Yakima

Washington's Wapato School District eliminated all of its dual-language classes last month, despite the fact that 67 percent of its students are Latino and in spite of evidence within the school district that bilingual education helped kids score higher on standardized tests.

The Yakima Herald-Republic's Phil Ferolito interviewed Wapato school board officials who say they stand behind the change because they want to focus on student performance on standardized tests.  However, the students enrolled at the district elementary school that still held dual-language classes last year outperformed the students at the district's two other schools whose instructors were told to throw away their Spanish teaching materials.

Those results are confirmed by national studies that show elementary students who become bilingual begin to outperform other students by the seventh grade.

Two elementary schools in Yakima are getting new layers of dirt for their playgrounds to cover arsenic- and lead- tainted soil, reports Adriana Janovich of the Yakima Herald-Republic. The contaminants stem from pesticides once used on orchards that grew on the sites on which the schools were built. Lead can cause neurological problems with chronic exposure, and arsenic is a known carcinogen, according to the EPA. The levels  at both schools exceed the EPA's maximum limits. Construction is being done during the summer to prevent distractions to students, but the other six local schools in need of work will have to wait until at least next summer.

– Emily Linroth