Welcome to the Sound of Ideas Reporters' Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for joining us.

The school report cards are in and state officials are thrilled with the progress in reading, math, and absenteeism.

A push to curb the usual summer surge of crime in Cleveland paid dividends.

As car thefts and homicides are down over the last 3 years.

Naturalization ceremonies here are being canceled as a change in federal policy means a growing backlog.

And are you loving those political TV ads?

Not so much.

They seem nastier than ever, and in some cases, AI is helping sell the nastiness, including a cake-eating Sherrod Brown who refuses to leave a birthday party.

Joining me to discuss all of the week's top news from Ideastream Public Media, Deputy Editor of News Andrew Meyer, and reporter Gabriel Kramer.

Hello, gentlemen.

Hello.

Happy Friday, Mike.

And happy Friday to you, Gabe.

I look forward to that every time you're here.

And it will be a happy Friday.

That's right.

In Columbus, a woman who can never be replicated by AI because AI will never be smart enough, Ideastream Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Hey, Karen.

Wow, what a nice thing to say.

Hey, we welcome your feedback via email during the show.

Praise for Karen, or you can talk about the topics we're discussing today.

Just go to soi@ideastream.org, send email to that, and we'd love to have you.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Ohio school report cards were released this week.

Statewide math and English scores were at 5-year highs.

Results varied across the region locally.

Some in Northeast Ohio need some improvement as well.

And to start today's show, we're going to have Conor Morris join us.

He's our reporter on the beat on, on education, and he covered this particular story.

So Conor is going to give us some of the local Karen's going to give us some of the statewide, and Conor, let's start with that local.

If the school districts were our children, no one's getting grounded, it seems.

No, there's no grounding going on, actually.

So schools are rated on a scale of 1 to 5 stars.

Some folks remember it used to be like A to F scale, so 1 would be kind of an F and 5 would be an A, but there's an overall score that districts get, and then there's score based on components like early literacy or graduation rates or, you know, their overall score on English and math standardized tests.

Right.

And so 3 out of 5 stars is considered meeting state standards.

So most of the region's largest districts saw their overall scores hold pretty steady this year.

In Northeast Ohio, Cleveland Municipal Schools, they got 2.5 stars.

That's the same score they got last year.

So not satisfactory.

They needed 3 to be doing well, but They didn't lose ground.

Yeah, just a little bit below.

And actually, if you look under the hood, they had a couple of scores go up a little bit, actually.

But still, I think at the very baseline of this that folks really need to understand is anytime you're looking at these test scores, if you look at a community's income, it is very the correlation appears to be very high that, you know, if you're a lower-income community, you're going to have a lower score on the report card.

Especially in the areas of early literacy.

You know, kids are often coming in behind.

They're coming from some of the toughest circumstances in Ohio when we're looking at Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, high levels of students with disabilities.

These kids are kind of the toughest circumstances for teachers to work with and to try to get them caught up and to really excel.

So, I mean, you'll hear really stark numbers.

Absenteeism, for example, while it, really improved this year since the pandemic.

If you look at a place like Cleveland, more than half of kids are chronically absent.

So they're missing more than 10% of the school year.

That's a huge problem.

You can't teach them if they're not there.

No, exactly.

Canton and Akron both got 3 stars, which is satisfactory.

Obviously want to do better, but satisfactory.

Excuse me, I'm so sorry.

That's all right.

Choking on my own spit here.

Canton, actually, they had 2 stars, actually.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I thought it was 3.

No, that's okay.

No worries.

They dropped a little bit here this year, as did Akron.

Akron had 3.5 stars last year, and now they're down to 3.

And then Canton had 2.5 last year, now they're down to 2.

And that's actually because of some changes to the way the state calculates early literacy.

But yeah, generally throughout the region, we saw either scores holding steady or actually improving for our biggest school districts outside of a couple of limited examples.

All right, I'm gonna let you grab that water and I'll go to Karen for a thought here.

And Karen, statewide, there's some celebration going on because as I mentioned, historic highs in math and English and historic lows in absenteeism across the state.

Yeah, the absenteeism thing is really interesting because even though the absenteeism rate dropped about 20% over the last 5 years, it's still almost 24% of kids who are not in school as much as they should be.

They're missing 10% of the school year essentially.

And the state launched this absenteeism dashboard back in April to try to get a grip on this problem.

And not all districts are participating, but it's really intended to try to help districts and really parents too see what's going on when it comes to absenteeism and try to get some arms around that because there are a lot of districts, especially these large urban districts, that are really having trouble getting kids to class.

You've got absenteeism rates well over 50% in some districts.

So, absenteeism being lower is good statewide.

We're also seeing, though, people that are saying if math is higher and English is higher, then things are going well.

This is a different report card.

Conor alluded to it, but we haven't had just it went from A to F to 1 to 5 stars.

We've had all kinds of iterations in between.

Are we set on this is how we're going to measure schools from here on out, or is there still debate about how we're doing it?

That's exactly what I asked Superintendent of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Steve Dackin, because we have been through several different iterations of the report card.

He says that he thinks that this one is the right mix, that it really shows these 6 specific categories, and it's the right thing where it doesn't look at just grades, it doesn't look at just stars.

I mean, we look at a lot of things like stars, but that there are a lot of elements in here that he feels is really appropriate to show how schools are doing.

And, you know, it doesn't hurt that this year's report cards show some real improvement over the last couple of years.

And Conor, there were though some changes in this report card.

Yeah, so the way that they calculate early literacy, it has been changed, specifically that 3rd to 4th grade promotion.

That's a really critical time for kids' development in terms of reading.

That suggests that, you know, if you're scoring low at this time in reading, you're going to struggle for the rest of your life on it.

And now the state is saying if you did not, if your students did not pass the reading test, to get up to that 4th grade level, we're gonna be measuring that fully in your score.

They weren't measuring it fully before.

And so that's really gonna be reducing some districts' overall scores in the early literacy.

