(energetic bright music) - [Rick Jackson] Coming up next on NewsDepth, we are one step closer to a new debt ceiling plan.

Residents among the Mississippi River prepare for flooding.

Mary tells us about an historic flood that changed some Ohio cities.

And schools tried different strategies to encourage reading.

NewsDepth is now.

(energetic bright music) The House of Representatives has passed the new debt ceiling proposal, but the issue is not yet resolved.

Hey everybody, I'm Rick Jackson.

Thank you for joining us.

We first talked about the debt ceiling back in February.

As a reminder, the debt ceiling is the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations.

Back in January, the US had reached its debt ceiling of $31.4 trillion, and lawmakers had to decide whether to raise the country's borrowing cap or keep it the same.

President Joe Biden and House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, haven't come to terms on how to raise the financial ceiling, and unless that changes, some analysts say American living standards could be affected.

John Lorinc reports.

- [John Lorinc] The United States reached its 31.4 trillion spending limit on January 19th, and that's when the battle in the beltway began.

- This power struggle between Democrats and Republicans, and frankly, between Republicans and Republicans, could lead to the first default in a major advanced economy since the Great Depression in World War II.

- [John Lorinc] House speaker, Kevin McCarthy's 320-page "Limit, Save and Grow Act," which passed through the house, raises the debt limit, but trims the budget.

- The polls are overwhelmingly showing that they want cuts in spending in order to raise the debt ceiling.

We've done the responsible thing and the President, and the Senate need to accept that.

- [John Lorinc] President Joe Biden and most Democratic lawmakers aren't interested.

- The discussion on the debt ceiling ought to be agreed to raise the debt ceiling.

Period.

End of story.

And tell us about when you wanna schedule discussions on the budget.

They ought to be separate.

- [John Lorinc] If an agreement on the debt ceiling isn't reached by summer, officials say "Treasuries could tank, interest rates spike, the dollar sinks, and global economies reel."

- The banking system, particularly small and medium-sized banks still have a lot of losses on their books, simply because interest rates went up a lot.

- [John Lorinc] Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, says, "The debt ceiling deadline could come as soon as June."

- Thank you, John.

Many analysts predicted the number of Americans out of work will rise for the fourth time and as many weeks in what they call a softening of the labor market.

Low-wage workers are now making more than ever as their hourly wages grew 9% between 2019 and 2022, but these workers are still struggling.

Some can't even afford the very food and drinks they serve.

Vanessa Yurkevich explains.

- Valvin Nicholson works as a cook in a Manhattan skyscraper, but he lives here in Brooklyn in his mom's third-floor apartment because he says his wages aren't keeping up with rising costs.

(feet stepping) (knife chopping) - [Vanessa Yurkevich] What are we making?

- I'm gonna make sweet chili salmon.

(tomatoes sizzling) - [Vanessa Yurkevich] How old were you when you had your first job in the kitchen?

- Nineteen, twenty.

- Do you remember your first job, how much you made?

- Eight something.

(salmon frying) - How much do you make now per hour?

- [Valvin Nicholson] Twenty three and change.

(jar slides) - So the $23 that you make an hour now- - It's not enough.

- it's not enough.

- We gotta pay, you know, car notes and insurance is very expensive, food and everything.

(tomatoes sizzling and spoon clanging) - [Vanessa Yurkevich] Nicholson, originally from Jamaica, says "His coworkers, many who are immigrants, too, feel the same way, especially as inflation sits at 6%."

(crowd chanting) - Need a raise!

- [Vanessa Yurkevich] In their new contract with their employer, Sodexo, a food service company, union workers are asking for a minimum of $20 an hour for everyone.

Women, Black, and Hispanic workers are disproportionately low-income earners.

(protesters chanting) Before the pandemic, it was high-income earners who typically saw the greatest wage gains compared to low-income earners.

But during the pandemic, it was low-wage workers who saw the greatest gains, up 9% compared to 4.9% for the highest earners, and just 2.4% for those in the middle.

