Tagged: local news

The Toyota USA Foundation announced it will contribute $100,000 to the annual CORE4 STEM Expo for students studying science, technology, engineering, and math.

toyota USA National Vice-President Pat Pineda said by 2018, 1.2 million STEM jobs will go unfilled.

"That’s because we don’t have enough people that have the requisite skills, and I think unfortunately we all know that this is a particularly acute problem in the Latino community," Pineda said.

State environmental group are calling for a thorough investigation of the fertilizer plant in the town of West following the fire and explosion that killed 14 people and injured about 200.

Luke Metzger, the executive director for Environment Texas, said there were too many glaring defects at the West fertilizer plant for someone not to notice.

As the Northside Independent School District ends its coordinated kindergarten registration, the district is expected to hit record enrollment for five year olds and finally top more than 100,000 students beginning next year.

When schools starts this fall the district will have 101,600 students.  

For the past week the district has been encouraging parents to enroll their five year olds for the 2013-14 school year. Northside expects to enroll a record 7,700 kindergartners, which spokesman Pascual Gonzalez said it is a barometer for future years.

Dr. Emily Kidd, an assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Health at the UT Health Science Center, said she was in West from midnight Wednesday to 4 a.m. Thursday to assist at the scene of the explosion.

Kidd said she was impressed with what local responders had been able to do in such a short period of time:

"Initially I thought that we were going to be seeing a lot of patients, however, by the time I arrived, the far majority of the patients had actually already been triaged, treaded and transported to area hospitals," Kidd said.