In Ohio, just for context, folks, if your kid can be sent from 3rd grade to 4th grade and beyond, even if they don't pass the test, if the parents say it's okay, and there's other circumstances as well, if you're IEP, if you're a student with disabilities, you know, you can still be promoted.

Individual education plan.

Yes, exactly.

When we talk about some of the tough things that are going on in some of these schools, there's also a lot of celebration.

I saw a bunch of celebratory posts on social media from certain districts.

10 of the local districts made it in the top 25 in the state.

3 of them, Chagrin Falls, Solon, and Rocky River, were in the top 5 in the state.

As you mentioned before, wealthier districts.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, Bay Villag you know, 5 out of 5 stars.

The median income is $130,000.

Not too far away over in Cleveland, median income is $40,000, 2.5 stars, you know.

But one thing about this report card that some folks have given credit to recently is there is a college and career and military readiness score.

And districts are getting higher scores on that regardless of income.

Some districts like Akron and Youngstown have really put a lot of eggs in that basket of We have academies meant to prepare kids for actual careers after school.

And so Youngstown, actually, we saw that boosted their score.

They are at 3 out of 5 stars for the first time ever in 25 years of the board history.

Historic moment for them.

And they are the only school that is under academic control, academic distress commission in Ohio, which is, it's, it's too long to explain here, but basically they're saying now's the time we should be able to get out of this.

This label has been used as kind of a cudgel against us for a long time.

So let's get out of this.

And Karen, one last thing about the report cards.

There were some irregularities that were flagged by the state.

Tell me about those.

Yeah, there were about 52 districts that had building or 52 buildings that had some irregularities, like you said, that, you know, it's been, I think, described by some as potentially cheating.

But they're investigating this.

This is like where students changed answers, that like last-minute changes in answers, or students that were struggling in one area suddenly got all these answers right.

And so they're There are investigations ongoing in those buildings there to try to figure out exactly what happened.

And so when those buildings pull up their report cards, there's a notice in red that says these results are under review.

Maybe they had like a, hey, what'd you get on number 2?

See?

Exactly.

Yeah.

We're really still trying to figure that out.

Yeah.

And what does it do to technical difficulties?

Are students using AI?

Is there something wrong at the district level?

We really don't know at this point.

Uh, districts' responses are due today.

All right, awesome.

Thank you, Conor.

Appreciate you dropping in and helping us kick off the show today.

Your house state medical association's political action committee has endorsed Republican candidate Vivek Ramaswamy for governor, even as some of its physician members are supporting his Democratic opponent, Dr.

Amy Acton.

And Karen, when I saw this, I was surprised because Dr.

Amy Acton is a doctor, and the association that represents doctors was siding with her opponent.

Why?

What did they, what did they give as an explanation for that?

Well, Vivek Ramaswamy's wife Apoorva is also a doctor.

So there's a couple of doctors in this race.

But, uh, I think, you know, there's this group, the Ohio State Medical Association Political Action Committee got together and decided that Ramaswamy was the candidate they were gonna support over Acton, even though Acton does have an active physicians license in Ohio.

And, uh, this is the, the, some of the statements that they made about why they did this were that he is committed to reducing government and insurance barriers and expressed the view that physicians must remain in charge of the healthcare process and that insurers should not be making medical decisions that should be between physicians and their patients.

That was the underlying statement with regard to the endorsement there.

But then there were about 1,000 physicians who broke from that and said, we want to endorse Amy Acton.

And so they came out with their own letter saying, we're not behind that endorsement of Ramaswamy.

We want to endorse Acton.

And she's also making a case that he is not in favor of Medicaid and Medicare, which she says is obviously very important to keep people healthy.

So the idea though is that the official endorsement from that organization has been given, and Ramaswamy says, you know, that ought to say something.

Right.

And I think what is interesting about this too is that Ramaswamy has been talking a lot to a group called Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, which right now is among the groups that is really charging against data centers.

But that group is perhaps best known for their concern about vaccines and their desire to see mandatory vaccine requirements for kids going to schools eliminated.

And I even asked Ramaswamy about that in my interview with him for our TV show, The State of Ohio, a couple weeks ago, whether he supported continuing the requirement that kids have vaccines before they come to public school.

And he said he doesn't plan on changing that.

So I think that that's kind of interesting here, that the doctors group was looking at a candidate who has definitely been talking to people on that vaccine-concerned area there.

So I think that's interesting.

All right, let's talk about some other political news.

Campaigns are increasingly using clips from news reports in their TV and online ads, sometimes taking those clips out of their original context.

And Ideastream was one of the organizations featured in an ad that was against Amy Acton.

I just want to explain that particular ad a little bit, and that is One of our employees, I think Jeff St.

Clair, put it out on our Slack channel.

Guys, we saw that, but it had an Ideastream Public Media logo and it had a headline saying Amy Acton praises socialist Zohran Mamdani.

And what actually happened in the date of that, what actually happened is she had a speech at City Club last year, which we aired.

And in that speech, she was asked about Mamdani and she said that he ran a joyful campaign.

So, yes, praised Mamdani.

It's correct.

But it looked like a headline that we wrote saying praised socialist, which I don't think we'd give a character characterization of somebody, whether they're socialist or capitalist or whatever it might be.

But regardless, that ended up getting we got a lot of calls from folks that said, you know, did you do this kind of story?

So it wasn't incorrect.

It wasn't in quotes.

But it also wasn't exactly what the news clip said.

And Karen, you see a lot of this, and there's fair use doctrine, and people will use news reports to their advantage in these political ads.

Yeah, and a lot of reporters get very irritated at that for exactly the reason you just said, because, you know, they can take things out of context and spin different headlines, cut off headlines so that the meaning kind of changes.

And so it can be frustrating as a reporter who's trying to just cover news and do fact-based journalism to see something that you wrote quoted in an ad when that's not exactly what you wrote, or it's taking a very important part out of what you actually put in there.

