Prepper's Web

Alexandria City Public Schools is in the initial stages of organizing a collective bargaining effort for thousands of its employees.

The school system has more than 2,400 employees and pays $11.6 million in salaries, with funds approved by the City Council. That means that any agreement reached between ACPS staffers and the school system will have to be approved by Council.

“In this case, you’re going to be negotiating a collective bargaining agreement for about 80% of your costs,” Mayor Justin Wilson said at a joint City Council/School Board Subcommittee meeting on Monday (Nov. 28).

Wilson continued, “Without some special structure put together, you’re going to be doing so without coordination with the entity that is going to pay those bills. So, I think we need to figure out how we hold hands and put together a process where we can all do this together somehow.”

The news comes shortly after the city and police department came to a collective bargaining agreement. As part of that agreement, which was nearly a year in the making, police officers will get significant salary raises, as well as bonuses for longevity and specialized skills.

Education Association of Alexandria President Dawn Lucas says that her organization is ready to get to work.

“We are ready and willing to work closely during this process,” Lucas told the School Board on Nov. 10. “We believe that having strong collective bargaining will make us more competitive than other school divisions when it comes to retaining and recruiting the very best educators and staff.”

In the meantime, the school system is proposing a 2.64% step increase and 2.5% market rate adjustment for all staff in the upcoming fiscal year 2024 budget. Healthcare costs are also projected to increase 8% and dental care costs will increase 2%.

Interim Superintendent Melanie Kay-Wyatt told Wilson that she will work closely with City Manager Jim Parajon’s office in creating a collective bargaining structure. No timeline has yet been presented.

“We will keep you informed as we are educating our staff on what it’s going to look at , as well as a timeline,” Kay-Wyatt said.

City Council adopted its collective bargaining ordinance last year.

Crisp, brisk air and sparkling frost signal the start of the holiday season each year. But for local shop owners, preparing for their busiest months began well before the first holly was hung. Finding out the up-and-coming trends, purchasing the perfect holiday gifts and staging their stores is a year-long process to help make shoppers get in the holiday spirit while searching for the perfect gifts.

“Most of my income comes in November and December so I do have to do the prep work beforehand to make that happen,” The Farmer’s Wife owner Bonnie Terpstra said. “It is a lot of work and my storage is up the stairs but you have to do it to make the reward.”

Terpstra’s store on the northwest corner of Newton’s downtown is transformed into a holiday wonderland, a little bit of something for everyone’s taste. But she doesn’t wait until the end of summer work on the holidays, it’s a process that kicks off just as the last holiday season wraps up.

“For looking, it’s always right after Christmas. I’ll go to market in January and order most of it there,” Terpstra said. “You can kind of see what is trending in all of the show rooms. I have my favorites that I like to buy from. Also, what’s trending, what sold well for me the past Christmas. Things change and evolve and you’ve got to move with the new colors or whatever they come up with on the designs.”

Market can be in Dallas, Las Vegas, Atlanta or many other large cities across the country. Stacy Barney from Fine Things on the south side of downtown Newton said owner Julia Prendergast is always prepping for the holidays, finding different pieces throughout the year.

“She does go to market and she has companies that she uses,” Barney said. “Most shows for any store will be spring and winter.”

Along with purchasing items from outside companies, Stephanie Moran owner and designer at Silverado Jewelry, makes her own products, an ongoing project as the trends evolve.

“The year before, we will make notes of things we want to do differently for the following year, what we want to buy, what we want to look for. Then, a couple of months ago actually buying things and figuring out how we are going to decorate and position things,” Moran said. “We get inspiration from different influencers, trying to see what the market in going towards. We want to have the right colors, right fit, the right textures, that is all important to us.”

Once the products are secured, getting the store ready is the next big task. Shoppers who might want to start decorating their own house begin to look for pieces before the holidays start, giving shop owners the opportunity to begin teasing what is coming for the season.

“I always start decorating Oct. 1 because I have large store,” Terpstra said. “I start at the back and move forward. Each section has a different theme. We have the farmhouse, the kitchen area, a black, white and silver and the front is usually a lot of sparkle and glam that Christmas comes with.”

Terpstra hinted at trends flowing in a boho direction incorporating a lot of wood tones and naturals for the upcoming season. Of course, the traditional reds and greens can also be found through each store, too.

“We try to hold back a little bit … once we get into the first of November, within the next couple of weeks everything will be out,” Barney said. “We’ll be good and prepared by then.”

By mid-November, shops are completely transformed to winter wonderlands, filled with holiday cheer and plenty of goodies to keep patrons busy. With several shopping weekends offering specials and deals along with extra activities in the downtown, shop owners are eager to welcome the hundreds of shoppers looking to celebrate throughout the holiday months.

“It is so incredible the support we get from the community,” Moran said. “It is indescribable.”

