At lunchtime on a recent Wednesday afternoon, the cafeteria at Western Elementary School hums with kindergarteners loading lunch trays with fish sticks and broccoli.
Every student here can eat breakfast and lunch for free, and that’s not all the school offers. The entryway to the district’s administration offices is lined with boxes.
Last year, Cleveland City Council member Kris Harsh proposed a different way to use some of the city’s American Rescue Plan funds: relieve medical debt.
“Medical debt is like a monkey on your back,” he said during an April 2023 press conference. “It never goes away. You think about it constantly. It interferes with your credit score when you go to buy that house or get a car.”
Ginger MacCutcheon had plans to spend decades as a military medic in the Women’s Army Corps. She enlisted right out of high school, leaving northeast Ohio at the age of 18.
“I went off to boot camp dressed in a suit with matching luggage and shoes, just like Private Benjamin would go,” MacCutcheon said. “And I thought, ‘Oh, this is a great adventure I’m going on.’”
The Ohio Supreme Court is considering holding oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the Columbus Police Department’s decision to withhold the names of eight police officers involved in a 2023 deadly force incident.
Ohioans hold more than $60 billion in student loan debt. That’s part of over a trillion owed nationwide.
This story was adapted for the Ohio Newsroom from a four-part Richland Source series called Ripple Effect. Read the entire series at richlandsource.com.
It’s been a wet spring in Ohio.
The walls in Don MacRostie’s studio in Athens County are covered in tools. Screwdrivers and scissors hang above tin cans full of markers and brushes. Piles of wood line tabletops and everything is covered in a light layer of sawdust.
The walls in Don MacRostie’s studio in Athens County are covered in tools. Screwdrivers and scissors hang above tin cans full of markers and brushes. Piles of wood line tabletops and everything is covered in a light layer of sawdust.
Jamie Small works for the University of Dayton's Human Rights Center as part of a project funded in 2022 by the Department of Homeland Security called PREVENTS Ohio. It works with individuals and community groups to convene conversations on difficult issues.
The diabetes rate in southeast Ohio is more than double the national average. Nearly 20% of the region’s adults have the chronic disease.
New research is providing insight about why.
