David Miller is the Editor and Publisher of Loveland Magazine
by David Miller
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine today announced the creation of the new Ohio Student Safety Advisory Council within the Ohio School Safety Center (OSSC). The student-led Council will work to identify school safety concerns and develop innovative solutions to address them. “School safety programs are designed to protect students, so it’s important that students are given the opportunity to be a part of the conversation,” said Governor DeWine. “Involving them in the process of identifying safety concerns and creating solutions will provide Ohioans with a new and important perspective for violence prevention.” Findings from the student-based council meetings will be delivered to the Governor’s Ohio School Safety Working Group to generate statewide solutions and supports.
“Being a member of this statewide council will enable students to ensure their voice is heard when it comes to school safety,” Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Tom Stickrath said. “They will learn more about student safety-related issues and help devise effective peer-driven solutions.”
To be eligible for the Council, students must:
Be entering grade 11 for the 2022-2023 school year.
Submit a completed application and nomination letter, which must be submitted together to OhioSchoolSafetyCenter@dps.ohio.gov prior to the May 6, 2022 deadline to be considered.
Agree to serve a one-year term and attend monthly virtual meetings and one in-person meeting in Columbus.
Students will have the opportunity to be involved in additional events both in-person and remotely throughout their term. Those selected should plan on spending no fewer than 10 hours per month on group activities/work.
Council members will develop strategies to encourage their peers to actively engage in maintaining a safe school environment and will be an advocate for students’ overall well-being. Students will work directly with the regional school safety liaisons from the OSSC to organize events, focus groups, and trainings in their regions to help highlight student success and safety best practices at various schools. These members will also act as a sounding board for the Governor’s Ohio School Safety Working Group and OSSC on student marketing campaigns and projects to ensure a student voice is represented.
Candidates chosen to move forward with the process will be asked to attend a virtual interview. The OSSC plans to announce the student council member selections at the end of May.
Additional information can be found on the OSSC website.
Nursing home workers are passing on their chance at early access to the COVID-19 vaccine, officials say, blowing a crosswind against a scarce supply of doses and a pandemic in a tailspin.
“I think in this case, [DeWine] is on target,” said Pete Van Runkle, executive director of an industry association representing Ohio’s long term care facilities.
“I talk to a lot of members on a regular basis. They are reporting a pretty low uptake among staff.”
Patrick Schwartz
Patrick Schwartz, a spokesman for Leading Age Ohio, an elder advocacy group, said he’s hearing mixed reports of some providers finding that 90% of staff chose to take the vaccine while others are “well below 50%.”
He attributed the shortfalls to misinformation and fear surrounding the potential for an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
“Many staff are simply ‘not yet ready,’ which will hopefully change as they see more and more colleagues vaccinated without side effects and confidence continues to build,” he said.
“By contrast, an overwhelming majority of residents seem willing to accept the vaccine, with many coming from the generation that saw polio and other deadly diseases wiped out by life-saving vaccines.”
The local Service Employees International Union surveyed its members on the issue, it said in a statement Monday.
The responses, according to SEIU 1199 President Becky Williams, indicate a trust problem between an exhausted, underpaid, underappreciated, and in many cases already-infected staff and health authorities.
She said this is a “substantial issue” that’s bigger than just the union and requires outreach and education from the state.
“Workers commented that the vaccine appeared rushed and unproven without enough data to show that it would be effective,” she said.
“Some workers are also concerned that the vaccine could cause fertility issues among women who may want to have a child. There are trust issues among frontline health care workers — some of which preceded the pandemic. These trust issues continue after so many nursing home workers have been on the frontlines of the pandemic without hazard pay and support such as needed personal protective equipment.”
Several news outlets have debunkedthisnotion of ‘fertility issues’ related to the vaccine. A quick scroll through the right Facebook group can deluge visitors with this and similar pieces of misinformation relating to the vaccine.
The Ohio Capital Journal called 13 state long-term care facilities Monday, who have each reported at least 100 COVID-19 cases among their residents, to discuss vaccination among their staffs. No administrators agreed to an interview.
Two vaccines (one from Moderna and one jointly from Pfizer and BioNTech) are currently approved for emergency use against COVID-19. They are both two-dose vaccines, taken several weeks apart.
Company data reviewed by the Food and Drug Administration shows both vaccines are about 95% effective preventing symptoms of COVID-19. While side effects (sometimes more intense than a standard flu vaccine) have been reported with both products, none of the vaccine trials have reported any serious safety concerns, according to information from Johns Hopkins University.