What I'm seeing this year seems, and I'm probably just because it's the most recent, but it seems more nasty.

And we're seeing from both sides, you know, these attack ads about somebody drinking and taking prescription drugs.

And on the other side, somebody who's swindling old people with the, with their, with their business.

Is it, am I imagining this or does it seem a little more vicious this year?

You know, I feel like our minds are erased after every campaign and then the next one comes up and it feels worse than the one before.

But I think this time you're right because this is definitely, definitely the nastiest campaign I've seen in recent memory in the governor's race.

I mean, you're seeing these allegations back and forth that both Ramaswamy and Acton have said are not true.

I mean, with Acton, it's the whole, uh, whether she has an alcohol or drug problem.

With Ramaswamy, it's this whole business and, and this Alzheimer's drug.

And both of them have said that these are absolutely untrue things.

But we keep hearing about this.

I mean, it is legal to lie in campaign ads.

That goes back to a decision back in 2014, and actually a decision that came out Ohio case.

And this is their First Amendment right to lie.

And so that means that it's on voters to do some more research and try to figure out where this is coming from and to try to see if there are missing pieces here, because usually there are.

If there's one candidate that's saying something against the other candidate, there might be something that is not being covered here.

Have you seen these AI ads?

Has anybody seen those where AI is being used?

Yes.

I saw the one where I was gonna say, I saw the one where Sherrod Brown is at a birthday party, And he's eating the cake from the tray.

And he and the couple is like, he won't leave.

We can't get rid of him.

And obviously it was that he's been a politician for a very long time, but it looked like Sherrod, kind of like Sherrod Brown, like a version of Sherrod Brown.

But if you didn't know, you would think maybe, maybe he was in that thing.

But they're basically creating these scenarios with AI to make people think that they're in that actual commercial.

Yeah, and I've seen it a lot on social media.

You're seeing specifically on the Republican side, a lot of these AI creations where the Republican candidate or the Republican Party is I've seen David Pepper, for instance, the running mate for Amy Acton, in an AI creation.

You mentioned Sherrod Brown.

These are definitely circling.

And for people who aren't really AI savvy and internet savvy, this may look real, though there's clearly some ways to tell that it's not real.

And a lot of times it will say made with AI on there.

But when you've got the largest voting bloc being older folks who did not grow up with this and may be confused by this, you know, it's, it's really a concern.

But the, the, the, just the, the way that some of these ads have been worded and some of the things that have been left out and connected and, and the way that the campaigns have really responded has been just, it, it shows just how nasty this race is.

And it's gonna be, it's, it's on track to be the most expensive governor's race in Ohio history.

I will tell you that I, if I see a campaign ad, I just don't I don't care which side it is, what claim is being made.

The ad is not a way to get your information to vote.

A good way, by the way, would be to follow a reputable news organization like Ideastream and the Statehouse News Bureau.

I try to gather that kind of information, but the commercials, it's time to go into the kitchen and get another cup of coffee.

Quick feedback before we get to our very patient panelists who have been waiting to talk about other news of the week.

Pat sends us a note, Karen, that says, please be aware that Vivek was endorsed by a group that largely represents specialists.

While I've noted that Amy Acton has favored much more by primary care physicians.

And Pat's a doctor herself.

We also had a note from Denise who says, because one candidate has a doctor spouse, that means there are a couple of doctors in this race.

Vivek's wife isn't running.

That's what Denise's point of view is.

And then finally, there's a question from Tom that I hope you'll be able to help us answer, Karen.

He says, how do the state's public school scores compare to the private schools using public money vouchers?

We don't have private school scores.

They don't report in the same way.

No, private schools are not covered in the report cards.

And I asked Dackin about the idea of vouchers and how this plays a role in the results in general.

And he said there's just no data on that that they are looking at.

So that's an important distinction.

And there's been some talk about trying to change that and trying to give a little bit more transparency with the state providing those vouchers to students, then shouldn't the state actually know what's happening with those students once they go to private school?

But right now, that's, that's not what we have.

Yeah, it's a little different.

It isn't just private and public, it's private with public money.

So maybe there should be different reporting.

Interesting point.

Thanks for bringing it up, Tom.

Appreciate that, that comment.

Violent crime is down in Cleveland the last 3 years.

Robberies dropped from over 1,200 to 740, and homicides are down from over 110 Gabe, that is part of a push to end the summer surge of crime, this initiative.

Tell me a little bit about that and has it worked?

So a few years ago, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb created RISE, short for Raising Investment in Safety for Everyone.

So it's a program dedicated to reducing crime in the summertime.

It does things like provide activities and things to do for young people in the city in addition to preventing violence.

You pair that with a lot of his other initiatives that he's had in the last few years.

He's had raises for the police force.

He's changed the way that they are distributed in their workforce, having different types of shifts that make it easier to staff, expanded use of different technologies, ShotSpotter and Flock, which help ShotSpotter.

ShotSpotter and Flock.

Say it 10 times fast.

You know, that help read license plates and gunshot detection technology.

Now, I will say the numbers certainly are going in the right direction in terms of reducing crime.

Those technologies don't come without some criticism in the way that they can be abused by those in power and those that use them.

But yeah, I mean, you have all these initiatives and they seem to be working if the numbers are certainly coming down.

And we have talked in the past about problems with recruiting police in Cleveland.

You mentioned the salaries have been increased.

That's borne some fruit.

The force has changed over the last couple of years.

Yeah, they gave us a statistic that the police department 2023 only able to hire 21 police officers.

Since then, 300 new officers have joined the workforce and it's made it a lot easier for them to staff and get people out there.

Okay.

More safety.

Good.

Yes.

A good thing.

Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro delivered her 2026 State of the County address this week, highlighting the county's economic challenges and changes to federal and state funding of local services.

And what specific economic challenges did she highlight, Andrew?

You were, you were covering that.

Well, one of the big ones was the ongoing issues concerning the impact of federal changes and requirements.

For SNAP and Medicaid.