- There are two factors driving increases in wages among low-wage workers.

The first is minimum-wage increases amongst a number of states and also labor shortages.

- Does that mean their wages are rising right along with inflation?

- Well, no, wages haven't actually been catching up with inflation.

(spoon clanging) - Hopefully by then when we meet again, we are able to come to agreement.

- [Vanessa Yurkevich] Valvin hopes that comes with a raise.

Sodexo posted about $750 million in net profits last fiscal year.

- [Valvin Nicholson] I came to the US for American Dreams.

Yes.

- Do you feel like you are living the American dream?

- No.

I mean, not really.

Right now, it's like you're living from paycheck to paycheck.

- Thank you, Vanessa.

The US is facing some layoffs this year, especially in industries like manufacturing, hospitality, and entertainment.

Layoffs or the elimination of jobs due to economic conditions or a shortage of work.

In the manufacturing industry, the supply chain is running more smoothly, and Wells Fargo economists predict companies should be caught up on the pandemic backlog in about five months.

But demand is falling as consumers and business reign in their spending on manufactured goods.

Disney says it's laying off several thousand workers across the company this week.

The cuts affect its parks, entertainment division, and experiences beyond products division as well as sports network, ESPN.

This is the second of three waves of layoffs for a total elimination of 7,000 jobs.

That's about 3% of Disney's global workforce.

And digital media company, BuzzFeed, has laid off 15% of employees there after announcing they will shut down their news division.

This was due in part to the decrease in usage of social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, which brought in most of the traffic to BuzzFeed articles.

Okay, we're now switching gears to weather news.

Folks living along hundreds of miles of the mighty Mississippi are dealing with a river that's even mightier than usual.

More than two dozen river gauges are in major flood stage across the Midwest with flooding in some spots expected to be the worst in 20 years.

The Mississippi River is the second longest river system in North America.

It reaches cities all the way from the Gulf of Mexico to Lake Itasca in Northwestern Minnesota.

And this year, due to severe weather and snow melt, towns are facing a massive problem.

But this is not the first time these towns along the river have dealt with flooding.

They've prepared with emergency plans and sandbags.

Now, Minnesota's governor says the state has seen most of the cresting there with no significant damage, but there are still more than 400 miles with flood warnings along the Mississippi.

You've heard the expression, fight fire with fire.

Well, the fire department in Wabash, Minnesota is flipping that.

They're fighting flooding with more water.

Jennifer Hoff shows us how it works.

- [Jennifer Hoff] Some two hours from the Twin Cities right down Highway 61- - [Darren Sheeley] It's beautiful.

- [Jennifer Hoff] sits Wabasha, a small town right on the Mississippi River.

- [Darren Sheeley] Yeah, now we gotta deal with this.

- [Jennifer Hoff] But It will often flood the water engulfing baseball fields, main roads, even popular restaurants.

- [Darren Sheeley] Slippery's been around a long time.

- [Jennifer Hoff] Slippery's Bar and Grill, the decades-old hotspot is now full of water.

The river reaching about 18 feet, one of the highest crest ever.

But two weeks before when it was still dry, the fire department filled it with 10,000 gallons of water on purpose.

- The thinking process on that was, let's fill it with clean water.

We don't get the dirty water seeping in.

- [Jennifer Hoff] The long-time chief says, it's not only minimizing the muddy water, it offsets any pressure put on the structure.

- [Darren Sheeley] And if you don't fill the basement or the in structure of that, the force of the walls on the outside will collapse that building.

If we neutralize the inside with the outside, the walls don't have no pressure.

When the water goes down, the clean water goes down or gets pumped out, and you have a clean basement.

- [Jennifer Hoff] The last time they used this tactic was about 12 years ago.

Even homeowners will, too, 40 of which the chief says are flooded this time, some of which won't be salvageable.

While everyone looks ahead to drier days.