Before coming to market, both vaccines underwent large scale clinical trials over the course of months. They are now under review via continuous monitoring for problems and side effects from the FDA and the CDC.
The vaccine hesitancy comes as COVID-19 has infected 727,000 Ohioans, put about 39,000 in the hospital, and killed at least 9,143 since March.
At least 4,856 of those deaths occurred among residents of Ohio’s long-term care facilities.
There are several theories as to why nursing home workers would rebuff a vaccine dose, according to Tory Hogan, an Ohio State University professor who researches nursing homes and infection control.
She said some probably just don’t trust health authority; some have “been in the trenches” of the pandemic for a year now, prompting them to shrug off the unknown risk of vaccine for the better-known risk of infection; some probably just don’t want to be the guinea pigs.
“There has been so much misinformation about everything in this process,” she said.
Wood County Health Commissioner Ben Robison said he’s detected some vaccine hesitancy and refusal across all industries. However, some who deny at first are likely to come around.
“Anecdotally, we’ve heard among some of the populations we’re reaching with our vaccine, some have initially said no and then later said yes,” he said.
Some employers, especially in the health care industry, mandate the flu vaccine and other immunization. However, Van Runkle said the industry is already dealing with a widespread staffing shortage, only worsened by the pandemic.
He said most of Ohio’s nursing homes do not even mandate the flu vaccine. Mandating a COVID-19 vaccine would worsen staffing problems.
“We don’t need another reason for people not to work in our facilities,” he said.
A vaccine mandate would backfire
Hogan agreed that a vaccine mandate would backfire, and Williams, from SEIU, said education and outreach should drive universal vaccination.
The Ohio Department of Health has shipped 341,100 Moderna first-doses, as well as 9,750 Pfizer first-doses plus another 9,750 Pfizer second-doses, according to ODH spokeswoman Melanie Amato. Only about 162,942 Ohioans have started the vaccination process, which is prioritizing health care workers, first responders and nursing home staff and residents.
“We do not have visibility to how many staff members at a facility decline to be vaccinated,” said CVS Health Spokesman Charlie Rice-Minoso.
“While we aren’t provided with full staff rosters, based on feedback from our teams in the field we’re seeing more vaccine hesitancy among staff when compared with residents.”
Walgreens, another company administering the vaccines, did not respond to inquiries.
Looking at the bigger picture, Hogan said governments from the federal to local level need to do a better job understanding why some are declining vaccination. Similarly, she said they need to emphasize, as they did during the polio years, that vaccination is the patriotic thing for Americans to do.
“It takes consistently pushing the right message, the correct and accurate information,” she said. “That takes money, a federal response, all levels. We’re struggling with that a lot.”
Columbus, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court has said a school district can go ahead with a firearm policy for personnel while the state’s highest court decides on their case.
The Ohio Supreme Court granted Madison Local School District’s request to allow the implementation of a policy allowing trained personnel including teachers to be armed on the Butler County district’s grounds Wednesday.
The amount of training the personnel must receive is still up for debate as the Ohio Senate considers a bill to lower that training level.
But just as they allowed the motion, they also sped up the schedule for their own deliberation.
“No stipulations or requests for extension of time shall be permitted, and the clerk of court shall refuse to file any stipulations or requests for extension of time,” the court said in a filing.
The district asked for an expedited timeline because of the upcoming school year, which started Aug. 13. The appeals court decision had “no practical effect” before then, because Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine had already closed schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Attorneys for the school district parents who filed the initial lawsuit said a last-minute halt to the appeals court decision “threatens to upend the expectations of parents who have used the intervening months to make time-sensitive decisions — and commitments — about how to safely educate their children this fall.”
“While parents face a variety of safety concerns when deciding how to school their children in a global pandemic, Madison’s last-minute request would add to the confusion and concerns that parents are currently grappling with, and have already made decisions about,” attorneys for the families wrote in a response to the motion, filed Aug. 12.
The parents disagreed with the district’s argument that allowing the school to implement the policy before the supreme court makes its final decision is “necessary to prevent irreparable injury.”
While both parties want to avoid a school shooting like the one that sparked the policy in the first place, attorneys for the parents said, being barred from implementing the firearm policy “does not prevent Madison from deploying almost any conceivable option to enhance school safety; it simply bars the use of armed staff whose few days of training fall far short of the state mandate.”
The school district has 20 days to file their arguments with the court, and the families have 20 days following that to respond.
Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justice Michael Donnelly disagreed with the decision to expedite the case and temporarily halt the appeals court decision, and Justice Patrick Fischer noted he would have specifically denied the portion of the motion to allow the district’s firearms policy.
Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
