Gilreath appointed as new principal at Parkway Intermediate
Gilreath's career spans diverse positions, including preschool director and middle school assistant principal. Currently serving as the assistant principal at Sultan Middle School, she has demonstrated a robust commitment to behavior management, social-emotional learning, and Career and Technical Education programming. Her appointment is poised to foster growth and innovation within Parkway Intermediate.
"Kim is a high-energy, thoughtful leader who puts students at the center of everything she does," said Ken Murray, Superintendent of the Ephrata School District, in a statement. "She's passionate about building strong relationships, thinking creatively, and working collaboratively to do what's best for kids. Kim is deeply committed to effective teaching and holding students to high academic and behavioral expectations, believing that all students can grow when appropriately supported and challenged."
Gilreath holds a master's degree in school administration from Central Washington University and a bachelor of science in biology from the University of Washington, along with multiple endorsements, including CTE certification. She said her educational background equips her with the skills necessary to lead Parkway Intermediate as it navigates the complexities of middle school education.
"I'm thrilled to be joining the Parkway Intermediate team," she said. "One of the things that really drew me to this school is its strong commitment to character development in students. I love building connections, thinking outside the box, and working collaboratively with staff and families to do what's best for kids."
Gilreath said that fifth and sixth grades are her favorite group of students to be around because they are young enough that they are still full of energy and they still think she is "cool," but old enough to begin making decisions for their futures.
"This is such a unique and important time — it's where elementary students begin to discover who they're becoming as young adults," she said. "I'm honored to be part of that journey and can't wait to get started."
With the ongoing challenges faced by schools nationwide, including learning loss due to disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Gilreath anticipates addressing these issues head-on.
"I think schools across the country are still seeing challenges with learning loss," she said. "It's essential that we acknowledge and address this for the benefit of our students."
As Parkway Intermediate has seen enrollment growth, Gilreath believes that while this is a positive indicator of the school's reputation, it also presents challenges.
"Ephrata is growing, which is a good problem, but we must ensure that we plan for the future. Parkway is an older building facility, and we're using lots of portables. We need to thoughtfully plan for the future to provide students with all the opportunities we want for them," she said.
Engaging with students is a fundamental aspect of Gilreath's vision for her leadership.
"I just love kids, so I plan on talking to them, spending time with them, and getting to know them. I want to find out what they think is important and what gets them excited to show up every day," she said.
Her strategies include establishing student committees and conducting regular temperature checks, allowing students to voice their opinions and needs.
Outside her professional duties, Gilreath said she holds a strong belief in community involvement. Growing up in Billings, Mont., and educated at the University of Washington, she said she has a personal connection to Ephrata and regards it as a strong community supportive of educational initiatives. She also said she frequently visited Ephrata while her children competed in sporting events and to visit her family members who live nearby.
"I love that it's a small enough town that you have a really strong sense of community. Everyone truly has a heart for seeing kids do well," she said.
As her inaugural year approaches, Gilreath aims to foster a positive school culture where both students and staff feel valued.
"I think we can be stronger together," she said. "I'm really excited for the opportunity to join a strong team in reaching our kids."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
3 hours ago
- Boston Globe
In Maine, tight rental market keeps domestic violence survivors in shelters longer
Shelters are a vital resource for survivors of domestic violence, but there are not nearly enough beds statewide to meet demand. Maine has 162 beds in 11 domestic violence shelters across the state, according to a Advertisement In fiscal year 2024, shelters around the state were able to house just 14 percent of those who were eligible and looking for a bed, according to the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. Admittance rates at some regional resource centers were even lower. Partners for Peace told The Monitor they were able to admit only around 6 percent of those seeking a space; Safe Voices, which covers Oxford, Franklin and Androscoggin counties, reported similar figures. Through These Doors, in Cumberland County, was able to provide beds for just 40 of the 358 people who sought shelter with them last year, a roughly 11 percent admittance rate. While a lack of beds has long been a problem, it has gotten worse in recent years, said staff at several resource centers, as people struggling to find more permanent housing in Maine's hot housing market stay longer in shelters. Advertisement A shortage of housing units, the rising cost of rent and constraints on federal low-income housing assistance programs, particularly Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, are compounding the issue. If beds don't open up, those waiting for a space may have to stay longer in unsafe situations. The difficulty of finding housing often leaves survivors feeling trapped, said Francine Garland Stark, the executive director of the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. 'The risk of being homeless or being in a shelter for months, maybe even a year, feels like a hopeless alternative to the terrible place that they are.' Resource centers work with those they turn away to find alternate solutions. 