The Black Friday weekend is traditionally one of the biggest of the year for online sales, but those sales hinge on the ability of retailers to keep their e-commerce sites going and to fend off threats from cybercriminals.

The stakes are undoubtedly high for retailers, as well as all kinds of companies, and so are the risks. Cybercriminals know that many IT security professionals will be home eating turkey instead of keeping an eye out for online attackers over the long weekend, making it a good time for them to launch an attack.

That’s why the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday reminded companies, especially those that involve critical infrastructure, to keep their guard up, reiterating guidance it issued last year.

The message isn’t lost on Jon Hocut, head of information security at Brooks Running, who plans to stay close to his laptop the entire weekend. He’s charged with protecting the personal information of the runners who buy his company’s products, as well as guarding Brooks’ overall corporate systems from online attackers.

In terms of sales, the “cyber five” stretch, including Black Friday and Cyber Monday, is a huge sales event for the 100-year-old company known for its running shoes and apparel. Its e-commerce team expects traffic on the company’s retail site to jump 30% to 50% over those peak days. 

If the site were to crash over the weekend, it could mean millions in lost sales and throngs of disappointed runners, but the Seattle, Washington-based company has more to worry about than that. Its computer systems also hold “shoe secrets” that need to be kept confidential, as well as the software that sends and tracks shipments to retailers.

The ransomware problem

The “worst nightmare” for many companies, Hocut said, would be a targeted ransomware attack, probably involving a Russian criminal gang staffed with cyberexperts, that would quietly infiltrate a company’s systems, then move through them without being detected.

The attackers would figure which systems are most critical, then find and compromise the company’s backed-up data. Everything would appear to be OK until around midnight on Thanksgiving, when the company’s incident response team is home, stuffed full of turkey and nearly asleep, he said.

“That’s when they start hitting all of your systems and taking them down,” Hocut said. “When you’re at your least ability to respond.

“That’s the nightmare, and that’s what we have to keep from happening.”

Ransomware really is nightmare stuff. The attacks, which have locked up entire computer systems at businesses, schools, hospitals and elsewhere, are getting more frequent, more successful and more expensive.

According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware report earlier this year, 66% of organizations surveyed said they were hit with a ransomware attack in 2021, up from 37% in 2020. And 6% of those attacks were successful in encrypting their victims’ data, up from 54% the year before. On top of that, the average ransom paid by organizations for their most significant ransomware attack grew by nearly five times, to just over $800,000, while the number of organizations that paid ransoms of $1 million or more tripled.

A big part of preventing that is making sure systems are locked down and there are enough people to respond if something does happen over the holiday weekend, Hocut said. At Brooks, the entire incident response team will be on call 24/7 over the holiday weekend.

The company also recently hired the cybersecurity company Illumio to help shore up its defenses. The idea is to segment off Brooks’ systems so that the damage is limited if a system is breached, said  PJ Kirner, Illumio’s co-founder and chief technology officer.

Kirner likened the company’s systems to the structure of a submarine, noting that subs are built in compartments, so that if one part of a sub is breached, it can be sealed off and stop the sub from sinking. If a company can quickly detect a breach and prevent the attackers from moving through its systems, it also can limit the damage, he said.

The idea isn’t a new one. The inability of companies to silo off their most precious data has long been blamed for some of history’s most massive data breaches. But segmenting massive computer systems is easier said than done, Kirner said.

That’s particularly true for Brooks, Hocut said. The century-old brand, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, has seen significant growth in recent years. In 2021, its revenue totaled $1.11 billion, marking its first year over the $1 billion mark.

The threats companies face have also changed, Kirner said. While the thought of a massive data breach might have kept security professionals awake at night just a few years ago, the major threat now is the kind of ransomware attack Hocut described.

“If you look at attacks maybe five years ago, they were data confidentiality issues,” Kirner said. “You got the customer list, you got emails, you got credit cards. They were about a breach of confidentiality.”

Ransomware, in comparison, is about a company’s operations.

“Why are we talking about retail now? Because Thanksgiving is the most impactful operational day of the year,” he said, adding that customer data is just as valuable to cybercriminals any other day of the year. 

It’s those operational threats that will keep Hocut and his staff on “maximum paranoia mode” at least through the end of the weekend. They’ll be taking a close look at any alerts that pop up and will be very grateful and happy when they turn out to be false positives, he said.

Other IT professionals may not be so lucky.

“I expect that 90% of my friends who do incident response as a specialty will probably be working on somebody’s painful experience this holiday weekend,” Hocut said.

Thousands of people expected for Thursday’s annual meal

DULUTH, Minn — It’s a job that some people may not like. For others it’s the exact opposite John McDonald, a chef at Mid Coast Catering is one person who enjoys potato peeling.

McDonald said, “There’s something Zen about peeling potatoes, you know, it just makes the time fly by.

