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ACC syncs with other colleges By TREVOR HOAG The Iola Register
Robin Schallie is the new director of the Iola Area Chamber of Commerce. REGISTER/VICKIE MOSS
Trying something new By VICKIE MOSS The Iola Register
“Don’t be afraid to try new things.” Robin Schallie grew up hearing that advice from her father, and she’s always taken it to heart. Now, at the age of 63, she’s trying something new as the new director of the Iola Area Chamber of Commerce. And on her first day on the job, she brainstormed a list of things to try. She wants to connect various entities, helping businesses utilize each other, educational institutions, organizations and local experts in new ways.
“I feel like my job is more of a facilitator,” she explained. “And also as a spark to get people thinking in different ways.” THOUGH it’s a new role for her, Schallie has always been focused on business and marketing. She grew up in Neenah, Wisc., an area of about a quarter-million people between Milwaukee and Green Bay. After earning a bachelor’s and master’s degree, she taught business and marketing for 26 years at Fox Valley Technical College. She retired in 2014, and decided to move with her hus-
band, Stephen Lust, to his hometown of Iola. They built a home in the country, creating their own little “hobby farm” with chickens, turkeys and a few cattle. For a city girl, her new life definitely fell into the category of “trying something new.” “I didn’t know I could raise chickens until I started to raise chickens,” she said. “My husband laughs and says, the two things you hate are dirt and bugs. So what do we do? Move to the country. “But I can sit on my deck and not hear anything or see See CHAMBER | Page A3
ACC is working hard to improve online education and sync up with other state colleges on general education standards. As an entree into these efforts, ACC vice president Jon Marshall briefed ACC trustees Tuesday evening about the differences between online learning, which the college specializes in, and correspondence education, to which it has little connection. Marshall said the distinction is important as efforts are made to synchronize standards for online learning across in-person, online and high school course offerings. ACC has also spent signifi-
cant time, he said, in recently updating its online learning standards, so that they resonate with best practices from cohort institutions, or “inspirational” ones such as Pennsylvania State University. Marshall noted how Kansas colleges and universities, including ACC, are working to draft general education standards that are highly consistent with one another. This would mean that a student who, say, graduated from ACC and then transferred to K-State, could later transfer to Wichita State without losing any of the progress that they had made towards earning their degree. Marshall also mentioned See ACC | Page A6
Vice president Cynthia Jacobson presents to the ACC Board of Trustees on the Kansas Promise Scholarship. REGISTER/TREVOR HOAG
Summer rec season concludes
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Turkey vultures could be a sign of climate change PAGE A2
Allen County COVID-19 Case Count
Current cases ................. 16 Total cases* ................... 1,282 Deaths........................... 20 *Since the start of the pandemic Sources: Southeast Kansas Multi-County Health Departments, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Vol. 123, No. 176 Iola, KS 75 Cents
Overdose deaths hit record 93,000 NEW YORK (AP) — Overdose deaths soared to a record 93,000 last year in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. government reported Wednesday. That estimate far eclipses the high of about 72,000 drug overdose deaths reached the previous year and amounts to a 29% increase. “This is a staggering loss of human life,” said Brandon Marshall, a Brown University public health researcher who tracks overdose trends. The nation was already struggling with its worst overdose epidemic but clearly “COVID has greatly exacerbated the crisis,” he added. Lockdowns and other pandemic restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get, experts said. Jordan McGlashen died of a drug overdose in his Ypsilanti, Michigan, apartment last year. He was pronounced dead on May 6, the day before his 39th birthday. “It was really difficult for me to think about the way in which Jordan died. He was alone, and suffering emotionally and felt like he had to use again,” said his younger brother, Collin McGlashen, who wrote openly about his brother’s addiction in an
University who researches geographic patterns in overdoses. “Nearly all of this increase is fentanyl contamination in some way. Heroin is contaminated. Cocaine is contaminated. Methamphetamine is contaminated.” Fentanyl was involved in more than 60% of the overdose deaths last year, CDC data suggests. There’s no current evidence that more Americans started using drugs last year, Monnat said. Rather, the increased deaths most likely were people who had already been struggling with addiction. Some have told her research team that suspensions
TOPEKA — Low-income Kansans will have wider access to child care assistance tied to federal aid authorized in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, state officials said Thursday. The Hero Relief Child Care Assistance Program implemented last year to assist essential workers with the cost of caring for children will be modified to include more Kansas workers. “Parents have faced additional challenges because of the pandemic, and it was important to me that we provide meaningful assistance to families,” said Laura Howard, secretary of the Kansas Department for Children and Families. Adjustments to the program mean any Kansas worker employed an average of 20 hours per week and making 250% or less of the federal poverty level would qualify. The family share deduction for essential workers was waived and the deduction for other people was reduced. The el-
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OxyContin, in 80 mg pills, in a 2013 file image. obituary. Jordan McGlashen’s death was attributed to heroin and fentanyl. While prescription painkillers once drove the nation’s overdose epidemic, they were supplanted first by heroin and then by fentanyl, a dangerously powerful opioid, in recent years. Fentanyl was developed to treat intense pain from ailments like cancer but has increasingly been sold illicitly and mixed with other drugs. “What’s really driving the surge in overdoses is this increasingly poisoned drug supply,” said Shannon Monnat, an associate professor of sociology at Syracuse
State expands help for child care, food
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