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Structural engineer discusses Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapse
“You think about it as an infinitesimally small chance of happening, but obviously, in this case, it did happen,” Welt said.
MINNEAPOLIS — The images and video coming out of Baltimore, Maryland are hard to see. In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after a boat struck the bridge.
For those who directly work on these bridges, like civil engineers, there’s layers to what they’re seeing.
“When something happens like this, it puts a little pit in your stomach,” said Travis Welt, Chair of Civil Engineering at the University of St. Thomas
Welt says there are many factors engineers consider when building bridges – weather, wear and tear, and even seismic activity.
“What the performance should be under various events,” Welt explained.
This bridge collapse is something he says you never think about.
“It’s essentially a freak accident,” he said. “This is something that we understand is possible, but, almost, you think about it as an infinitesimally small chance of happening, but obviously in this case, it did happen.”
For many in the Twin Cities, it’s a familiar sight. In 2007, the I-35W bridge collapsed – memories that come rushing back when looking at the situation in Baltimore.
“That initial shock can be scary as an engineer, too,” Welt said.
It’s also scary for the ones were there through it all.
“I think like so many people who were involved, the memories came flooding in,” former Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Ryback said. “I carry a fair amount of that with me to this day.”
Welt is quick to point out, while our cities are connected by a tragedy like this, the reasons behind them are different. We don’t fully know what caused the Baltimore bridge collapse just yet – which is why Welt is emphasizing we wait until we do.
“I would urge folks, just as with the I-35W bridge collapse, wait until the experts have weighed in and provided and their analysis as to what happened. and then think about how do we move forward from that?” he said. “How do we think about how we design things moving forward.”
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The author of a popular New York Times opinion piece says parents do themselves and their kids a service by doing less. Is that true?
How do you approach parenting your child?
An article from the New York Times is stirring up a lot of debate around this loaded question. The piece is titled, “Parents Should Ignore Their Children More Often” By Darby Saxbe, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at the University of Southern California.
The article discusses how in today’s society, children are at the center of our attention and parents are constantly engaging and entertaining them. Parents can feel guilty if kids get bored doing mundane chores, so parents keep them preoccupied with “fun” kid stuff.
Saxbe suggests that parents do themselves and their children a service by doing less. In the article, the professor’s lesson is to let children learn from watching and observing. If kids can learn to tolerate boredom, parents can raise patient, imaginative children.
KARE 11 Sunrise anchor and parent Alicia Lewis decided to look at the differences between “helicopter” and “free-range” parenting styles. Free-range is when parents take a hands-off approach.
Lisa Bunnage, a parenting coach who owns BratBusters Parenting, said most parents try to play the “Pleaser Parent” but there is a time and place for any parenting style.
“If we’re at an airport, I’m a helicopter parent but if it’s at school and they’re having problems with the teacher, maybe they don’t like a teacher or something and I just hands-off, you deal with it. I don’t get involved in that.”
If you’re interested in learning more about parenting styles and the affect they can have on a child, here’s an article from the Mayo Clinic that explains the four types: authoritarian, authoritative, permissive and neglectful.
A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals took up a challenge to the Biden administration’s SAVE student loan repayment program.
ST PAUL, Minn. — Supporters of President Biden’s latest student loan repayment plan gathered outside the federal courthouse as a three-judge panel from the U.S. Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals heard the most recent challenge to it.
The SAVE — or Saving on Valuable Education — program aims to reduce student debt by $170 billion, a scaled-back plan the U.S. Dept. of Education created after the courts struck down Biden’s plan to cut college loan debt by $430 billion. The program expands the scope of an existing income-based repayment program by shortening the repayment terms and erasing some of the interest.
“This isn’t just about repayment. This is an attack on everyone who had a dream and worked hard to go to college, but didn’t have rich parents who could write a check,” Melissa Byrne of the We the 45 Million organization told reporters outside.
“This debt takes away the American dream and turns it into a debt sentence that last and lasts and lasts.”