- When all this stuff goes down, all the debris on the roads, it's in the parks, it's in everything.

The flood is one thing, but sometimes the cleanup is a lot more.

- The river did crest last night, but officials are a bit worried that it could still be weeks before all of this water subsides.

Hopeful still that restaurants and campgrounds like these will still be able to open come the busy Memorial Day weekend.

- Thank you, Jennifer.

Ohio is certainly not exempt from flooding.

Back in 1913, Dayton experienced an incredible flood that left the city underwater.

In today's Know Ohio, Mary shares about the historic event and the engineering developed to prevent it from ever happening again.

(upbeat country music) (upbeat country music ends) - In Dayton, Ohio in 1913, it started raining one day, and basically didn't stop for a week.

And this wasn't a drizzle either.

It began with a storm on Good Friday, and over the course of five days, nearly a foot of rain pounded Dayton and the Miami Valley.

That's the region around the Great Miami River.

All this rain sent the Great Miami river rushing over the levee, and into the busy downtown Dayton.

A levee is a wall of earth built to prevent the overflow of a river.

But in this case, the rain was just too heavy, and the flood waters turned the gem city into an underwater city.

In some areas, the overflowing water was 20-feet deep.

The water rose so quickly that in some cases, people had to scale telephone poles and crawl across wires to safety.

Houses floated off their foundations, sending residents jumping from roof to roof until they finally found dry land.

And survivors who were worried about drowning or freezing in the cold temperatures also had to be concerned about burning when the city's gas lines ruptured and set entire city blocks ablaze.

It basically looked like a scene from a disaster movie.

With the mayor trapped in his house, local businessman, John Patterson, became the de-facto leader of Dayton during the disaster.

He had his factory that normally made cash registers, build boats instead, and he sent out rescuers to bring people back to his factories which he turned into makeshift shelters and hospitals for those who had been driven from their homes.

His heroic leadership saved thousands of lives.

When the water finally receded, Ohioans began to assess the damage.

Along with more than 360 lives lost in the flood, more than 20,000 homes were totally destroyed.

Factories, railroads, and other structures also face major losses, and total property damage would've been more than $2 billion in present-day terms.

After the flood, Daytonians were determined to never let this happen again.

They hired hydrological engineer, Arthur Morgan, to design a massive system of dams and levees to protect Dayton from floods.

It was a huge undertaking and it took five years to build.

But since Morgan built his flood-control system in 1922, the city has never again experienced a flood like the one in 1913.

One community that wasn't really affected by the flood itself was the small village of Osborn, Ohio.

Lying northeast of Dayton, it had very little damage from the flood, but the village was located in the area that Morgan designated to become part of the Huffman floodplain, which would make it prone to flooding.

So the citizens of Osborn decided to pick up and move the whole city three miles away next to another town called Fairfield.

Some years later, Osborn and Fairfield merged to become Fairborn, Ohio, with the name selected to reflect the merging of the two towns.

So I guess you could say the flood brought communities together, literally.

- Wow.

Thank you, Mary.

After a big storm or flood damage, communities have to assess the damages and start the clean-up process.

All the water can bring up mud, tree branches, debris, and gold.

California's back-to-back storms have sparked another Gold Rush.

The Gold Rush was rapid movement of people trying to discover gold.

The first major Gold Rush happened way back in 1848 in California.

Steve Large reports from the heart of Gold Country.

- We do a lot of different gold supplies in here.

- [Steve Large] Albert Fausel is a third-generation owner of the Placerville Hardware store opened 170 years ago.

- 1852.

Yep.

Second continuous operating business in all of California.

- [Steve Large] The store is in the heart of Gold Country.

- So now, instead of selling dynamite, I'm selling metal detectors.

Oh, up high, we've got the sluice boxes.

- [Steve Large] Now, Fausel is getting ready for a new Gold Rush.

- So it's one of those points like, I haven't seen this in my life.

(gold tapping) - [Mark Dayton] There's $750-worth of gold right here.

