Cheers & Jeers
Cheers: Local entrepreneurs will be offered space in downtown Waynesburg to get budding business ventures off the ground. Using a nearly $1.4 million grant from the recent federal spending package, the board of commissioners is moving ahead with plans to convert the Silveus Building at 30 W. High St. into a business incubator. The county is partnering with Waynesburg University on the project. “Our Entrepreneurial Leadership program was developed several years ago with a focus on strengthening problem-solving skills. The Silveus Building plan is a wonderful next step to advance the work we are doing by engaging and supporting the Greene County community, as well,” said Stacey Brodak, vice president of institutional advancement and university relations at Waynesburg University.
Cheers: For many years, charter schools in Pennsylvania have been the recipient of taxpayer dollars without being subject to the same kind of accountability public schools must face. Regulations approved earlier this week by the commonwealth’s Independent Regulatory Review Commission go some distance toward correcting this defect. The new rules mandate that charters follow the same auditing and fiscal management benchmarks that public schools have to meet, provide health care benefits for teachers equal to what they would receive if they were employed by a public school and post admission policies. These changes have been backed by school boards across Pennsylvania and have long been advocated by Gov. Tom Wolf. The governor said, “These regulations are a vital step in clarifying charter schools’ responsibilities to the taxpayers who fund them. … Charter schools received nearly $3 billion in publicly paid tuition this school year. Parents and taxpayers have a right to know how those resources are being used.”
Jeers: We would like to think that American politics has traveled a long way from the days when a sitting vice president would kill a former treasury secretary in a duel, or a member of Congress would beat another member over the head with a cane. There’s reason to wonder how much progress we’ve actually made, though, if a confrontation last week between two Republican candidates for an open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio is any indication. At a candidate forum, Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel almost came to blows during an argument over a stock trade Gibbons made. They stood chest-to-chest and hurled accusations at one another. Mandel then reportedly called Gibbons an epithet not suitable for publication in a family newspaper. After watching a spectacle like that unfold, the possibility of greater civility coming to our political life seems more elusive than ever.
Jeers: Warm-weather months are approaching, masks are coming off and the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths has declined dramatically. While we all might be ready to put the coronavirus behind us, the coronavirus is not yet done with us. Public health officials are forecasting there could be an increase in cases looming over the horizon if what is happening in Europe is any indication, and there is always the possibility of new and more contagious variants emerging. That’s why it’s disturbing that a $15 billion funding package that would, among other things, cover a potential second booster shot for Americans, is stalled in Congress. The funding would also help pay for a vaccine that would be adjusted to fight against any new variants. With a little luck COVID-19 is slowly fading away, but we shouldn’t rely on luck. We should be prepared, and there’s reason to worry that we won’t be.