The 2021 Arkansas Times Academic All-Star team
May 10, 20212:10 pm WIZ KIDS: (From left) Greenwood High s Anna Johnson, Episcopal Collegiate s Adanna Mogbo and Springdale High s Ryan Espejo.
The 2021
Arkansas Times Academic All-Star Team, the 27th team the
Times has honored, includes quiz bowl savants, budding novelists, future engineers and doctors and championship athletes. There’s rarely a B on the transcripts of these students in not just this, their senior year, but in any year of their high school careers. Read on for stories of inspiration in these troubled times. And see lists of All-Star finalists and nominees.
Traditionally, the All-Star team is made up of 10 boys and 10 girls, but this year’s class of boys was so strong our judges, retired school counselor Sam Blair and nonprofit leader and former State Board of Education member Mireya Reith, insisted on 11 boys.
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Just 1.2 per cent of rental properties are affordable for single Australians earning minimum wage, according to new analysis which also found only three affordable properties available for about 1.17 million JobSeeker recipients.
The national rental affordability snapshot, published on Thursday by Anglicare, revealed the number of affordable properties for minimum wage earners had halved from 1,688 homes in 2020 to just 859 this year.
Meanwhile, this year’s $50-a-fortnight increase to the JobSeeker payment “hasn’t made a dent” in housing affordability, Anglicare’s executive director Kasy Chambers said, with even fewer affordable rentals now than there were before the boost.
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A federal government backbencher has broken ranks to criticise changes to welfare rules, fearing they will impose a meaningless burden on people seeking work.
Tasmanian Liberal MP Bridget Archer condemned moves to force unemployed people to apply for many more jobs each month in exchange for a very modest increase in their dole payments.
Ms Archer said the mutual obligations changes were very unhelpful .
READ MORE There is an opportunity to ensure we look at how mutual obligation can be a more useful tool for those seeking work, rather than the increasingly meaningless burden it puts on both the potential employer and the potential employee, she told parliament.
On Tuesday, the federal government unveiled some big changes for job seekers in Australia.
The JobSeeker payment, formerly known as Newstart, is being boosted permanently – but not by the amount some had been calling for.
Mutual obligations are also returning, including a new employer reporting line that is already causing controversy.
Here’s a rundown of the major changes and what it means for unemployed Australians.
JobSeeker boosted - by $3.57 a day
With the coronavirus supplement being wound up at the end of March, the government has permanently boosted the levels of some welfare payments, most significantly, JobSeeker.
It means people on the payment - currently about 1.2 million Australians - will get an extra $50 a fortnight, or $3.57 a day, from 1 April.