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Ritter: Tackling causes of chronic absenteeism

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

As our country reflects on the decisions made to close schools during the COVID-19 pandemic and the severe damage it did to students’ academic progress, it would be easy to assume students being out of school is a problem of the past.It would be easy, but it would also be wrong. As it turns out, while schools have reopened and returned to normal, millions of students are missing.According to a recent report from Stanford University, chronic absenteeism, defined as when students miss roughly 18 days of school year, is on the rise in 40 states across the country. In the 2021-22 school year, there were 6.5 million more students chronically absent than in the 2018-19 school year, an increase of roughly 14%.An analysis from Attendance Works and the Everyone Graduates Center at Johns Hopkins University forecasts chronic absenteeism in 2022-23 to be roughly 28%, nearly double the pre-pandemic rate.But it isn’t just the rate of change that is different, it is also the populations of student...

Editorial: Feds waste billions of taxpayer $$ on empty offices

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

“Office Space” may be a comedy classic, but the government’s version is no laughing matter.Last month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report on how federal agencies use — or don’t use — their headquarters. It examined 24 agencies, including the departments of Justice, Education and Transportation.It found that 17 of the 24 agency headquarters buildings “were at 25 percent capacity or less in the first three months of 2023.” Among the bottom quartile of agencies, the usage was a mere 9%. Even among the agencies that used their headquarters’ space the most, none topped 50% occupancy.This is an issue with a large footprint. The federal government owns more than 460 million square feet of office space. Maintaining it costs taxpayers billions every year. It’s wasteful to have so much unused space.One might assume this is a new problem. Perhaps the federal government has been slow to adjust to remote work and the bureaucracy just hasn’t had time to recalculate how mu...

Netflix’s ‘The Crown’ readies to end its reign

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

Peter Morgan’s stunning — and stunningly inventive – series, “The Crown,” which profiled the extraordinary and lengthy reign of Queen Elizabeth II, now concludes with its final two-part Season 6 beginning Nov. 16.It all began in 2006 with Morgan scripting Helen Mirren’s Oscar-winning theatrical movie “The Queen” and, more importantly, its 2013 theatrical spin-off “The Audience,” again with Mirren, which noted the passages of her reign in weekly meetings with various Prime Ministers.That notion of looking at her reign as one decades-long story led to this ambitious and extraordinarily expensive series. “The Crown” launched with Elizabeth’s 1947 marriage to Prince Philip, her first-ever televised coronation and the drama of her sister Margaret giving in to familial and religious pressure and not marrying the divorced Peter Townsend.“The Crown” continued to the dawn of the 21st century, following Princess Diana’s death and Prince Charles’ relationship with Camilla Par...

Franks: Welfare reform, abortion impact elections

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

Is it possible that welfare reform and my small contribution toward that effort in 1996 as the Republican chairman of the Welfare Reform Task Force may have inadvertently contributed to the election of a Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate in 2022, a Kentucky governor, and a Virginia state legislature in 2023? Sounds strange.After the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade – which returned the abortion question back to the states – the GOP has had to fend off well organized campaigns in states across the country.Is there a lesson to be learned?At the very least, Democratic women and young women have been super motivated to vote and vote Democrat. There is no wonder and no secret why Vice President Kamala Harris is leading the charge for the Biden-Harris campaign on the abortion rights issue. She has made frequent college campus stops to discuss the issue. It is paying political dividends.One of the primary goals of the Welfare Reform Bill was to break the cycle of government dep...

NEEDTOBREATHE switched on for MGM show in Boston

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

NEEDTOBREATHE is definitely a rock band, and its members are indeed Christians. But there are a few good reasons why they don’t like to call themselves a Christian rock band, even after a Grammy nomination in that category.“People hear that and assume that it (stinks),” says frontman Bear Rinehart. “There are a lot of very big bands out there that you could just as easily call Christian bands, and for us it really comes more from the business side — like ‘Is this song going to make it on Christian radio?’ There have certainly been songs where my faith gets into them in a natural way, and I wouldn’t say I shy away from that. I just don’t feel that every one of my songs derives from that place.”If he does write a spiritual song, he’ll probably keep it non-specific. “I decided a long time ago that I can’t tell people what to think of my songs or how to interpret them. And I think we intentionally write songs in ambiguous way. To my mind that gives people a way to connect, so they...

