McALLEN, Tex. — At 7 p.m. on a recent Wednesday, Isabella and Tony Ruiz were standing in their usual homework spot, on a crumbling sidewalk across the street from the elementary school nearest to their home.
“I got it. I’m going to download,” Isabella said to her brother Tony as they connected to the school’s wireless hot spot and watched her teacher’s math guide slowly appear on the cracked screen of the family smartphone.
Isabella, 11, and Tony, 12, were outside the school because they have no Internet service at home — and connectivity is getting harder. With their mother, Maria, out of work for months and money coming only from their father, Isaias, who washes dishes, the family had cut back on almost everything, including their cellphone data plan.
So every weeknight, the siblings stood outside the low-slung school, sometimes for hours, to complete homework for the sixth grade.
“There’s just no funds left,” Maria Ruiz said later outside the family’s white clapboard rental home. “It worries me because it will become more important to have Internet when they have to do more homework.”
With many educators pushing for students to use resources on the Internet with class work, the federal government is now grappling with a stark disparity in access to technology, between students who have high-speed Internet at home and an estimated five million families who are without it and who are struggling to keep up.
The challenge is felt across the nation. Some students in Coachella, Calif., and Huntsville, Ala., depend on school buses that have free Wi-Fi to complete their homework.

Making a short film with the availability of today’s technology has become a relatively simple endeavor for most people.  Assuming that you own a respectable computer, a digital camcorder and some kind of editing software, you are basically ready to go.  Add some decent actors, a simple script and you’re a filmmaker!

But, first things first, you will need a story.  Remember, most of what filmmakers do is to become a storyteller.  And if this is your first attempt at creating a short film, consider a comedy or spoof on a topic that isn’t too serious.

With the discriminating taste that has been acquired by most film viewing audiences, even on Youtube, it’s wise to leave the more sobering ideas to those that can spend millions of dollars telling their story.

Now that you have a basic outline for your story using the cast available to you, create a bit of a character for each role.  What is the personality of each character?  Do they have a specific way of speaking?  There are many ways to create individual characters for each role which helps when writing the final draft of the script.  But don’t get jammed here.  You might have friends that are really good actors and you have no idea.  Ask around, see who is up for the excitement involved in making even a short film.  Then work around what you have when writing the final draft of your script.  Don’t forget that although you might only have a few characters in your story, that there will be background actors required, set dressers and production assistants to help organize things during the day of filming.

The upcoming budget for the Chicago Public Schools will rely on $500 million in yet-to-be-enacted pension savings by Illinois, school officials said. The third-largest U.S. public school system is projecting a $1.1 billion deficit in its fiscal 2016 budget, largely because of an approximately $675 million pension payment. If the $500 million in pension relief does not materialize, officials said, the school district would turn to “unsustainable borrowing and additional cuts” to balance the budget nearly halfway through the fiscal year.

“The fact is much of the pain in this year’s budget is due to a broken pension system that forces CPS to choose between making pension payments and investing in our classrooms,” interim Chief Executive Officer Jesse Ruiz told reporters.

A complete fiscal 2016 budget, which will include a $61 million property tax increase and must be in place by the end of August, will be released later this summer. The school system tapped borrowed money to make a $634 million, state-mandated fiscal 2015 payment to the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund by a June 30 deadline. It also announced $200 million in spending cuts last month that include the elimination of 1,400 jobs. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who controls the district, called on the state legislature to either create a uniform pension system for all Illinois teachers or pay a bigger chunk of the city’s teacher pensions. The Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund said it received just $62.1 million in fiscal 2015 state appropriations, compared with $3.5 billion for the statewide Teachers Retirement System. District officials said the upcoming budget would incorporate a $106 million cut in state funding. Still, per-pupil funding will remain at current amounts of $4,390 to $5,444, depending on the grade level.