--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Friday, August 19th. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
--:-- Randi Weingarten: Students across the country are getting ready to return to classrooms, but school districts are scrambling to fill tens of thousands of teaching positions. There's been a teacher shortage for years. What you're saying now is that it's reached a tipping point.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That's Randi Weingarten speaking to MSNBC. She's the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which is the second largest teachers union in the country. And she brings up an important point. When you hear people talking about a teacher shortage, know that it didn't just happen overnight. The pandemic accelerated the problem, but the education industry has struggled for decades to train and keep teachers.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Wall Street Journal reports the number of people finishing teacher preparation programs fell by 30 percent between 2010 and 2020. Teachers have long said that they work too much for too little pay. And in recent years, their jobs have gotten more difficult. Managing classrooms through COVID, dealing with culture wars and legal battles over what they teach, anxiety over mass shootings.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Many educators say that they are burned out. Here's what some told NPR. The teachers are just feeling overwhelmed. And they're breaking down underneath it. I find people crying in the bathroom.
--:-- Shamita Basu: States are now turning to unconventional solutions to try to lure people to the profession. Some are running ad campaigns offering salary bumps and bonuses. Some are loosening requirements, like in Florida, where military veterans without bachelor's degrees or teaching experience will be allowed to apply for teaching jobs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In some rural parts of Texas, schools are switching to a four-week schedule because they just don't have the staff. School administrators told the Wall Street Journal that this has been their toughest recruiting season ever. One virtual teaching company tells the journal that demand is way up.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In other words, some schools have effectively given up on finding a teacher for every classroom. They're turning to virtual ones to fill the gaps. A warning that our next segment is about sexual assault.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The lead witness in the latest trial of R. Kelly says he repeatedly sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager. She says he pressured her into sex hundreds of times. And on Thursday, she took the stand and identified herself as the girl shown on video being abused by the R&B singer.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She says she was 14 at the time of the tape. Kelly has pleaded not guilty to charges of child pornography and obstructing justice. This trial comes weeks after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in another case for racketeering and sex trafficking.
--:-- Shamita Basu: In the early 2000s, a copy of this video was sent anonymously to a journalist named Jim DeRogatis. For years, he covered the sexual abuse allegations against R. Kelly, even when the music industry was largely ignoring them.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I spoke to D. Regatis recently on In Conversation about how disturbing the tape is. And it's the most horrifying thing I've ever seen. 26 minutes and 39 seconds. Think about that, Shamita. This was a document of a rape.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You know, she had the vacant, disembodied look of a zombie. The tape led to a child pornography trial in 2008 where Kelly was acquitted. Today's witness didn't testify back then. They had every confidence that Kelly was Kelly, but they had not heard from the victim.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Prosecutors now say Kelly paid off witnesses to keep them from taking the stand. Now this woman is finally telling her story. She said she decided to talk to authorities about Kelly because she was, quote, exhausted with living with his lies.
--:-- Shamita Basu: All summer Lake Mead has been a reminder of the climate crisis in the West. It's the largest human reservoir in the country and historic drought has brought the water to extremely low levels.
--:-- Shamita Basu: If you look up pictures of this, they're really arresting. There's a visible stripe, some call it a bathtub ring, showing where the water used to be and where it's fallen to today. As the lake has dropped, it's revealed ghost towns, a World War II-era bomber plane, even human remains.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Now, the drought is threatening the ability of the Hoover Dam to generate power. CNN explains how the dam is a key power supply for the region, and it's now down to nearly half its generating capacity.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The government says that if the water drops much further, the dam won't be able to produce any power. And that would mean energy suppliers across the Southwest will have to burn more fossil fuels to keep the lights on for people.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam are part of the larger story of the Colorado River, which is a vital source of water for multiple states. It's dangerously dry, which is why for the first time the federal government declared a Tier 2 shortage that begins in January.
--:-- Shamita Basu: That means that multiple states will have to further cut back on water use. Farmers may be hit hardest. They may have to temporarily give up on whole patches of land. And things may get worse.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Jennifer Pitt works on Colorado River issues for the National Audubon Society. She was on PBS this week. These cuts are significant, but I think even more significant is the rapidity with which the reservoirs on the Colorado River are declining.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And we have clear indications that these cuts won't be enough. If you had a perfectly equal partnership, one that was totally balanced, what would your home life look like? You cook and they wash up. You wash the clothes and they fold.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It's easy to imagine splitting these things 50-50. But in practice, it's tricky to come up with a system that feels perfectly fair. Equal partnership in my mind means that two people, and I use partnership broadly, it doesn't matter what gender identity is.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I interviewed different sex and same sex and queer couples in my research, but two people come together and they share in the physical and cognitive labor of the home. That's Kate Mangino.
--:-- Shamita Basu: She's the author of Equal Partners, Improving Gender Equality at Home. And it probably won't surprise you to hear that when you look at the data, a lot of people are not striking that equal balance in the house.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Studies of relationships between men and women show that roughly 65% of physical housework is done by women. Mangino says they tend to do most of the mental labor too.
--:-- Shamita Basu: You have to anticipate, what am I going to feed everyone for the week? You know, you have to anticipate, when am I going to have time to pop into the grocery store to buy the ingredients? When do I have to start the prep so that I can get everything on the table by a certain time.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Mangino studied and wrote about dozens of couples that she says meet the equal partners standard. And there's a lot to learn from this group. One tip, if you and your partner keep hitting up against the same argument, Mangino says one person might have to lower their standards and the other person might have to raise theirs.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Couples need to meet in a place that feels not just fair, but also realistic. Once you're together, you need to agree on a value as a couple. Are you going to eat together seven nights a week? Are you going to have a home-cooked meal seven nights a week or five nights a week?
--:-- Shamita Basu: I think that these are conversations worth having so that you can agree on the level where we need to be. My interview with Kate Mangino is the next episode in our Think Again series.
--:-- Shamita Basu: And I've got to say, this one really made me think again about my relationship, about my parents' relationship, how we learn gender norms and unlearn them, and renegotiate the kind of partnership that we want. Check it out on this weekend's In Conversation.
--:-- Shamita Basu: To find it, just search for Apple News In Conversation in the News app or in the podcast app. And starting next week, I am taking a little time off. So some of my colleagues will be filling in for me. They will be back with the news on Monday.
