 to a halt.
It’s also become a political issue in the Third District Congressional Race, with Rep. Nick Rahall touting his seniority and ability to bring home highway funds, and challenger state Sen. Evan Jenkins vowing not to raise gas taxes to fund highways.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed a short-term fix to replenish the Highway Trust Fund. The bill now goes to the Senate.
Here’s the transcript of the story:
JUDY WOODRUFF: The Federal Highway Trust Fund, which pays for the building and fixing of many of the roads and bridges in this country, is running out of money. Congress has only a few weeks to figure out how to keep it going. And if it doesn’t, it could cost thousands of jobs.
The NewsHour’s Quinn Bowman traveled to West Virginia, where he looked in on one project dependent on the funds, and he talked to West Virginians who could be affected.
GARY TAYLOR, President, Bizzack Construction: We’re in Logan, West Virginia. This construction project is part of the Route 10 relocation. It allows the traveling public to go from Man to Logan. Ten millions cubic yards of excavation and, contract-wise, it’s about $75 million.
QUINN BOWMAN: Gary Taylor’s company, Bizzack Construction, is part of the team turning this winding two-lane road into a new one double in size. Much of the money for this and projects like it nationwide comes from the Federal Highway Trust Fund.
It was created in 1956 to finance and maintain the federal highway system, and relies on a gasoline tax, now pegged at 18.4 cents a gallon. The revenue goes to reimburse states, which, in turn, pay companies like Bizzack for construction and maintenance. But the fund has been spending more than it takes in for years, as inflation eats away at the value of the tax and increased fuel-efficiency reduces gasoline usage.
The money will start to dry up in August, but Congress is deadlocked over what to do. Democrat Nick Rahall has represented West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District for 38 years.
REP. NICK RAHALL, D, W.Va.: I got first $50 million for Route 10. This is where you have loaded school buses playing chicken with coal trucks on a very windy segment of a highway hanging over a mountain, a disaster waiting to happen.
QUINN BOWMAN: He’s the top Democrat on the House Transportation Committee and a champion of saving the highway fund.
REP. NICK RAHALL: Should the unforeseen happen and I not be returned to Congress, the experience that I have gained in being the top Democrat now on the House Transportation and Infrastructure, that seniority doesn’t automatically transfer to a new guy.
I have been able to get these monies I mentioned earlier for transportation projects in Southern West Virginia regardless of which party controls the House of Representatives, regardless of which party controls the White House.
QUINN BOWMAN: Rahall wants to keep the program funded, but doesn’t support raising the federal gas tax and has not been specific about a solution.
For decades, longtime Senator Robert Byrd made sure West Virginia got its share and then some, delivering billions in earmarks to the state, where several roads bear his name. But the political tide has changed. Where Democrats once ran without challenge, Rahall is now viewed as one of the year’s most vulnerable incumbents.
His Republican challenger is Evan Jenkins, a state senator who recently abandoned the Democratic Party.
EVAN JENKINS, Republican House Candidate: We have got to be more efficient. I’m not for raising taxes. And, unfortunately, there is this Washington attitude of just bring in more money, spend more money, and maybe then we will get the job done. Well, that hasn’t worked. We have got a $17 trillion debt in this country.
QUINN BOWMAN: Jenkins thinks decreasing coal regulation could lead to more jobs and generate revenue for roads without any increase in the federal gas tax.
Indeed, most of this year’s Republican candidates have signed a pledge with Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes. Mattie Duppler works on transportation issues for the group.
MATTIE DUPPLER, Americans for Tax Reform: And that’s one of the problems with infrastructure, is that it makes a really good political point for lawmakers, standing in front of a bridge, standing in front of a highway. It’s really a great campaign stop for these folks. However, when that project ends, they struggle with the notion that the political capital then ends along with it.
QUINN BOWMAN: The Obama administration says that unless Congress finds more revenue, states will see a 28 percent reduction in federal highway money come August. It says that would put 700,000 construction jobs at risk.
President Obama has mocked lawmakers for leaving the highway fund hanging.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I haven’t heard of a good reason why they haven’t acted. It’s not like they have been busy with other stuff.
(LAUGHTER)
QUINN BOWMAN: As the debate continues, concern is rising among West Virginia’s political and business leaders, including Paul Mattox, the state’s secretary of transportation.
PAUL MATTOX, Secretary of Transportation, W. Va.: Well, the dysfunction that we are seeing in Washington, unfortunately, it is affecting West Virginia. I’ll tell you, as each day passes, I get more and more concerned.
I can’t see them letting the funding not be addressed, that they would not at least give an extension to keep the programs up and running. The consequences, I know here in West Virginia, we’re going to lose a lot of — the rest of the construction season possibly on some of our projects. And people are going to lose their jobs.
QUINN BOWMAN: Back at Bizzack Construction, Gary Taylor is hoping both sides will decide that keeping the money flowing is vital.
GARY TAYLOR: We’re the destination of Appalachian coal work that’s here. Good roads are very important. It’s the only hope that the people that live here have of having work and having industry come in.
MATTIE DUPPLER: Infrastructure really is the backbone of commerce in this country. It’s important. And conservatives do struggle with relaying that message, because the message is, that’s important, and because it’s important, we should be spending as well as we can on it, rather than just throwing dollars at a problem that is not going to make it go away.
QUINN BOWMAN: The House and Senate are preparing plans to move enough money into the fund to keep it solvent for a few months. A deal could be finalized as early as next week. Both sides agree that a long-term solution would be best, but, like a lot of things on Capitol Hill, neither side can agree on how to pay for it.
