The first time Ohio school vouchers went to court was more than two decades ago. In 2002, the constitutionality of the so-called Cleveland Scholarship, which gave public school students taxpayer-paid vouchers to attend private religious schools came before the U.S. Supreme Court.
School vouchers have exploded in use in Ohio since last summer when the state legislature made all families, regardless of their income level, eligible for the private school scholarships.
As students mill around Indian Creek High School’s cafeteria, Superintendent T.C. Chappelear greets them with a smile, stopping to chat, complimenting one on his performance in the school play.
Long before Dean Martin joined the Rat Pack, he grew up in Steubenville as Dino Crocetti. Each year, the eastern Ohio city honors his Ohio roots with a festival. The city hosts Dean Martin impersonators, trolley rides to significant sites of the singer’s childhood and even a Dino Dash 5k.
A one-room schoolhouse in Akron. A 19th century era Episcopal church in Cincinnati. A century old department store in Columbus. All of these buildings have long sat empty, forgotten with time, and are now under threat of demolition.
On June 12, 2023, Ohio public radio stations broadcast the first episode of Today from the Ohio Newsroom.
Ohio’s behavioral health care system is stretched thin.
On a sunny Wednesday in Steubenville, a family of four roams the small aisles of a downtown grocery store. Kids zip past the mounds of produce, paper bags of flour and jars of spices to check off their shopping list. They grab blueberries and leafy greens and stop to smell the fresh bread on the shelf.
Kenmore Boulevard is quiet this morning. The commercial thoroughfare in Akron's Kenmore neighborhood — its second largest — is in the process of being reinvigorated as a music and arts hub after years of what local residents call disinvestment in the neighborhood.
At a May meeting of the Columbus Board of Education, a third grader made a plea.
“I love my school and I don’t want to see it closed,” he said. “For some of my classmates, school is their only safe space. Sometimes [it’s] the only place they can get a bite to eat.”