So, if you enjoy peeling potatoes or enjoy helping others, the DECC kitchen was the place for you. Nearly 2,000 pounds of potatoes were peeled and sliced to make real, home-made mashed potatoes for the 6,000 to 7,000 people expected on Thursday.

The organizer of the DECC event is Monica Hendrickson from the College of St. Scholastica and she described the events of the day.

“Today, it’s potatoes, potatoes and stuffing and everything made with love, a lot of love and lots of butter. We’ve gone through a lot of butter, ” said Hendrickson.

More than two dozen volunteers, many from Minnesota Power and others from Mid Coast Catering were peeling the potatoes on Tuesday.

This is the 33rd year for this meal and there is a lot of food to cook.  Hendrickson said, “We cook for three days straight and everyone pitches in.”

The effort is led by the College of St. Scholastica with donations of cash, time and food coming from throughout the community to make Thanksgiving a little better for a lot of people.

Hendrickson summed up the reason for the effort that’s put into this one meal, “for us it’s getting kind of back to our roots, of really having that home-cooked meal like if you went to your grandmas or your moms.”

SOUTHINGTON, CT (WFSB) – As temperatures go downhill into the winter months, ski and snowboarding resorts are ready to thrive.

Eyewitness News stopped by Mt. Southington to see how they’re getting ready.

“It’s just really fun in the snow but I don’t like being cold but I don’t feel cold when I ski,” said Ella Stratton, skier.

“I was excited and surprised that there’s already snow because it’s early,” said Paige Straub, skier.

Mt. Southington isn’t open yet but usually opens in mid-December.

“This year we have both new and used with every seasonal rental kids come in and purchase we give them two lift tickets worth $68 a piece,” Monti Montana, Seasonal Rentals and Social Media.

General Manager Jay Dougherty said they are working hard. They already tested out their first blast of snow.

“Last night we had some temperatures that allowed us to test fire our snow gums pump some water up the hill we did a lot of work to our snow making system over the summer and it’s good to see it all come out great so we’re happy,” said Jay.

Now they’re looking ahead to a busy season. Usually thousands visit and they’ve got about 100 snow making machines ready to go.

“Planning for every season starts at the close if the previous season so it’s a lot of work all through the summer we have a lot of crew that does it we are working on our chair lift we’re working on our rental equipment we’re working on our snow making system but it all comes together in November so it’s a really exciting time of year,” Jay said.

Copyright 2022 WFSB. All rights reserved.

SHREVEPORT, La. (KSLA) – The Salvation Army of Northwest Louisiana is preparing to feed at least 1,200 people this Thanksgiving.

The organization is asking for donations of ingredients or premade side dishes in order to make this meal successful. Organizers are asking for mac n’ cheese, dressing, sweet potatoes, green beans, and rolls. Meals will be given out on a first come, first-served basis.

Donations will be accepted Tuesday, Nov. 22 and Wednesday, Nov. 23 from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. at the front desk of the central office. Officials say if it’s after 4 p.m., donations can be left at the shelter with a note attached indicating the donations are for the Thanksgiving meal.

The Salvation Army will also deliver meals to seniors or those who can’t leave home. Simply submit the person’s name and address before 12 p.m. Monday, Nov. 21.

For more information, contact Chef Melvin Nelson at 318-424-3200 ext. 19, or email melvin.nelson@uss.salvationarmy.org.

Copyright 2022 KSLA. All rights reserved.

CHOCOWINITY, N.C. (WITN) – WITN hosted a booth at a high school career fair and was told by students, that they feel the pressure more now, more than ever when it comes to thinking about their future.

Southside High School gave students an opportunity to ask employees in various professions questions so students could have a better understanding of what life would be like in that career.

The career fair in Chocowinity was open to all grades. Students could be seen with a pen and paper ready to ask questions, and ready to take notes on what professionals said their day-to-day was like.

Adair Cisneros, a tenth-grade student, says he’s already thinking about his career at a young age because he wants to help his parents.

“My parents there – they migrated from Mexico. They are immigrants and they’ve worked hard ever since I was younger,” said Cisneros. ” I wanna retire them, get a good job. Take them out of working, make them happy.”

Students were motivated to get a jump start on their prospective careers for many reasons.

Freshman Taylor McRoy is hoping to go into the medical field. She plans to take college classes while completing her high school education because she can do so for free.

“A lot of people try to do it so that can be more prepared and not have to take certain classes while they’re in college,” said McRoy.

Amoz Gardner, a junior, says being around determined people has instilled a personal goal to be the best in his career.

“Simply because I want to be able to be successful in the future. I want to be able to retire young. I want to be able to basically, with all the money I have left, invest. And I want to be able to basically be a front runner,” said Gardner.

Copyright 2022 WITN. All rights reserved.