Why Jed Hoyer seized the opportunity to hire Craig Counsell to manage the Chicago Cubs: ‘Felt like we left wins on the table’

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations Jed Hoyer had said all the right things for months in support of David Ross.Even when scrutiny on Ross’ performance became heightened in June when the Cubs slipped 10 games below .500, Hoyer continued to believe in him. At the end of the season, after a three-week September collapse dropped them out of playoff position, he backed his hand-picked manager. Hoyer, though, has shown a willingness to make tough decisions when he believes it benefits the organization.A covert recruitment of managerial free agent Craig Counsell was the latest shrewd maneuver by Hoyer that landed the Cubs one of the best in the game for a record contract at the expense of parting ways with Ross. But that was a price Hoyer was willing to pay. The Cubs want to harness the way Counsell and the Brewers consistently outperformed expectations during his nine seasons at the helm.Counsell always seemed to get the best out of his roster.“My job is to figure o...

Dear Abby: Priced out of pal’s bachelorette bash

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

Dear Abby: My best friend is getting married next year and is planning for her bachelorette party. Right now, they are looking at places that have a three- or four-night minimum and would cost each person more than $500. (That’s just to rent the place.) It wouldn’t cover food, gifts, etc.My friend isn’t a fancy, extravagant person, so I was shocked by the length of time I’ll need to take off from work and the amount of money I will have to spend. I worry if I try to (nicely) say something, it will come across as not caring about her, her wedding or doing this for her. It’s not that I can’t afford it, and I think I should have some time off available, but it’s going to cost more than I’m comfortable with. Am I being unreasonable? I wouldn’t want to not make her feel special. — Sour On It in IndianaDear Sour: You are not being unreasonable. You are practical, and your reasoning is sound. If your friend’s bachelorette pa...

Vivek Ramaswamy’s approach in business and politics is the same: Confidence, no matter the scenario

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

ATLANTA (AP) — A political novice and one of the world’s wealthiest millennials, Vivek Ramaswamy has waged a whirlwind presidential campaign mirroring his meteoric rise as a biotech entrepreneur. On everything from deporting people born in the United States to ending aid to Israel and Ukraine, he consistently displays the bravado of a populist, self-declared outsider.“I stand on the side of revolution,” he declares. “That’s what I’m going to lead in a way that no establishment politician can.”In business and politics, though, Ramaswamy has run into skeptics and sometimes hard facts that threatened to derail his ambitions. In the 2024 campaign, the Israel-Hamas war has refocused the Republican primary on foreign policy and exposed just how much Ramaswamy’s self-declared revolutionary approach puts him at odds with the party’s most powerful figures and many of its voters.At Wednesday’s primary debate, Ramaswamy joined the rest of the field in supporting Israel’...

Jim Biden’s last name has helped open doors. It’s also made him a Republican target

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

ELLWOOD CITY, Pa. (AP) — When a healthcare startup dreamed of building a network of rural hospitals several years ago, it turned to Jim Biden.Although he wasn’t a public health consultant or a medical expert, Jim Biden was the brother of Joe Biden, who had recently finished his term as vice president. The firm’s chief executive believed Jim Biden would help provide the enterprise with “serious horsepower.”But Jim Biden wasn’t the secret weapon that Americore Health Services was counting on. The company imploded in 2019, filing for bankruptcy amid a pile of lawsuits and a federal investigation into fraud allegations. Americore also accused Jim Biden of failing to repay $600,000 in loans.Some of the Florida-based company’s hospitals closed, including one here in Ellwood City, near the western edge of Pennsylvania, where medical equipment gathers dust and plywood covers broken windows. The only reminder of the bankrupt company’s brief tenure as the town’s biggest employer is a pl...

Biden and Xi are to meet next week. There is no detail too small to sweat

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:30:41 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Joe Biden meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Wednesday, there will be no such thing as a small detail.How they greet? If they eat? Where they sit? Will there be flowers? Bottled water or in a glass? “Pretty intense,” senior administration officials say of navigating delicate protocols. Any encounter involving the president and a foreign leader means managing tricky logistics, political and cultural, and every occurrence or utterance can potentially jolt the world order. But few nations are more attuned to etiquette than the Chinese, and Washington and Beijing’s often-conflicting interests might mean the seemingly trivial becomes meaningful. There’s probably “very detailed planning of the actual choreography of who enters a room where, if there will be pictures taken and all of that,” said Bonny Lin, senior fellow for Asian security and director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Biden and Xi ...