Latest news with #Hose
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House Judiciary OKs bill allowing schools to hire safety officers or contract Guardians
Mar. 7—dbeard @ MORGANTOWN — School security guard legislation continues to wend its way through the Legislature, with a bill blending House and Senate versions earning unanimous House Judiciary Committee approval on Friday. HB 2164 will now head to the House floor. It's the third iteration, blending House Education's version with SB 450, which passed out of Senate Education and has been sitting in Senate Finance (in the early part of each session, the respective finance committees hold agency budget hearings and bills needing financial review pile up in the queue). The Hose provisions say public and charter schools, along with private and religious schools, may employ school safety officers. SSOs must be former law enforcement officers and may carry firearms. They may detain but not arrest a suspect. The hiring school must cover the equipment costs and provide insurance coverage. The bill prescribes training for the SSOs. In a new bill section, it brings in the Senate's West Virginia Guardian program. This allows public schools, including charters (private and religious schools do not appear n this section), to contract with a former law enforcement officer to provide Guardian services. The powers are essentially the same as for an SSO. Adding this to the House version gives schools a choice of bringing on an officer either as an employee or as an independent contractor. One change from SB 450 is HB 2164 cuts a provision providing qualified immunity from civil and criminal liability for the school and the Guardian. In substitutes an insurance requirement. For both SSOs and Guardians, this is an option for a school, not mandatory. Last year, the competing House and Senate approaches went to conference committee on the last day of the 2024 session but went unresolved before the session adjourned and both bills died. On Friday, Delegate Michael Hornby, R-Berkeley and a bill co-sponsor, said they've worked hard on this for the past two years. "It's about time we address this so that we can protect our kids." Delegate Keith Marple, R-Harrison, said every school in his county has a resource officer, and that officer is always the most popular adult in the school. They have good rapport with the kids and the kids will come to them to share any problems they're having at school or at home. "They've been able to rescue some kids from dangerous situations in their homes, " he said. The bill now heads to the House floor.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House Judiciary OKs bill allowing schools to hire safety officers or contract Guardians
Mar. 7—dbeard @ MORGANTOWN — School security guard legislation continues to wend its way through the Legislature, with a bill blending House and Senate versions earning unanimous House Judiciary Committee approval on Friday. HB 2164 will now head to the House floor. It's the third iteration, blending House Education's version with SB 450, which passed out of Senate Education and has been sitting in Senate Finance (in the early part of each session, the respective finance committees hold agency budget hearings and bills needing financial review pile up in the queue). The Hose provisions say public and charter schools, along with private and religious schools, may employ school safety officers. SSOs must be former law enforcement officers and may carry firearms. They may detain but not arrest a suspect. The hiring school must cover the equipment costs and provide insurance coverage. The bill prescribes training for the SSOs. In a new bill section, it brings in the Senate's West Virginia Guardian program. This allows public schools, including charters (private and religious schools do not appear n this section), to contract with a former law enforcement officer to provide Guardian services. The powers are essentially the same as for an SSO. Adding this to the House version gives schools a choice of bringing on an officer either as an employee or as an independent contractor. One change from SB 450 is HB 2164 cuts a provision providing qualified immunity from civil and criminal liability for the school and the Guardian. In substitutes an insurance requirement. For both SSOs and Guardians, this is an option for a school, not mandatory. Last year, the competing House and Senate approaches went to conference committee on the last day of the 2024 session but went unresolved before the session adjourned and both bills died. On Friday, Delegate Michael Hornby, R-Berkeley and a bill co-sponsor, said they've worked hard on this for the past two years. "It's about time we address this so that we can protect our kids." Delegate Keith Marple, R-Harrison, said every school in his county has a resource officer, and that officer is always the most popular adult in the school. They have good rapport with the kids and the kids will come to them to share any problems they're having at school or at home. "They've been able to rescue some kids from dangerous situations in their homes, " he said. The bill now heads to the House floor.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
House passes bill to expand options for Kentucky schools to make up lost classroom time
As of Friday morning, 64 of Kentucky's 170 public school districts had used their 10 allotted non-traditional instruction (NTI) days. Another 40 districts have one NTI day remaining. (Photo by) Despite a handful of Republicans voting no, the Kentucky House passed a measure that would expand options for public school districts that have lost instructional time to weather closures and other reasons, including recent statewide flooding. If House Bill 241 becomes law, Education Commissioner Robbie Fletcher would be authorized to grant up to five 'disaster relief student attendance days' when schools could provide instruction without having students in the classroom. Fletcher could also waive five required days for a district if making up the instruction would keep schools in session past June 4. The Hose approved the bill Friday morning by a vote of 82-7. Earlier this week, floods swept over all of Kentucky's 120 counties and snow and cold temperatures soon followed. Gov. Andy Beshear has said 15 people have died from the weather in recent days. The bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Timmy Truett, R-McKee, said Fletcher told him that as of Friday morning, 64 of the state's 170 public school districts had used their 10 allotted non-traditional instruction (NTI) days. Another 40 districts have one NTI day remaining. Truett, an elementary school principal, had previously acknowledged in a House committee that virtual learning is 'not as good as in-seat instruction,' but argued 'it does beat the alternative.' 'We're trying to make a bad situation as good as possible,' Truett said on the House floor. During NTI days, students participate in virtual learning at home. Even before the most recent flooding, some schools had used NTI days for bad winter weather or sickness. Kentucky law requires school districts to provide 170 student attendance days and offer a minimum of 1,062 instructional hours. Other avenues for school districts in the House bill include districts lengthening school days. Local school boards may also revise their calendars and submit plans to the Kentucky Department of Education for approval. Rep. Tina Bojanowski, an elementary school teacher and Democrat from Louisville, voted for the bill and also said, 'I'm going to tell you, the most important thing we can do is have children in the building, in their seats, in classrooms, and there is no exception for that, nothing virtual, nothing at home,' she said. Among Republicans voting against the bill, Rep. T.J. Roberts, R-Burlington, said the measure was 'extraordinarily well-intended,' but he had 'concerns about the level of discretion being given on this issue.' Rep. Felicia Rabourn, R-Turners Station, filed House Bill 737 which would eliminate NTI days. She voted against Truett's bill Friday. House Bill 241 now goes to the Senate for further consideration.