One of those who spoke at the press conference was Alyssa Barnes, a U.S. Navy Gulf War veteran from Maine, who says she won’t be able to repay the $130,000 in debt she incurred in undergraduate and graduate school, while trying to support herself and two sons as a single mom.
“I feel a lot of regret that I didn’t know what I didn’t know when I took out those loans,” Barnes told KARE. “Over a third of by debt is just from interest accruing over the years — $37,000 is just interest. During COVID I called them to try to refinance and they just hung up on me.”
Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey led the legal attack against the plan and was joined in the effort by several other Republicans attorney generals. He has challenged the legality of using the current repayment plan to cancel interest debt, and more generally asserts only Congress can craft such a program.
Bailey, speaking on the Christian Washington Watch podcast, said Missouri has legal standing to challenge the repayment program because the state’s higher education system will lose funding if the state’s student loan program known as MOHELA can’t collect fully on student loans.
“They owe money to the State in the Lewis and Clark Discovery Fund used to pay for capital improvements in higher education facilities, and they also fund scholarships. So, there’s direct, concrete harm to the State of Missouri if those student loan payments to MOHELA are canceled by President Biden’s plan.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, took his GOP counterparts to task during Thursday’s news conference outside the courthouse.
“Here come these AGs who are supposed to be the people’s lawyer of their states, and they fight tooth and nail to block opportunity,” Ellison said.
He said the SAVE program was modest, not earthshattering.
“Look, we ask people to better themselves, to pursue education, to get more education so they can make a greater contribution to themselves or their family and community, and then what we do is say? ‘Here’s a bunch of debt!’ Unless you’re rich!”
During Thursday’s oral arguments the three judges, all appointed by Republican presidents, appeared to be skeptical of the government’s argument that SAVE program can be expanded the way the Biden Administration has done.
The U.S. Supreme Court already decided the Republican AG’s lawsuit can proceed, and asked the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule on the merits of the challenge.
The newly elected board unanimously accepted it during a special board meeting Thursday night.
BURNSVILLE, Minn — STEP Academy officials said the school is taking steps to pay off its debt after letting go teachers, administrators, and people who worked in operations to balance their budget.
“We’re very sad we had to reduce our budget based on our enrollment but that was a necessary step so that we could stay financially secure,” said Paul Scanlon, STEP Academy’s chief operations officer.
Scanlon corrected a statement made by the St. Paul charter school’s finance director on Monday who said the school has an operating budget deficit of $2.1 million.
“It’s projected by the end of the year that it will roughly – 2.1% of our overall budget. It’s not 2.1 thousand or 2.1 million,” Scanlon said.
He said that’s roughly $275,000, which is how much debt the charter school will have by the end of the academic year.
“Through careful financing, we’ve been able to pay off some of our debt and get that number lower and lower,” he said.
Scanlon said under the Minnesota Department of Education, a school must be at least -2.5% to be considered in statutory operational debt.
The newly elected board started on Monday. Scanlon said there was some confusion about their appointment, but he said the plan was to seat them at their annual meeting on Oct. 21. He said all of the new board members were elected to their positions.
“Candidates nominated or being nominated for the positions to expand the expertise and size our of board took several weeks of getting the nominations and having ballots prepared,” he said.
The board unanimously voted to accept Superintendent Mustafa Ibrahim’s resignation. He said his last day will be Nov. 4. In his letter, he said “my time leading STEP Academy has been the most rewarding period of my career.”
Scanlon said they will not be looking for an immediate replacement.
“At this time based on our finances, based on the strength that we’re seeing from our two principals on both sites, we feel like we can cover many of those components and then we would look to post for the 25-26 school year,” he said.
The board also approved an Ad Hoc committee’s report on the job description of the superintendent of educational services for when they do hire someone for that role.
The board unanimously voted to postpone filling two school board vacancies until they have appointed a chair, vice chair, secretary, and treasurer. They’ll discuss it again at their next meeting, and possibly decide how they want to fill those seats.
