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Thank you to all Ohio National Guard members

Ohio’s National Guard is made up of 35,000 active and reserve Buckeye State residents who sign on to be available for their state and country when duty calls. If help is needed — whether that be responding to a flood-stricken community or defending our country’s interests halfway around the globe — they stand up. Ohioans got a startling reminder of just how diverse the Ohio National Guard’s membership is when Secretary of State Frank LaRose was activated last week for deployment. According to a report by The Columbus Dispatch, his deployment location will not be disclosed, ...

‘Should we fail, polio will surge’

While some folks in Columbus work against vaccines, there are still plenty who understand their importance and are diligently working to fight preventable diseases no matter which way the socio-political winds blow. Members of the Belpre Rotary Club collected more than $1,700 in donations as part of Rotary International’s effort to eradicate polio worldwide. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children should get four doses of inactivated poliovirus vaccine — at 2 months, 4 months, 6-18 months and 4-6 years. Those recommendations have been in place ...

Ohioans deserve better

A bipartisan effort by Ohio lawmakers aims to finally put better oversight and accountability measures in place for JobsOhio, which came to taxpayers’ attention again this month after we learned the agency had provided $60,000 in sponsorship funding to “The Callout,” the podcast at the heart of former Ohio State University President Ted Carter’s “inappropriate relationship” scandal. According to a report by the Ohio Capital Journal, state Reps. Justin Pizzulli, R-Scioto County, and Tristan Rader, D-Lakewood, are proposing a bill (which as of this writing is yet to be ...

Food for Mountaineers provides a lifeline for those in need

West Virginia is considered to be the fourth “hungriest” state by organizations such as Feeding America and the U.S. Department of Agriculture studying food insecurity in this country. Certainly, Appalachia is hit hard. The food insecurity rate in southeast Ohio is 17.4%, though some counties in the region are much higher. In the Mountain State, the rate is approximately 16.67%. A significant number of those affected are children. Homegrown efforts such as those of the Highmark Foundation and WVU Medicine are a lifeline for families in need. For that reason, the Highmark Foundation ...

Returning to pencil-and-paper testing

Marietta City Schools Board of Education members made an important decision for students this week when they approved Superintendent Mary Schaeffer’s recommendation to return to pencil-and-paper testing for third grade students. It’s tempting to think students of any age are adept at using — and being flexible with — technology these days, but that’s simply not the case. In fact, Schaeffer said some students may be struggling because of their unfamiliarity with keyboards, rather than what they are being taught. As she pointed out, students at Marietta Elementary School do ...

Protect school children with required vaccines

Sitting in the Ohio House Health Committee is state House Bill 561, a measure for which authors appear to have given as much thought to a catchy acronym as they did to the well-being of Ohio children. HB 561, “to revise the law governing childhood immunizations and exemptions and to name this act the Parental Clarity on Health Options and Information on Conscientious Exemptions ‘C.H.O.I.C.E.’ Act,” would eliminate the requirement for some Buckeye State children to get the hepatitis B vaccine and make changes to other vaccine regulations. It is similar to a host of other ...