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It’s time to update all public school education in Ohio

“We treat you like a kid until you walk across the stage, and we’re like, ‘see ya.’ ‑— That doesn’t work,” said Canton City Schools Superintendent Jeff Talbert during a roundtable discussion on transforming Ohio high school education. He’s right, but what do we do about it? How do we prepare young people to move into a job market that looks nothing like it did 10 years ago? Not to mention the structure of a public high school education was solidified generations ago. According to a report by WCMH, XQ Institute and Battelle Education gathered education experts and ...

Don’t kill Ohio’s growth by banning data centers

Eighty years ago, Piketon, Ohio, stood at the center of a defining national challenge. The uranium enrichment facility on that site helped secure American victory in World War II. Last month, I sat in that same community and listened to SoftBank leaders outline a new era of investment in southern Ohio. We are in a race for global leadership in artificial intelligence, one with significant national security implications. China is investing aggressively to dominate this space. The United States must meet that challenge head-on, and the infrastructure that makes AI possible — data ...

Screen culture is destroying our children

We’ve been having a debate about “book bans” in recent years, but given the steep decline in student literacy, the deeper question is how anyone would notice whether a book is available in a school library or not. The New York Times published an eye-opening report on a study by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford documenting steep declines in student test scores, especially in reading. Over the past 10 years, reading scores have declined in 83% of school districts. What looked like a COVID-driven catastrophe is, instead, part of a long-running trend. Reading ...

ATHENA Award winner, nominees make Valley proud

As of last week, a highly accomplished and well respected executive of Howmet Aerospace in Niles has joined the pantheon of amazing women trailblazers and changemakers worldwide enshrined as an ATHENA Award winner. Gina Govojdean, vice president of sales and supply at Howmet, is in great company with the likes of such other ATHENA goddesses as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, legendary tennis icon Billie Jean King and NASA astronaut Christina Koch. Govojdean received the Mahoning Valley’s 2026 ATHENA Award ...

Blame Biden for high prices

The new consumer prices report showing a 3.8% price rise in April confirms what Americans have been complaining about for months: Inflation is continuing to squeeze family budgets. It’s indisputable that oil and fertilizer supply disruptions in the Middle East are driving up prices here at home. But that’s only part of the inflation story. Consumer prices overall are up nearly 30% since COVID-19 derailed the U.S. economy six years ago. That’s the worst stretch of inflation since the bad old 1970s under Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, when inflation hit double-digit ...

Police failed troubled woman in Ky.

On March 27, the Louisville Metro Police Department in Louisville, Kentucky, responded to a 911 call requesting help for someone experiencing a mental health emergency. When police arrived, Katelyn Hall had locked herself in the bathroom with the intention of harming herself. At last week’s Bishop’s Table — a weekly community forum — I listened to Katelyn’s mother, Rebecca, recount what happened that night. Rebecca is grieving now because what began as a call for help ended with Katelyn losing her life. LMPD shot and killed Katelyn when she came out of the bathroom holding a ...