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LORAIN COUNTY
AMHERST NEWS-TIMES • OBERLIN NEWS-TRIBUNE • WELLINGTON ENTERPRISE Thursday, Oct. 22, 2020
www.lcnewspapers.com
Volume 7, Issue 43
Oberlin Schools ABSENTEE DISASTER will go hybrid
School board debates canceling Phoenix winter sports season JASON HAWK EDITOR
OBERLIN — Over reservations about increasing COVID-19 case numbers, the Oberlin City Schools will move to a hybrid model. The district has been fully online since the beginning of the school year. By a 4-1 vote that capped hours of debate Saturday, the Board of Education voted to send kids back into physical classrooms on a part-time basis. No date has been set for the transition, said Superintendent David Hall, nor have key decisions been made about how many days kids at each grade level would attend. "We don't want to rush into it," he said. School board President Jason Williams cast the dissenting vote. He said virtual learning has its complications, but he is worried about the unprecedented threat posed by the virus, and how risks could increase during cold and flu season. In a survey of Oberlin parents, 37.5 percent of respondents said they wanted a hybrid model with in-person classes three days a week, while 34 percent said they wanted kids to keep learning from home. A little more than 28 percent said they preferred a return to in-person school five days a week. Meanwhile, a majority of teachers backed a continuation of the fully-online model. Teachers want to have their kids back, and are hoping for a change at some point, but feel timing is important, said Robin Diedrick of the Oberlin Ohio Education Association. "The feedback that I've been hearing from the community is the young kids are really struggling. We're not connecting, and this could be irreparable damage for them," said Board of Education member Anne Schaum. Board member Ken Stanley agreed, saying kinds in kindergarten through second grade need to "spend some time in school" and "gotta have some physical presence." Farah Emeka and Kimberly Jackson Davidson, both new appointees to the board in recent months, said they supported a hybrid model as long as Hall would have the power to order the Oberlin City Schools back to remote learning if there is a COVID-19 outbreak. The school board also debated whether to allow winter sports to move forward. In a talk with the board, Lorain County Public Health Commissioner David Covell said he met with athletic HYBRID PAGE A2
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Kristin Bauer | Chronicle
Andrew Irizarry, a worker at the Lorain County Board of Elections, collects ballots in their drivethrough lane on Tuesday, Oct. 14.
How a Cleveland company disrupted the 2020 election JASON HAWK EDITOR
SHEFFIELD TWP. — Jennie Stauffer was worried last Wednesday, watching her mailbox. No absentee ballot had arrived, eight days after state election officials swore it had been sent. "I've been watching and waiting, and checking on the status," said Stauffer, of Oberlin. No ballot appeared in Patricia Rea's mailbox in Sheffield Village, either. She said her brother and son had also not received ballots By Thursday, the scope of the problem became apparent, as social media lit up with complaints about ballots that had failed for more than a week to materialize all across Northeast Ohio. That day, the Lorain County Board of Elections revealed fewer than half of the absentee ballots requested by voters here had been mailed out, even though the state's reporting system said otherwise. Just 26,000 of the more than 63,000 that should have hit the mail Oct. 6 actually made it, Board of Elections Director Paul Adams confirmed. That left a backlog in excess of about 30,000, chalked up to problems at a Cleveland company called Midwest Direct, which was hired by 16 Ohio counties and two in western Pennsylvania to print and mail ballots. According to Adams, the company promised to get those 30,000 ballots in the mail by the end of Thursday, Oct. 15, already nine days behind schedule. Only a few thousand made it. The following morning, Adams and a bipartisan posse of elections
Copyright 2020 Lorain County Printing & Publishing Company
workers drove to the Cleveland plant to observe operations, crack the whip and make sure the rest of the ballots were on mail trucks by nightfall. Around 9 p.m., he said they were all in the hands of the U.S. Postal Service. They were 10 days behind schedule. What went wrong In a statement, Midwest Direct said it wasn't prepared for the volume of absentee ballots that had been requested. Thinking demand would double from the 2016 presidential election, the company bought extra equipment, hired extra staff and expanded work hours. "It is fair to say today that no one – not the various boards of elections, not Ohio’s Secretary of State, not our company – anticipated the staggering volume of mail-in ballot requests that has actually occurred," the release said.
As an example, Midwest Direct said one county it contracted with had expected between 40,000 and 70,000 ballots would be requested, but ended up needing 109,000 as of late last Thursday. "Our staff is working 16 hours every day to make sure everyone who wants a ballot in the counties we are serving gets one in time to cast their vote," Midwest Direct's release said. Not all counties have struggled. Mike West of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections said Midwest Direct has been able to pump out 40,000 ballots per day there, and voters started receiving them promptly on Oct. 6 as planned. “We’re seeing returns by the thousands. The ballots are coming back to us at a pretty good clip,” he said Friday — more than 50,000 completed and returned already, he estimated. “Somehow we dodged a bullet. I don’t know the rhyme or reason,” said West. BALLOTS PAGE A6
INSIDE THIS WEEK
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Lucy Jara of Amherst drops her ballot off in the drop box outside of the Lorain County Board of Elections.
Amherst
Oberlin
Wellington
Firefighters forge mutual aid deal with Lorain • B1
Top health official tells school board county will go red • B1
Trains on track to run silently starting Nov. 3 • B1
OBITUARIES A2 • MEET THE CANDIDATES A3-A4 • SPORTS B4-B6 • CLASSIFIEDS B6