'Sometimes, people call for shelter, and really what they need is a security deposit, or first month's rent, or a bus ticket to get to a family or friend that has a safe place to stay,' said Walker, of Partners for Peace. Advocates may also make referrals to other domestic violence or homeless shelters. Longer shelter stay lengths are a symptom of Maine's housing crisis. Maine's housing shortage was decades in the making, driven largely by the construction of too few homes. During the pandemic, the state experienced a population boom, with more than 20,000 people moving in between 2020 and 2022. The spike in demand exacerbated the housing shortage. From 2020 to 2024, the state's median home price grew by more than 50 percent. Workers' wages, however, grew by less than 33 percent. A Advertisement During the pandemic, Maine also saw calls to domestic violence hotlines become 'Everyone expected the numbers to go up during COVID-19, because people were stuck at home,' said Grace Kendall, director of development and engagement at Safe Voices. 'They were in very close proximity with their abusers.' Advocates, however, did not expect the number of cases to remain elevated after quarantine had lifted — and to continue increasing, said Kendall. 'Our numbers go up every year, but the housing market can't respond that quickly.' Rising rents have meant that housing vouchers issued through federal rental assistance programs — which several resource centers said they once relied on to move survivors out of shelters — have not gone as far as they once did. The vouchers, which subsidize between 60 and 70 percent of the cost of rent for those who qualify, are paid for by the federal government and managed by housing authorities around the state. The average cost per unit the vouchers were covering began rising sharply in 2018, Advertisement The state's housing authorities have exceeded their budgetary authority — meaning that they issued more vouchers than they had the funding to pay for — in When a housing authority goes over budget, the federal government asks it to stop issuing new vouchers. That was what happened in 2024, when several of Maine's largest housing authorities — including Portland, Westbrook, and MaineHousing, which oversees towns without a local housing authority — hit pause on issuing vouchers until enough new ones had been returned to circulation. The pause was detrimental to domestic violence resource centers. In fiscal year 2024, New Hope Midcoast helped 15 families obtain a housing voucher. This fiscal year, they have only been able to place one family, who were on the centralized waiting list prior to the pause on new vouchers. According to Scott Thistle, communications director for MaineHousing, the state housing authority resumed issuing new vouchers in April 2025, though they are not issuing as many as before the pause. MaineHousing issues one-third of the Section 8 vouchers in Maine. The remainder are issued by local housing authorities. Several other resource centers said they are no longer able to place survivors into affordable housing through the voucher program, and instead rely on other assistance programs to move them out of the shelter. Advertisement The lengthy waitlist for vouchers, full shelters, and the tight housing market have created a difficult situation for many people looking to flee an abusive relationship. 'Many survivors correctly decide that it is, in fact, safer for them to stay in an abusive relationship, because otherwise they would be living on the street,' said Kendall. This story was originally published by and distributed through a partnership with the Associated Press.
Axios
12 hours ago
- Axios
Calls grow for unity to solve Iowa's nitrate crisis
Persistent wet weather has increased nitrate leaching from farm fields into rivers and is the main cause of the metro's prolonged water crisis this summer, Matt Helmers, director of the Iowa Nutrient Research Center, tells Axios. Why it matters: The consequences are apparent this year, but the problem has been getting worse for decades. Understanding it can help unify the state to achieve lower nitrate levels more quickly, urban, farm and public utility advocates tell Axios. Catch up quick: Nitrate levels at key water intake points surpassed the federal drinking water limit of 10 mg/L for about 40 more days this year compared with 2024 — a near-record period, according to data from Central Iowa Water Works (CIWW). The DSM metro is also the fastest growing in the Midwest, creating a situation in which water utilities are struggling to remove enough nitrates to meet demand. Flashback: In 2015, DSM Water Works — a member of Central Iowa Water Works (CIWW) — sued three northwest Iowa counties and multiple drainage districts in federal court, alleging they violated the Clean Water Act by not better controlling nitrates. The legal battle caused political division before a judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2017, concluding that the widespread problems are for the Iowa Legislature to address. State of play: Metro water utilities have been working on nitrate removal expansions for years, with new projects expected to come online in 2026, CIWW executive director Tami Madsen tells Axios. Farmers are deploying dozens of types of projects like precision nitrogen management through the Iowa Nitrogen Initiative, an on-farm trail program at Iowa State University. The use of cover crops in Iowa has grown from 50,000 acres in 2010 to over 4 million acres this year. Friction point: The work needs to be greatly expanded, environmental advocates such as Polk County Conservation director Rich Leopold tell Axios. The intrigue: Nearly two-thirds of Iowans voted in 2010 to amend the constitution and establish the Natural Resources and Outdoors Recreation Trust Fund — a permanent funding source for clean water, outdoor recreation, and habitat projects. Yes, but: There's still no money because the Legislature has not increased the state sales tax by three-eighths of a cent to fund it. Gov. Kim Reynolds identified funding the Trust Fund as a top priority in early 2020, which would generate an estimated $220 million annually for outdoor improvements. The effort stalled just a few weeks later amid the economic uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, and questions about its future have largely been postponed to future Condition of the State addresses. Inside the room: Polk County Supervisors Chairperson Matt McCoy, a Democrat and former state senator, called on the Legislature to act on the trust fund during a July 1 meeting when the county publicly released its 200-plus-page river report.
