Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed this week into law, House Bill 99. It lowers the training needed for school districts to arm teachers and other personnel from 700 hours to 24.
Supporters of the measure say it will make schools safer and less of a target. The bill gathered momentum following the mass shooting of 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Districts will be able to decide locally whether to arm teachers.
DeWine signed the arming teachers bill into law on the same day that another gun law went into effect which dropped the training and permit requirement to carry a concealed weapon.
A wild weather week for Ohio left hundreds of thousands of people dealing with dangerously high temperatures without air conditioning or fans.
Powerful storms moved across the entire state of Ohio in waves on Monday night into Tuesday morning. The National Weather Service confirms those storms spawned three tornadoes-including one that touched down in Richland and Ashland counties. In Wayne and Holmes counties, the weather service say it was straight-line winds caused by a derecho that did the damage.
ODOT had to use plows to clear some of the storm debris in rural counties after thousands of trees were brought down.
Power lines came down too---at the height of the storms-more than a quarter million people were without power. That number is down to less than 50-thousand-many of them in rural areas. But power restoration for everyone may not come until late Saturday.
Ohio health officials this week announced the first probable case of monkeypox in the state.
The state is waiting on confirmation from Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff did not divulge where in the state the probable case was or details about the patient.
There have been about five-dozen cases of the illness in the United States this year-as well as in a number of other countries worldwide.
The nation's newest federal holiday, Juneteenth, will be observed on Monday. Juneteenth refers to June 19th 1865-the day on which word finally reached the last enslaved people in Galveston, Texas that they were free. The word reached them two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
President Joe Biden signed the bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday last year. It is the first new designated federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was approved in 1983.
The focus on Juneteenth and the move to make it a federal holiday intensified after the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the calls for racial justice that followed.
Most states will observe Juneteenth meaning federal and state offices will be closed.
But lawmakers in several states including Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, failed to pass legislation this year that would have given state workers paid time off for the holiday. Those states do however do continue to commemorate the Confederacy.
Guests:
Anna Huntsman, Akron-Canton Reporter, Ideastream Public Media
Shana Black, Founder and Publisher, Black Girl Media
Andy Chow, Statehouse News Bureau News Editor, Ohio Public Radio/TV