The money comes from Washington, the regulations come from Washington, but it's the county that has to administer that.

And the county executive has been doing a pretty aggressive outreach program for the past year trying to loop people in who benefit from these benefits and giving them the information they need so they can continue to take advantage of them.

But she said that they're starting to see the impact in terms of a 19% fall-off in recipients when it comes to SNAP recipients.

And it's not just that, hey, you know, we're doing better, we don't need the money.

It's harder to get those benefits.

Right.

I mentioned you covered it.

That's not true.

Ella Abbott covered it.

What you did was played a role there.

In fact, led the Q&A after her address there in it was in Akron.

It was in Akron.

And in addition to those problems with cuts, she also talked about how the county is going to use windfall, the money from the opioid settlement.

What, what is the plan for that?

Well, there are 2 funds that were announced, and one of them is the I have to look at my screen for this the Summit Health and Safety Innovation Fund.

The other one is the Summit County Community Empowerment Fund.

Some told they're getting $50 million that's going to be invested in funds that grants can be derived from.

The idea is to provide communities with the grants to help repair the harm that was done.

In the case of the Summit County Community Empowerment Fund, it's specifically earmarked for disadvantaged communities.

And it's a significant amount of money.

Some told the amount of money that Summit County is getting from the settlement was just over $100 million.

So that's about half the money that's being committed to helping repair the harm.

And she also talked about, as we get in all of these state of the county addresses, by the way, the state of the county is strong, right?

Never boy, the state of the county is worse than everything that we accomplished this year.

But she did talk about infrastructure.

Infrastructure is important, and what did she highlight?

One of the big things there is the ongoing work concerning a fiber ring that's going to connect the 31 municipalities in the county.

It is not just residential broadband, but it is exclusively for government to improve infrastructure, security, government purposes, smart traffic control.

The whole range of issues there.

And the big news here is that they're just about done with it.

It's been a multi-year project.

It's been a big financial investment, but they're looking at flipping on the switch pretty soon for that.

All right.

Well, that's the state of Summit County.

Now, Ohio lawmakers are working on a bipartisan bill that would require utility companies to reimburse customers for food and medicine lost during prolonged power outages.

Hundreds of thousands of Ohioans have had to throw out food due to outages.

Karen, I know sometimes there's a big cookout in the backyard because all the food's gonna go bad, but that doesn't always work.

You get the spoiled milk.

And then also, if your insulin is in the refrigerator or other types of medication, we're talking about serious losses.

So what is the idea?

What's the bipartisan idea to make the utilities pay up?

Like you said, this is bipartisan.

It's two Northeast Ohio lawmakers, Democrat Tristan Rader and Republican David Thomas.

And Northeast Ohio has been hit with a lot of power outages.

I don't have to tell you folks that, of course.

And Rader is from Lakewood, which really has been hit because not only there's been bad weather outages, but also outages that have been blamed on aging infrastructure that hasn't been properly maintained.

You heard about lawn sprinklers being used to cool certain electricity units earlier this year.

And so what these 2 lawmakers say that they want to do is force the utilities to offer a $50 daily credit for power outages that go on more than 16 hours when the weather's fine, more than 36 hours when the skies are gray, and more than 72 hours when it's catastrophic.

Of people lost power.

And then also there's this element of it where if you have to throw out the contents of your fridge and you can give them an itemized list, the utility would have to give you $250.

And if you can give you not only an itemized list but proof that you bought these items, that can go up to $600.

So these aren't huge amounts of money for a utility, but obviously they're huge amounts of money for people who have had to do this a couple of different times this year and are very concerned about how much groceries cost.

Yeah, it just seems to make sense.

If they, they're supposed to have the power on, you're paying for the power, it goes out, you should be reimbursed for what gets damaged as a result of that.

That seems to be common sense.

I see why maybe it's a bipartisan issue.

Well, and there's nothing in state law that allows people to do this, to ask the utility company to help them with the cost of this.

Now, you know, this is obviously there's other issues in terms of affordability here.

You know, gas prices are high, all sorts of other things are high.

But this is one area that these lawmakers feel like like if they can kind of twist this on utilities, maybe utilities will continue to do the upgrades that the PUCO has said they need to do.

So I don't know what its chances are because this was just well, it's actually not been introduced yet.

It's still in the stage where they're looking for co-sponsors.

But we're running out of time in this legislative session.

They say, though, that they're going to come forward with it next session if they both win to try to get this forward.

Day.

Naturalization ceremonies are less common in the Cleveland area as the number of people becoming U.S.

citizens has fallen.

Federal immigration officials have canceled 13 ceremonies in Cleveland, in the whole area, this year.

And Gabe, we had a great story by Sean McDonnell on that topic where he did attend a naturalization ceremony, but there should have been a dozen more and there weren't.

And that's because the numbers are way down.

Yeah, the amount of people that are expected to you know, receive their citizenship is just, is just down.

You know, Sean's reporting has numbers that says in 2024, 2025, you'd have 70,000 new citizens each month.

This is, you know, across the country and about 17,000 just this last July.

So it's, you know, definitely shrinking.

And, you know, they're talking about a lot of applications pending where there's a more rigorous process for approval.

Applications are under more scrutiny.

And in Cleveland, those numbers are showing that you have maybe 1,000 per quarter and just 300, 350-ish for the last few months.

So, I mean, that's just a third of what it used to be.

And I think if you continue to think about other processes, you know, I did some reporting earlier this year about green cards being those processes being held up and for a lot of different communities just being put on hold.

So that's a step for a lot of people before becoming citizens.

So if that's on hold, you have to imagine the step beyond that to get citizenship is just gonna be slowing down too.

Right.

They've already gone through an arduous process.

They've done all of the work.

They took the test.

They did all the things to become a citizen.

And then the ceremony itself just gets delayed because there's some sort of bureaucratic backlog that allows that to happen.

Why are they saying the officials, the immigration officials why are they saying that it's taking longer to get these naturalization ceremonies buttoned up?