Vox
13 hours ago
- Vox
The incredible global collapse of fur production, explained in one chart
is a senior reporter for Vox's Future Perfect section, with a focus on animal welfare and the future of meat. In just one decade, a longtime fashion mainstay has been relegated to the sidelines of both haute couture runways and bargain clothing racks: fur. In 2014, over 140 million minks, foxes, chinchillas, and raccoon dogs — a small, fox-like East Asian species — around the world were farmed and killed for their fur. By 2024, that number plummeted to 20.5 million, according to an analysis from the nonprofit Humane World for Animals using data from governments and industry. (Disclosure: I worked at Humane World for Animals, formerly known as the Humane Society of the United States, from 2012 to 2017, but I didn't work on fur issues.) The data encompasses the vast majority of animals raised on fur farms, though it doesn't include the number of animals painfully ensnared in traps, which account for a small share of global fur production. It also doesn't include fur from rabbits. The rapid transformation represents a shift in the perception of fur from a luxury good that signals wealth and status to an ethical faux pas. It's perhaps the biggest animal welfare campaign success story of the 21st century, achieved by pressuring major fashion brands to drop fur from product lines and persuading lawmakers across Europe and elsewhere to ban the production and even sale of fur. Covid-19 hastened Europe's move away from fur production, as mink — the species farmed for fur in the greatest numbers around the world — were found to be especially susceptible to the virus, and mink-associated strains spilled back over to infect humans. Economic headwinds and shifting political dynamics in Russia and China, two of the world's biggest fur producers and consumers, helped change the course of the global industry, too. The outlook for billions of animals used by humans every year, in industries from meat production to scientific research, is largely bleak. But the fall of fur shows progress is possible. The brutality of fur farming, briefly explained A lot of factors have contributed to the global decline in fur production, but there's a key reason why it was possible to make progress against the industry. It produces an unnecessary luxury product that is, unlike meat, financially out of reach for most people. And that it's so unnecessary makes its cruelty all the more horrific. Animals farmed for fur are confined in tiny wire-bottom cages that are often stacked atop one another, causing feces and urine to fall through to the animals below them. Farms range in size from a few hundred, to a few thousand, to over 100,000 animals who are typically born in the spring and then slaughtered in the fall or winter. Mink are killed by carbon dioxide gassing, while foxes and raccoon dogs are anally electrocuted. In Finland, some foxes — nicknamed 'monster foxes' — have been selectively bred to have large folds of fat so they produce more fur, which causes a range of welfare issues. A small fur farm in Poland with foxes and raccoon dogs. Andrew Skowron/We Animals Mink crowded into a cage on a fur farm in Sweden. Jo-Anne McArthur/Djurrattsalliansen/We Animals The conditions and practices are terrible enough, but fur farming is especially cruel considering that these are wild, non-domesticated species. In the wild, their home ranges encompass several square miles, but on fur farms, they barely have any room to move around at all, much less express natural behaviors. Mink are semi-aquatic animals, yet have no access to water on fur farms. They also prefer to be solitary, yet they're caged with other minks. Foxes, meanwhile, naturally burrow and create dens where they care for their young, but they can't do so in captivity. These bleak conditions cause the animals to engage in what are called 'stereotypical' behaviors — repetitive motions that are a sign of stress. When caged, mink will pace or bob their heads — even perform somersaults — while foxes might constantly scratch at the corner of their cages in a fruitless attempt to dig and burrow. 