Bullying can be countered
Bullying can be countered
I read with much interest last Sunday’s article about bullying. Help is available right here in our community.
The Rich Center for Autism located on the campus of Youngstown State University has identified bullying as a persistent issue involving students with a diagnosis of autism. We receive calls daily from distraught families. Several years ago we approached several public schools with a plan to develop a program that would address the needs of students diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. Special education programs do a good job but frequently miss addressing the social deficits of those with autism. These individuals have problems with social interaction.
Most often these students can learn successfully from the general curriculum but have difficulty navigating the social world. This makes them an easy mark for bullying and rejection. Parents and students are painfully aware of this reality. We at The Rich Center focus on social skill development.
Our proposal to the local schools to provide support was rejected for a variety of reasons. Not wanting to give up on the idea, we forged a partnership with St. Charles School and have very successfully supported students in a typical school setting. How has this program been so successful you might ask. The administrators committed to the appropriate education of students on the spectrum. The general education teachers co-teach with Rich Center teachers. We were able to prove to ourselves, and more importantly to the families raising a child on the spectrum that with the right support, these students can be socially competent and develop friendships and, most importantly, eliminate bullying from their lives.
Phyllis A. Ricchiuti, Poland
The writer is co-founder of the Rich Center for Autism.
Trustees have a duty to speak
In his letter to the editor in last Sunday’s paper, Donovan O’Neil wrote that he believes two of the three Austintown trustees, including myself, and the township administrator are “driving a wedge between Austintown Township and Governor Kasich.” He apparently believes our board’s comments to the media regarding proposed state budget cuts to local governments, which will result in a lack of matching funds to secure grant money, have been politically motivated.
Mr. O’Neil chastised our board for not silencing Trustee Ditzler for speaking out “without doing his homework”. I wonder if Mr. O’Neil realizes that our administrator, whom he also criticized, is a registered Republican. Could this newly hired Republican political director be shooting from the hip without first doing his homework?
Ironically, on the same day his letter appeared in the paper, two local school districts declared they would seek levies due to state budgetary cuts. I wonder if Mr. O’Neil believes that every local governmental entity is playing the partisan game. We must all be in cahoots.
His letter went on to rant about our board allowing a “Canfield” resident to speak at our last meeting and alleged this same individual demanded that Austintown withdraw its membership from the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber based purely on politics. I assume Mr. O’Neil was referring to Atty. David Betras, a Boadman resident and chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party. During the public comment period of a recent trustee meeting, Mr. Betras posed a good argument why our board should consider withdrawing our membership from the chamber. He cited the chamber’s unnecessary and divisive stand on SB 5 and the fact that Tom Humphries, president of the local chamber, was quoted as saying the reason he did not support then Gov. Ted Strickland, was that Strickland’s administration refused to hire his private company for a contract with the state lottery commission.
My only comments to the paper regarding withdrawing our membership from the chamber were that I believed our township should have withdrawn our membership a few years ago when the chamber supported the idea of imposing income taxes on employees of existing businesses in Austintown via a JEDD agreement with the city of Youngstown. That’s also when Tony Paglia, a vice president of the chamber, issued a personal warning to me that I either get on the bandwagon with the JEDD concept or face the consequences at election time. Yes, it was then that our board should have terminated our membership with the chamber.
We were elected to keep our constituents abreast of how their tax dollars are being spent, and it is incumbent upon us to reveal the dismal financial challenges we will be facing in the near future due to state budgetary cuts.
Lisa L. Oles, Austintown
Nothing nonpartisan about rally
The YSU students who orga- nized Monday night’s “Rally for Education and Community” at Beeghly Center don’t have much to be proud of. Instead of being a “nonpartisan” event as advertised, it was an intellectually dishonest display of misinformation about the effects of Ohio Senate Bill 5 which was recently signed by Gov. John Kasich and may be headed for a referendum election this fall.
One would think that a platform filled with highly paid and educated faculty, staff and students (not so highly paid) would have given us a more honest discussion about Ohio’s severe budget crisis and efforts to bring government spending under control.
Instead it was the biggest exhibit of hand wringing on display in a long time. The list of Democratic and union talking points was long: “unjust terminations,” “lower salaries,” “an attack on the middle class,” “will destroy teaching,” “ends collective bargaining,” “is an attempt to destroy unions” — all of which is incorrect.
Instead of being concerned about the real issues facing Ohio, Democrats are worried that the money train that runs from the unions to Democratic candidates may run dry. Unions are worried about protecting their own turf, and members are concerned that they may have to share more of the burden for health care, retirement and other benefits, which are often better than those in the private sector, the very place where the money comes from.
SB 5 won’t balance the budget and the governor never claimed that it would. It is just one piece of a large collection of reforms to fix Ohio, and help create a climate where YSU graduates can find jobs here, rather than have to leave the state for good.
There is plenty of information to be found about SB 5. A good place to start is www.SB5Truth.com, or view the bill summaries to be found on the Ohio Legislative Service Commission web site.
We would have hoped for better from our proud YSU, a place where honesty, integrity and academic rigor should be the norm.
Mark E. Munroe. Youngstown
The writer is chairman of the Mahoning County Republican Party and a member of the Mahoning County Board of Elections.
Gas prices will kill economy
After people lost much of their life’s savings in the stock market a few years back, it seems Wall Street speculators are back to get what’s left.
These prices at the gas pump will kill the economy for sure. They seem to invent reasons to raise prices daily.
This system isn’t working for us. Take the power away from the fox in the henhouse.
John K. Hodgson, North Lima