Well, they're saying that there's changes to the policy that includes additional background checks, which has more biometric testing, additional interviews, and oftentimes the interviews are reviews and interviews are repeated to double-check people's claims of who they are and, you know, where their refugee stories are from, immigrations are from.

Yeah, and there are certain countries now where I'm sorry, there's some travel bans as well that I think a lot of people that And where people might have come from certain countries before, from the federal government putting travel bans on certain places or immigration bans on places saying that there's, you know, USCIS saying there's 39 countries that are, you know, we're pausing all applications from.

So yeah, there's federal policy that is changing things.

Right.

Exactly what I was going to ask.

My apologies.

Thank you.

Very good.

We'll continue this conversation Monday on The Sound of Ideas.

Ward 12 City Councilmember Tanmay Shah will join the show, as well as Ideastream's reporter Sean McDonnell.

We'll have that for you Monday.

The St.

Patrick's Day Parade will start on Euclid Avenue next year in front of the historic Playhouse Square Theaters and Happy Day, the Idea Center, as well.

After nearly 20 years on Superior Avenue, organizers announced a move this week.

Andrew, it'll actually go in front of the theaters.

It'll come to just in front of the Idea Center where the chandelier is and then hang a left, go down 14th Street, and really the bulk of the route is Prospect.

Now, I remember as a kid that we marched on Superior, then it was Euclid for a long time.

Yeah.

Why did Euclid get canceled?

Well, it goes back, believe it or not, 20 years ago almost with the construction of the Health Line.

So they moved it over to Superior and that's where it was.

Coming back, coming home, if you will, Playhouse Square, where we'll be stepping off at 1:04 on March 17th.

I think the question is, are we going to see snow again this year like we did last year?

I was over by the parade route and I was looking and thinking, wow, not a great day for a parade.

Listen, you guys, back in my day, when I was a kid, we used to march with a Shetland sweater, of course, or the Aran sweater.

Sorry, sorry, Irish people.

With an Aran sweater and underneath it were garbage bags, hefty bags with holes in it that your mom would cut.

And so that was your insulation.

It was that cold.

And you're trying to play a fife and not very well in warm weather, but then you're trying to do that in cold weather.

But it's the St.

Patrick's Day Parade in Cleveland.

It's a thing.

It's not like only the Irish come out.

It's sort of the day when everyone seems to be Irish, but it's a party atmosphere for some.

For others, I mean, there's the parade, the pew, and the pub.

So you're going to church, you're going to the parade, and maybe hoist one, but not necessarily.

But yeah, it's a in Cleveland, the St.

Patrick's Day parade is something.

I don't yeah, go ahead.

I mean, growing up in Medina, a little bit further away than most suburbs, kids would skip class to go to the parade in Cleveland.

And I was jealous of those kids that would their parents would drive up to the city.

Yeah, at St.

James, they canceled class because we were all gone anyway.

Yeah, might as well.

Yeah.

You know, it's hard to believe.

I, you know, I'm prepping I was looking at the fact that this upcoming parade's gonna be the 185th parade.

Right.

That's got some staying power to it.

Absolutely.

Well, good luck to them on the new route.

And it's great to be having the muster right in front of us.

Hopefully not having to come in to warm up.

Maybe it'll be a nice mild we're told the El Niño is gonna make it a milder winter.

So maybe it will.

Milder, snowier, who knows?

Right.

All right, we got plenty more to talk about, including the use of artificial intelligence at the Cuyahoga County Jail and federal grant dollars coming to Northeast Ohio First, here's Sound of Ideas host Stephanie Haney to preview what we'll bring you next week on The Sound of Ideas on 89.7 WKSU.

Hey, Stephanie.

Hey, Mike.

Here's what we have coming up next week on The Sound of Ideas.

On Monday, we're looking at naturalization in Northeast Ohio, and we'll hear from several brand-new U.S.

citizens.

This is as we're learning that ceremonies have been hard to come by in the Cleveland area.

On Tuesday, we take a look at wellness technology.

We'll talk with experts on how experts about what's worth your investment when it comes to things like red light therapy, things that target your vagus nerve, and wearable monitoring devices, to name a few.

Then on Wednesday, we have a conversation about neurodivergence in adults and later diagnoses that are coming later in life for people.

We round things out on Thursday looking at scams that you need to be aware of with an update from Cuyahoga County officials.

Everything from investment scams to romance scams and how the bank teller might be your last line of defense.

Back to you in the studio, Mike.

Thanks, Steph.

You're back with the Sound of Ideas Reporters Roundtable from Ideastream Public Media.

I'm the executive editor here, Mike McIntyre.

I'm joined by Ideastream's deputy editor of news, Andrew Meyer, and reporter Gabriel Kramer.

Ideastream Statehouse News Bureau chief Karen Kasler joins us from Columbus.

And a reminder, before we get back to the show, take our Ideastream news quiz.

You can find it on our website at ideastream.org/quiz.

Listening to the show is a great primer for that.

Or is it a primer?

It's one of those things.

Ideastream Public Media, which owns this station and several others, including WVIZ PBS, WKSU, a bunch of others, is planning to merge with PBS Western Reserve based in Kent.

Boards of the 2 nonprofits voted to approve a merger yesterday.

And Andrew, our newsroom independently covered that.

It wasn't reviewed or approved by senior management.

It's a news story.

What was the reason given for the 2 organizations coming together?

A confluence of factors, Mike.

One of them is rescission of the funding for CPB, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a year ago.

Combined between Ideastream and PBS Western Reserve, that means an annual loss of federal funding of $4 million.

There are other financial headwinds out there.

And then there's the efficiency overall of joining together.

PBS Western Reserve and Ideastream have been collaborators in the past.

We have a good working relationship.

We have friends there who we value as colleagues, will value as colleagues, but have been colleagues in the past.

Right.

It's just, it's the right time.

That's exactly what the company has said.