- [Steve Large] Mark Dayton is a metal-detector expert.

- Anybody could find this right now.

- [Steve Large] He recently found this treasure in a few hours time.

- [Mark Dayton] It's gonna get crazy though.

- [Steve Large] Dayton believes more gold will be more easily available this year in this historic Gold Country where James Marshall's 1848 find changed California forever.

- And it's the biggest event of my life.

- [Steve Large] The predicted Gold Rush follows this series of intense winter storms eroding rock from waterways.

- [Mark Dayton] As the water comes down really quickly, especially in steep canyons, it hits the banks and washes fresh dirt right off the banks and liberates new fresh deposits of gold right into the water.

Probably most of these were in moving water at some time.

- [Steve Large] A new golden opportunity in Gold Country?

It's starting to feel like 49er fever.

- This year's gonna be unprecedented.

- Time to go get some gold.

- And take a look at this glass vial of gold nuggets.

This is half an ounce of gold.

Right now?

It's value?

$1,000.

- Thanks, Steve.

Did you know that Lake Erie is the 11th largest lake in the world?

And did you know that the Great Lakes have about six quadrillion gallons of fresh water?

Yep.

I said quadrillion.

That's 15 zeros.

It's about 20% of all the fresh water in the world.

Pretty interesting, right?

Well, all of that fresh water is an important resource, and a group of students at Beachwood High School are determined to keep Lake Erie clean for generations to come.

Aqua is an awareness campaign through the Excel TECC Making and Junior Achievement Program at Beachwood High School.

The goal is to educate communities about water conservation and to encourage Northeast Ohio residents to clean up beach areas along Ohio's Great Lake.

The campaign kicked off on early April with an art installation in the Pine Crest Shopping District.

The instruction was designed by South African artist, Neill Wright.

It included large inflatable structures that have a tropical motif and show how important clean water is for healthy ecosystems.

You probably remember that we told you back in episode 23 that an ecosystem is a community of living things that interact with each other in their physical environment.

The art installation will be at several other locations in the spring, and its finale will be early June in the city of Beachwood.

The students involved told us that this project is particularly important to them because Lake Erie's been an important part of their life.

They remember swimming and fishing, and boating in the lake over their entire lives.

Their teacher, Mr. Perry, told us "They were motivated by social responsibility and the idea that they can make a difference."

Max, a senior at Beachwood, told us that the project challenged them to overcome real-world problems and they were able to learn outside of the traditional classroom setting.

His classmate, Sepanta, added that the hands-on approach was more valuable than any other activity they've done.

In addition to the art installation, Aqua is hosting a splash party at the Van Aken District in Shaker Heights and a dinner and reception at District Gallery.

So this week's A plus award goes to a very impressive group of students from Beachwood High School for making sure our great lake stays great.

Now, did you know that one in three kids in America cannot read at a basic level of comprehension?

This alarming new statistic is according to a key national exam.

The troubling downward trend now has some schools rethinking their approach to teaching children by going back to the basics such as phonics.

Athena Jones has more.

- My name is Judy B. Jones.

- [Athena Jones] Before this school year, eight-year-old Dream James was struggling to read.

Now.

- She's reading everything.

- I just like B and that's all.

- Before it was, I can't do it.

I can't spell, I can't read too.

Now it's, "Oh, I know how to sound this out, and I know how to read this."

- [Athena Jones] The third grader at Panther Valley Elementary School in rural Pennsylvania had a hard time learning the basics of reading.

Her school had introduced a new curriculum a few years ago based on the Balanced Literacy Theory, an approach used in some classrooms nationwide for over two decades.

Rather than learning to sound out letter combinations, also called phonics, teachers focused on what's known as queuing, instructing children to use context and other clues to figure out words.

- This just explains to them what each syllable actually means.

- [Athena Jones] Teacher Amanda Kusko at first embraced this new approach.

- But then, as we started kind of digging deeper and getting into the instruction, you know, we sort of noticed something was missing.