Associated Press
21-02-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Crow is not the only thing they eat at a wild game dinner in rural Pennsylvania
PINE GROVE, Pa. (AP) — The buffet line inside the fire hall in rural Pennsylvania was a familiar sight last weekend as a crowd of about 150 people heaped dinner onto their plates before sitting down to eat, hear a little live music and wait for the raffle. Aside from a couple of vegetable dishes that were largely ignored, the food being served at the Taste of the Wild Outdoors dinner inside the Pine Grove Hose, Hook and Ladder Fire Company was anything but standard fare. The menu of 14 species that included stingray casserole, bear stew, raccoon andouille and rabbit kielbasa was the centerpiece of a 12-year-old event organized by Larry Primeau, the volunteer rescue captain and a man with the cooking chops and network of sportsmen friends needed to pull it off. There was roasted grey squirrel, bobcat lo mein, wild boar ham and coyote teriyaki on a stick. And the mystery meat this year, as a boy in the crowd correctly guessed, was alligator. For the less adventurous, there was also venison and salmon. In previous years, dishes have included wood duck, snapping turtle salami, smoked eel, beaver shepherd's pie, goose in sauerkraut and groundhog chili and chorizo. Jim Jasterzenski braved the slushy weather and traveled about 74 miles (119 kilometers) from his home in Kingston. He rated the bobcat as very tender. 'Everything was good,' said Jasterzenski, whose companion at one point plucked a tiny shotgun pellet out of a serving of squirrel. 'You can't get it anywhere else.' The raccoon andouille sausage, served with cheddar mini pierogies, won over Sue Demko, Jasterzenski's wife. 'I normally don't like rabbit,' Demko said. 'But it's just, I don't know — it's just good.' The bear stew 'tastes like beef,' said Jack Gentilesco of Mountaintop, Pennsylvania. 'Very much like beef.' Primeau's goals are to encourage anglers, hunters and trappers to consider new species as food, make full use of the animals they kill and raise money for youth outdoor activities. 'In my opinion, any time we can get a kid away from a computer, away from a cellphone and out fishing, hunting — anything in the outdoors — that's a great thing,' Primeau said. For predators like fox and coyote, smoking helps conceal their musky natural flavor. Coyote has been popular as a smoked ham. A previous year's venison boudin sausage divided diners, Primeau said: 'Half the crowd loved it and half the crowd hated it.' All of the game on the menu Saturday was legally harvested somewhere in the United States, much of it in Pennsylvania. It is generally prohibited to sell wild game meat in Pennsylvania, a law that Primeau and his crew of relatives and friends comply with by packaging the event as a night of family entertainment and fundraiser. Schuylkill County Wild Outdoors is a registered charity. Primeau's hunting and fishing friends supply the major attraction, a plateful of the kind of meat that money can't buy. Dave Mease Jr. donated the bobcat, coyote, stingray and salmon and brought along family members to enjoy it. 'The cool thing is you get to try things you'd never get to eat,' Mease said, recalling the crow that was the prior year's mystery meat. 'It was actually really good.' From Primeau's boyhood outside Pine Grove, he has a fond memory of his grandmother's Shake 'N Bake squirrel and getting a taste of more exotic game, antelope, as a Boy Scout. By his teen years, he had developed an avid interest in survivalism. These days, when he is not working in his construction business, he might be foraging for edible wild plants, fishing or making an annual trek to a spot in South Carolina where spends a week hunting wild boar.