The fact of the matter is, Ideastream took about a 10% cut from federal funds, a higher percentage for PBS Western Reserve as well.

And as the CEO of Ideastream, Kevin Martin, noted, these headwinds have to be sort of met early.

Like, let's not wait until there's trouble.

Now they want to merge because they're both in a decent financial position and want to make that the situation going forward.

So there is a position of stability at this point despite the loss, and there's the belief that we'll be stronger together.

The, the employees of PBS Western Reserve, it's not one of those things where you're taking it over and saying we don't need the people.

What we've been told is that all of them will be offered positions in the, in the company.

So the timeframe ahead is that that the boards have approved the merger, the boards of each organization.

That happened yesterday.

The next step is getting the required approvals from both the FCC and from the state of Ohio.

That may take a couple of months.

And then organizationally bringing everybody together.

As you mentioned, Mike, every employee at PBS Western Reserve is going to be offered a position at Ideastream.

The call letters WNEO, AEO for Western Reserve's 2 PBS stations will stay the same, but they will come under the banner of Ideastream Public Media.

And this is there's been a growth pattern here at Ideastream.

We're on radio on WKSU.

Before 2021, we were not.

That was a public service operating agreement that brought WKSU into the fold.

In addition, WCSB, which became JazzNEO, and that one was much more controversial.

There's still protest about that from folks who said it silenced student voices.

In this particular case, with the 2 PBS stations coming together, had there been protest of that type of thing?

Is there have we heard any kind of opposition to that?

Not at this point.

I think the question is what's going to happen with the programming that exists on all the stations, and there's a lot of figuring out how it's all going to come together.

But there is some overlap, but there is some distinctness to what we each do.

And the commitment for the time being is to maintain operationally everything that we're doing at both organizations.

Okay.

Before we get to our next topic, some feedback, Karen, from our discussion about the paying for medicine and food that's lost in power outages.

Lynn has a good point.

She says, what about wear and tear on electrical appliances?

Heard from my AC repairman that these electrical issues are also taking a toll on our appliances.

Repairs should be covered as well, in her view.

So pass it along to the legislators as you're talking to them.

4 bills have been introduced in the last week to regulate flock cameras and other automated license plate readers, or LPRs.

Some lawmakers are suggesting an outright ban, but Karen, the Attorney General Andy Wilson says a ban is not a great idea.

What does he say?

Well, yeah, he came out with a statement.

He been generally supportive of flock cameras and these light, uh, automated, automated license plate readers for a while, but he said that, you know, he wanted to talk about this because there is just all this movement on flock cameras, and cities like Columbus has decided not to use flock cameras anymore, and they cited specifically the alleged misuse of a camera by a police officer.

And so he says that he thinks that flock cameras and I'm just going to use that term as a general term for all these they need to still be in use because they are an important crime-fighting tool.

But he's worried that all of these things to try to ban flock cameras are an overreaction, and they're kind of a knee-jerk reaction.

He's worried that actually what's going to happen is all these cameras are shut down, and then something's going to happen in the community that the cameras could have seen and potentially prevented, and then people are going to be mad at law enforcement for not doing that.

So he said that what he'd like to see is some more regulation around these cameras, you know, how, how the data is collected and stored, how long is it stored for, can there be audits on the use of these cameras.

And he specifically said that anybody who's caught misusing one of these cameras should face a felony.

That could mean possible prison time and potentially a ban on ever being a police officer or in law enforcement again.

Andrew Ginther, the mayor in Columbus, says there has been misuse.

Yeah, and, and that's been the that's been the concern here.

I think not only are there concerns about privacy, because people say that they're very worried I mean, you, you're hearing candidates for office talk about this potentially being kind of a surveillance state kind of a thing, and, and some lawmakers are really embracing that too.

One of the bills that's been proposed all the bills on Flock rules in the legislature have been proposed by Republicans one of them is called the No More 1984 Act, referring to 1984, the Big Brother George Orwell novel.

But, you know, there's the concern that not only is there all this surveillance going on, but also the idea that these could be misused, that these cameras could be used to track people, to stalk people, to follow them state to state.

And that's another concern that's involved in all these Flock cameras.

Okay.

Cuyahoga County's judges and Prosecutor Mike O'Malley are rejecting a call to make $6.2 million worth of budget cuts in the face of a deficit.

It in 2027.

Gabe, Cuyahoga County says you need to make these cuts.

The judges are saying, uh, no, we're not going to do that.

What's, what's their reasoning?

Yeah, I mean, they said we, we need the money, but they pointed to cuts that they made, uh, a year ago and said we've already been making cuts, um, and that this is already just too much on them.

The county asked, um, departments across the board to, uh, make cuts, 3.3%, heading into 2027 to help, uh, balance the county's budget.

But, um, you know, Mike O'Malley and, um, the rest of the judges are, are putting their foot down.

I wonder, can you just say no?

I don't know.

I mean, like, I guess we'll find out.

But I mean, I don't know if there seems like there's going to be at least some back and forth between the judges and the counties trying to figure out how maybe they could save this money elsewhere.

And this wasn't just a judge, uh, it's the prosecutor and every one of the administrative judges.

And then there's a bunch of different courts.

There's a common pleas, the appeals court, domestic relations, all of those.

All of them came together and said, nope, this won't stand.

Right.

Okay.

University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center was awarded its largest grant in its history.

The 5-year, $56 million federal grant will help a national effort focused on pediatric emergency preparedness.

And Gabe, where did that money come from?

So this is the largest grant UH has ever received.

Ever, ever received.

It's from the Health Resources and Services Administration, the HRSA.

$11.25 million annually to lead what's called the Pediatric Prevention Network, the PPN they're calling it.

So great news for them.

The agreement, what does it do?

What is it?

What are they going to use that money for?

So they're creating kind of this network of places that are working toward You know, they're going to help they're going to serve as a national resource dedicated toward pediatric preparedness, prevention, response, recovery, resilience.

