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Remove the label of shame from schools in Youngstown

Editorials

For 16 years now, the Youngstown City School District has stood as a distant relative of Hester Prynne, the adulteress protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1850 novel, “The Scarlet Letter.” Like Prynne, who was forever branded with a scarlet single-letter A for her transgressions, the urban school system has been forced by state decree to suffer the stigma and endure the public humiliation of its previous shortcomings, namely through branding it with a big, bad, bold AD for the entire state to see. That AD, signifying its status as the sole Academically Distressed ...

Orchids & onions

Editorials

ORCHID: To sexagenarian Dan Gallagher of Boardman for his resilience, perseverance and endurance as he plans to compete in and complete a 24-hour , 62-mile run in Cape Fear, North Carolina, next weekend. Talk about prepared; Gallagher has logged more than 1,400 miles of running and biking just since April. It was not until about eight years ago that Gallagher, then about 40 pounds heavier and not in top form, caught the running bug and hasn’t let loose of it since. Today, his now long-running passion for long-distance races serves as an excellent model for middle-aged and older men and ...

Archbishop Fulton Sheen and me

Editorials

History yields people whose influence extends far beyond their earthly lives. They become teachers to generations they never met, spiritual companions to people whose names they never knew, and reminders that faith is not merely a set of propositions to be accepted but a way of life to be embraced. For me, one of those extraordinary figures is Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen. Fulton Sheen possessed a rare gift: He could bring the richness, beauty and intellectual depth of traditional Catholicism into the homes of ordinary Americans. Through his Emmy Award-winning, half-hour weekly ...

Will increasing pay for rail safety inspectors help?

Editorials

Rail safety reform is not a matter of partisan politics — or it shouldn’t be, anyway. But since February 2023, when a derailment in East Palestine ignited renewed calls for reform, politicians in Washington, D.C., have sat on their hands while their friends in the railroad industry made promises and assurances that weren’t worth the paper their public relations teams hoped it would be printed on. This week, U.S. Sens. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., and Gary Peters, D-Mich., are giving it another shot, with a bill that would increase pay for federal railroad inspectors and ...

Ciccone appears safe despite controversies

David Skolnick

Despite causing numerous problems and great embarrassment to Mahoning County, Clerk of Courts Michael Ciccone isn’t going anywhere. When I last wrote a column about Ciccone, a Republican, nearly 10 months ago, the county Republican and Democratic parties were united in an effort to have him ...