- [Athena Jones] So how did it work?

- [Amanda Kusko] As they're reading, they are supposed to look at the picture, "Oh, what's this word?"

Well, look at the picture.

Do you maybe know a word part?

What could that word be?

What word would make sense there?

So they weren't actually reading the letters.

They weren't reading the words.

They were guessing.

- [Athena Jones] That didn't work.

- We realized very quickly that students weren't acquiring the skills to actually sound out words.

decode words, spell words.

They weren't actually learning to read.

- [Athena Jones] By year end, just a quarter of Panther Valley's third graders could read at grade level.

In fact, much of the country is facing a child literacy crisis.

Just one in three fourth graders was at or above proficiency in reading last year with nearly four in 10 performing below basic level, but a shift is underway.

Education Week reports over the last decade, "At least 29 states in the District of Columbia, have begun to acquire an evidence-based approach to reading instruction."

- Mississippi started back in 2013 when they enacted legislation and policies around requiring teacher-prep programs to base their training on the science of reading.

From 2013, fast forward to 2019, they have 10 points gain.

- [Athena Jones] At Panther Valley Elementary, Principal Robert Palazzo also changed course, replacing balanced literacy after trying it for just a year and a half.

- Oh!

- [Teacher] Good job.

Cold.

- Cold - [Teacher] Syllable?

- We've seen students in third grade's decoding skills, meaning sounding out words, increase from 20% at grade level in the beginning of the year to approximately 60% currently.

- Thanks, Athena.

That brings us to this week's poll.

How much do you read every day?

Jump on over to our poll page to choose between 10 to 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes, or like me, more than 30 minutes a day.

And if you noticed, we didn't even include a zero-minute option because I assume you all love reading as much as I do.

So last week, we wanted to know if you thought Ohio schools should ban Native American mascots.

88% of you said you wouldn't ban it because it's part of a school's history.

12% said you would agree with a ban because it's cultural appropriation.

My own high school changed its mascot from an inappropriate one to the Bulldogs just around two years ago.

Graduation is just around the corner and twin sisters, Gloria and Victoria Guerrier were respectively named valedictorian and salutatorian of West Hempstead's Secondary School's Class of 2023.

The valedictorian is the student usually with the highest academic achievements who delivers the farewell graduation speech.

And the salutatorian is the second highest graded student.

They give the welcoming address during a graduation ceremony.

Gloria earned a grade point average of 105.3, while Victoria's reached 104.9.

Neither sister has ever received a grade lower than 100 on their transcripts according to their school.

Sonia Rincon has their story.

- [Sonia Rincon] The Guerrier twins are pretty unstoppable.

The all-state track stars learned this week that Gloria will be this year's West Hempstead valedictorian and Victoria, salutatorian, and they credit each other for help getting to the top.

- Being competitive as twins, we push each other.

- [Sonia Rincon] They also credit their hardworking mom, Marie, who says they've been competitive since they were in her belly together and have been each other's coach, cheerleader, role model, and occasional tutor.

- Subjects like AP physics, I'm always over there over her shoulder helping her.

And maybe in English, she gives me a hand.

- In essay rating, I think I'm a better writer.

(laughs) - It's rare that you come across, not only one student like them, but two students like them.

And they just impress me on a daily basis.

- The twins don't just work hard in school and on the field.

Both have part-time jobs outside of school.

They say they realize they wanted to help their family financially when their dad became disabled by an illness in 2016.

They were only 11 years old.

- Growing up with immigrant parents from Haiti, I had a a strong incentive to work really hard, to not waste the opportunity that they gave me.

- [Sonia Rincon] Their principal says, Victoria and Gloria exemplified the American dream and have been role models since day one.

- Student athletes who are genuinely kind-hearted people and are able to, they're musicians, they work, they have jobs.

They're able to manage their time.

- [Sonia Rincon] So how do they manage their time?