So this is going to, you know, educate doctors and have a training program for healthcare professionals and provide families with, you know, communities with evidence-based preparedness resources, improve conditions during disasters and public health emergencies.

So it's training is what it is.

Okay.

Another important grant for a Cleveland medical institution.

Cleveland Clinic-led Center for Alzheimer's Research has received a 5-year, $21 million federal grant to support research into Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.

And Gabe, more good news for another system, but the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, what is that?

So this is a collaborative or a chance for different organizations to come together to study this.

You have different organizations like the Cleveland Clinic, of course, taking the lead on things, Case Western Reserve University, uh, the Veterans Affairs Northeast Ohio Healthcare System, uh, just to name a few.

This was established 7 years ago, and collectively they'll study this disease, which is getting bad apparently.

The data that they provided us showed us that, um, in 2020, um, the amount of people with Alzheimer's is about 7 million.

They project that to double, um, in 40 years from now.

So they want to you know, try to keep that doubling from happening.

And what other institutions are involved in that?

You mentioned it's led by the Cleveland Clinic, but there are Case Western Reserve University, Veterans Affairs Northeast Ohio Health System, MetroHealth, and UH.

Okay.

In other news, Cleveland Clinic is partnering with an artificial intelligence company to automate some administrative tasks, starting with patient referrals that arrive by fax.

I feel like this is not going to be news as of next week, Gabe, because everyone is going to be using AI for all kinds of automation.

In fact, at the county jail, they were talking about extending a contract where AI listens to phone calls to flag things that are happening there.

But in this case, what will the AI system do to handle patient referrals?

Well, it's funny.

I think people will read a headline like this and think, oh, Cleveland Clinic using AI.

And they're like, are they going to be doctors?

Are they going to be operating on me individually?

Right.

But really, the case the answer is yes.

No, I'm just kidding.

They're doing administrative So when referrals come to the hospital by way of fax, which with all due respect to fax is not the technology that I would assume they're using, but they're using that technology, newer technology to just, you know, do kind of data entry work.

And when those referrals come in, they will do whatever handling an administrative person does with that paperwork.

I saw this stat, nearly 70% of clinicians now use AI tools daily according to a 2026 industry report.

Question is, what are those tools and are they helping them to spend more time Well, it sounds like this is the type of tool that you would expect AI to be used in a way that makes sense.

It's to make their job a little bit easier, to make paperwork a little bit easier, not to do the, you know, the hands-on operating or even meeting with somebody.

But when a referral comes to the hospital and they have to determine what, you know, what do they might need or who should they see, what availability do they have to see whomever they need to see, you know, that AI technology can help, you know, handle that in a much faster way.

Indeed.

Flu season is almost here.

Experts are recommending that you get your flu shot in late September or early October, so we're basically there.

Andrew, it runs from October to March, but why do they say it's helpful to get it before the season officially starts?

Like, if you did it tomorrow, that would be a good idea.

It would be great if you did it yesterday.

The short answer is it takes a little while for it to really build up what it's supposed to do in your system.

2 weeks is what doctors say.

So you get it now, and 2 weeks later, you should be as prepared as you're going to be, having gotten the vaccine.

And the flu vaccine, a new one was approved this year.

Sometimes they hit and sometimes they miss.

What was the formula for this year's vaccine?

Well, one of the things they're approved to do this year is to use the mRNA-based flu vaccine, which if that sounds vaguely familiar, it's because it's what they used to develop the COVID vaccine originally.

Now they're taking that technology, which allows for the faster development of vaccines, that can be more powerful, more effective.

That's going to be available to certain groups under for this flu season.

We'll see what the track record is going forward on what happens this year.

But ultimately the thing that the health experts are stressing, young, old, in between, you need to get your flu shot.

do we know what mRNA stands for?

Ribonucle... Okay, I'm gonna see if maybe Aya, the producer, can give me that because I don't want to be accused of letting an acronym go by.

But everyone 6 months old and older can get a flu shot.

Older adults also qualify for other vaccines this season and should be thinking about it.

People 65 and over.

Yeah, you remember COVID?

That's available.

Also, a lot of talk last season about RSV, which is respiratory syncytial virus.

Go ahead.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

So anyway, those are 2 biggies also that health professionals want you to consider being vaccinated for.

All right, and it's messenger ribonucleic acid.

Of course, that came right out of my head.

It wasn't the screen here where Aya typed that.

Thank you, Aya.

Moving on, residents of Avon Lake will vote on a municipal income tax increase this November.

If approved, it would go into effect in January.

Gabe, why does Avon Lake say that it needs more income tax?

Uh, infrastructure primarily.

I mean, they're talking about, uh, a 0.4% municipal tax income that would increase Avon Lakes rate from 1.5 to 1.9 over 6 years.

Um, you know, they're hoping to generate about $6 million a year, but they're talking about, uh, different ways to improve infrastructure.

Um, you know, we're talking about roads, we're talking about buildings in the city, and there seems to be not a huge opposition to a lot of this what, you know, they're saying to this.

So people seem to be kind of on board in Avon Lake.

Yeah, it's interesting we brought this up because there's a lot of places where we're seeing moves to reduce taxes and these fights against it, and there we're not seeing that.

We're saying a little bit more of investment for our growing community.

Yes, a good idea.

Yeah, I think people are saying that we need more city services, we need more different ways that we can, you know, see the city grow and develop.

Other news in Avon Lake, it has an open council seat.

Applications being accepted accepted.

Now for Ward 1 council seat, it was left vacant.

Uh, tell me a little bit about that.

So there is a councilperson for Ward 1 in Avon Lake who stepped down, um, and, um, sorry, his name is Shahmir.

Um, yeah, Rob Shahmir.

Rob Shahmir, my apologies.

Rob Shahmir.

Um, so they're looking for people to appoint him and then for someone to run, uh, to fill his seat for a 4-year term beginning in, uh, 2024.

Okay.