'They've literally gone insane in these operations, because they're not fulfilling their natural behaviors,' PJ Smith, director of fashion policy at Humane World For Animals, told me. How animal advocates — and shifting political and economic conditions — put fur out of fashion Today's animal rights movement is largely focused on cruelty to animals raised for meat, milk, and eggs. But in the 1980s and '90s, ending the fur industry was the cause du jour. PETA put the issue on the cultural map, stigmatizing fur by throwing fake blood on runways and recruiting A-list celebrities to wear next to nothing for its 'I'd Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur' campaign. In 1991, The Go-Go's launched PETA's 'I'd Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur' campaign. Greg Gorman/Courtesy of PETA The impact of that early advocacy, however, is hard to discern; Calvin Klein committed to going fur-free in 1994, while other brands resisted PETA's campaign. US fur sales declined from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, though it's unclear how much of that was attributable to animal rights campaigning. By the late 1990s, animal advocates had largely moved on to other issues, while US fur sales began to recover. At the same time, China joined the World Trade Organization, which opened up its capacity to export fur, while the US's growing prosperity led it to become a major fur consumer. Fur production boomed, and fur trim became a popular lining for winter coat hoods. But some advocates maintained pressure against the industry, and in the 2000s, a few mid-level brands, like Ralph Lauren and went fur-free. Meanwhile, some European countries, including Croatia, Austria, and the United Kingdom, banned fur production. Terrifying undercover investigations into the fur trade — especially one video from a Chinese market in which a raccoon dog is skinned alive — reignited occasional momentum on the issue. In the mid-2010s, Armani, NET-A-PORTER, and Hugo Boss committed to going fur-free. Before then, Smith told me, it was hard to get companies to take meetings with him. And then, everything changed when, in 2017, Gucci announced a fur-free policy. After Gucci, other major brands followed — like Versace, Burberry, Prada, Chanel, and Michael Kors, to name a few. In 2019, California banned fur sales. Around this same time, more countries in Europe banned fur production, which had become a trend that accelerated after Covid broke out. Research found that mink are highly susceptible to the disease, and evidence emerged that mink-adapted viruses have spilled back over to humans. Economic downturns in Russia and China over the last decade, European sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, and China's crackdown on corruption (furs had been a common gift to government officials) likely affected fur sales and production in those countries, too. And as major fashion brands moved away from animal fur, faux fur got a lot better. Until the mid-2000s, 'faux fur was this thing that was acrylic — it looked plastic. Not many people saw it as luxury,' Smith told me. But the political and corporate progress created a 'gap in the marketplace,' he said, which helped startups get funding to create better-looking, higher-quality alternatives. Is the end of fur nigh? That progress appears likely to continue. Switzerland just effectively banned fur imports, and the UK is considering doing the same. In 2023, European activists delivered over 1.5 million signatures in support of a ban on the production and sale of fur to the European Commission, which is currently weighing the measure. Last week, in a major boost for the effort, the EU's food safety agency issued a damning report on the welfare of fur-farmed animals. And earlier this month, the European Commission listed the American mink — which was brought to Europe for fur production — as an invasive species, which will restrict mink breeding and sales in the EU. Otto, a fox rescued from the fur farming industry stands on Piia Attonen's lap, awaiting a treat. Anttonen is the Director of Tuulispää Animal Sanctuary in Finland, an organization that cares for and provides a home for many different kinds of farmed and companion animals. Jo-Anne McArthur/#unboundproject/We Animals But there have also been recent setbacks. In 2019, New York City considered a ban on fur sales, but it didn't pass. Politicians in some of Europe's top fur-producing countries — Finland, Poland, and Greece — have resisted calls for fur bans, too. And there are some still big-name fashion holdouts, including Hermes and LVMH — the company behind Fendi, Dior, and Louis Vuitton. In February, the New York Times reported on a vibe shift around the stigma on wearing fur, though it's unclear whether that helped boost sales — the fashion world's focus has largely revolved around reclaiming vintage and used pelts. And despite the significant progress, 20.5 million animals in fur farms annually means there's still a lot of work to be done. Smith hopes that doesn't lead fellow animal advocates to become complacent and move on to other issues too soon, like what happened with fur in the late 1990s. 'The hardest part is going to be closing out an industry for good,' said Smith. 'It's going to be convincing those final fashion brands and retailers to move away from fur. And it's going to be the case that we need to make to legislators and policymakers that we need to implement policy change,' he said, to 'ensure the future is fur-free once and for all.'