- I just keep myself in a positive space and just, I just keep grinding at what I need to do.

- Yeah, definitely.

I know that it got overwhelming at some point last year where I was like studying for SATs and APs, and it just got so overwhelming.

But I told myself I just take it one minute at a time.

I almost planned out every minute last year.

- Wow.

All that incredible planning and hard work certainly paid off.

Both Gloria and Victoria have won scholarships to attend Yale University this fall.

Well, since the school year is wrapping up pretty soon, we wanna hear what you would say on a valedictorian speech.

Head to our inbox form online to tell us what you learned this year and what you look forward to next school year.

Now, last week, we talked about artificial intelligence and how it can have life-saving benefits or be controversial depending on how people use it.

We wanted to hear your input and how you thought we could balance both sides of AI.

Let's see what you had to say by opening up our inbox.

(mobile phone swooshes) (mail clicking) Benji from Hull Prairie Intermediate in Perrysburg wrote, "One of the benefits of AI is that it can help make faster and more informed decisions.

But one of the risk with AI is that it can take a wrong turn.

So a way we can balance it all out is focusing on transparency, putting money into education and training, coming up with regulations and standards, and considering how much impact AI has made on our society."

Wow.

Benji, you put some serious thought in your argument.

Thank you.

(message alert chiming) Ceci and Clara from Monfort Heights Elementary in Cincinnati think regulation is the key.

"By fostering transparency, promoting diversity, establishing accountability, and ensuring effective regulation, we can ensure that AI technology provides the greatest benefit to society, while minimizing its potential dangers."

(message alert chiming) Alix from Heritage Elementary in Medina thinks we need to take extra safety steps when it comes to AI.

"There are many and I mean many risk of having AI help us with art or buildings, but there are many benefits with it.

For grownups, they have their own way of using AI, but so do kids, and viruses, and hackers.

Anyone can hack that and use it for bad, but if we put good passwords and are safe, we can all be safe.

(message alert chimes) Kieran from Adena Elementary in Westchester thinks AI should have limitations "by making sure we don't make everything AI.

If we have AI everywhere, where are we gonna be?

We need to make sure they help, but not take over.

That is why I think that we don't make everything AI."

(message alert chiming) And Vincent from Kinsner Elementary School in Strongsville says that it is on people to use AI responsibly.

"Dear NewsDepth, we can balance the benefits and risk of AI by only having a limit of it.

I think this will help because if they all go rogue, then you can shut them down and restart the system.

And if you shut down all of them, they can't spread to other AI all over the world.

Also, we can teach the AI so they don't do bad things.

This is how I think we can balance the benefits and risk of AI."

Thanks everyone for writing in this week.

Boy, I can tell your writing skills have gotten better since the beginning of the school year.

Can't wait to read what you send us next week.

Okay, it's finally time to check in with our pup, News Hound what do you have for us this week?

(African drums music) (African wind instrument blowing) (dog barking and growling) Hey there, News Hound, looking sharp.

Are you on your way to prom?

Well, before you head out, can you tell us what animal story you've found?

(keys clacking) (mouse clicking) Oh, wow.

It's a story about an ant eater who is definitely not a morning person.

Sounds like a cat I know somewhere.

Well, to see what strategies and zookeepers use to get them out of bed, click the Petting Zoo button on our website.

Thank you, News Hound and have fun at prom.

Well, that's gonna do it for us today.

Remember to vote in this week's poll and send us your valedictorian speeches.

But you know, we always wanna hear from you no matter what you have to say.

And there are plenty of ways for you to stay in touch with us.

You can write to us.

We're at 1375 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio.

Our zip code here, 44115.

You can email us at newsdepth@ideastream.org or you can tweet us.

Our handle is @NewsDepthOhio.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Rick Jackson.

We'll see you right back here next week.

(energetic bright music) - [Child Presenter] NewsDepth is made possible by a grant from the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation.

(energetic bright music continues) (energetic bright music fades) (bright tune)