The Ohio Department of Transportation has closed the Brookpark Road Bridge 2 years ahead of its planned rehabilitation after discovering deteriorating concrete across on the crossbeams supporting the road.

And Andrew, it's a historic 93-year-old bridge, pretty rough shape.

By the way, when you drive over it, you don't really realize as you're going over a bridge.

So when they said it closed, I'm like, where exactly?

And this is a that's an important spot.

We're right near the airport, just to the west of the airport.

You got NASA Glenn there.

The workaround, of course, is you get off the road, get on 480 for an exit, and then you get back off to circle around that.

And that's going to be in place.

They say they should have these temporary repairs patched up by Thanksgiving.

You can go down to Mastick too.

There are a couple of ways to get around that.

But you want to give away all the trade secrets here?

Sure, exactly.

We'll have a traffic jam there.

But the timeline, you said that was, it was a couple of years?

Thanksgiving for getting it opened.

With these temporary repairs, but they're still planning and proceeding with the overall bridge rehab project in 2028.

That was the original plan.

All right, now let's have some traffic news we can rejoice about.

The East 9th Street ramp is open on I-90 on the Innerbelt, Gabe.

So, you know, not, not that big backup for no reason.

Yeah, I took it this morning for the first time, uh, and, you know, since it's been open, and it was like driving down memory lane.

Yeah, so good.

It's back open, everything's fixed, and everything's good.

We always like it when it comes back, you know.

All right, Anisfield-Wolf, the annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which celebrates work examining racism and diversity, will be held tonight at 6:30 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

And Gabe, you've covered the awards in depth in past years, created these terrific documentaries that ran across the country about the recipients and the winners.

This year, what are some of the common themes?

I want, I want to say racialized diaspora.

I know that sounds a little silly, but this is, you know, celebrating or at least discussing the different ways people have migrated to the United States and the struggles that they faced.

So, you know, there's a new category that they have called memoir, which they haven't had in the past.

They had fiction, nonfiction, history books, and poetry.

Having a memoir is a new one.

They have a memoir by a woman named Sarah Aziza who wrote the book The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders, who talks about her family stories traveling from Palestine to the United States.

So should be a good show.

I'll be there this evening.

All right.

And you mentioned Sarah Aziza.

Who are other winners this year of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards?

Well, I think what I'm most intrigued by is Nell Irvin Painter, the Lifetime Achievement Award winner.

For nonfiction, the winner was Bench Ansfield.

And for poetry, Gbenga Adesina.

So it shows some, you know, maybe names that you haven't heard of, but if you really dig into their work, It's some pretty impressive stuff.

And the prizes are a little more beefy, a little beefier this year, a little more money when you win that prize.

Got some cash prizes this year.

I think it was $30,000 worth of prizes that they're doing.

So it's pretty impressive stuff.

All right, ceremony is free.

You need to reserve a ticket.

You've reserved yours.

But a terrific thing coming to Cleveland.

There's all kinds of events after that as well.

Buying around may not be enough to help the state's struggling craft breweries.

So Ohio lawmakers have proposed Senate Bill 23, which is aimed at reworking existing laws between beer and wine manufacturers manufacturers and their distributors.

And Karen, how exactly is this supposed to help brewers?

Well, apparently the law right now as it exists would kind of they're trying to change it so that it would regulate this franchise agreement law between beer and wine manufacturers and their distributors.

They say that the group that wants to do this says that it's excluding many smaller breweries from the requirements because of these strict agreements.

Now, the Wholesale Wine and Beer Association says that this is just going to be a way that people these smaller breweries can get out of their, their contracts, so to speak.

But you've got a lot of small breweries that have really been struggling over the last couple of years.

So this is thought to be something that could help these smaller breweries as they go up against these larger, these mammoth breweries that, that are happening all around, when in fact taking over some smaller breweries.

We've certainly done our part.

I am doing my part.

I don't know what else to do.

You know, it's funny.

I think, you know, younger people aren't drinking the way they used to be.

We're seeing some breweries close, Working Class Brewery on the West Side closing.

So yeah, I think it's a tough time for people.

All right.

And by the way, it isn't because you had a bunch of beers that you're looking at these new Mounted Patrol animals and thinking, are they tiny?

Because they are.

Cleveland Mounted Patrol is getting a whole lot cuter this week with the introduction of 2 new miniature ponies.

The Division of Police says the ponies will be used in community events, that they want the public's input on what to name them.

And I'm glad they're not using them for crowd control.

Unless it's like for a crowd of unruly preschoolers.

But they're little tiny ponies.

And we're actually going out to cover it today because I am dying to see what these things look like.

Do we have any name ideas?

I do.

Okay, let's hear them.

Turner and Hooch.

Come on.

There's Tom Hanks in the clip.

Turner and Hooch.

Yeah, but let's horsify that.

Yeah, okay.

Turner and Hoof.

Turner and Hoof.

Turner and Hoof.

We're getting there.

Karen, sounds like you want to weigh in.

Yeah, how about Benson and Stabler for the SVU fans out there?

You know, Cagney and Lacey, how about that?

All right, fair.

Starsky and Hutch.

You know, we are our car fleet at Ideastream, we've called Bert and Ernie in honor of the PBS Sesame Street stars.

So I like that for these horses too.

All right, well, check out our social media today and our website because we're gonna have we were suckers, so we fell for it.

It's the cute ponies on page one.

All right, that's all for today, and I thank you, Gabe and Andrew, for being with me in studio.

And Karen, thank you for joining us from Columbus as well.

Hey, go Guardians!

Absolutely, go Guardians!

All right, if you missed any part of today's show, you can hear a rebroadcast tonight at 9 on 89.7 WKSU and find it on any podcast app or the Ideastream Public Media YouTube page.

Monday on The Sound of Ideas, we'll explore what's happening for people in Northeast Ohio who are trying to become United States citizens and hear from several brand new Americans on our our latest Law of the Land segment.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for listening and watching and stay safe.

And now our closing song for today, One-Trick Pony by Paul Simon.