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COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio’s state board of education is facing a budget cliff – and says for it to survive the fall, it must either raise teacher licensing fees or receive immediate funding from the state.

At the board’s March meeting, members mulled over a proposed licensing fee increase, from $200 to upward of $300, to prevent a $3.5 million budget shortfall by next June. With Ohio’s teacher licenses already among the most expensive in the region, education professionals – and board members themselves – argue that a fee increase disproportionately impacts newer, lower-paid teachers and would discourage prospective teachers from becoming licensed in the state.

The state school board is still navigating its new role as separate from the Department of Education and Workforce. Under the state’s two-year budget passed last June, the school board lost most of its powers – and a large portion of its funding. Instead of funding for staff salaries, travel expenses, IT costs and other board operation expenditures coming from the state, the vast majority of the school board’s money now comes from teacher licensing fees. 

“This is a problem 100% created by the state legislature and the governor when they changed the law taking away state funding from the state board of education while still giving the state board of education responsibility over licensure, teacher discipline, territory transfers and a number of other functions,” Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, said in an interview.

Dan Tierney, spokesperson for Gov. Mike DeWine, said examining the school board’s budget is, at present, like “looking at a cake that’s half-baked.” The board is still in the middle of its budget analysis process, he said, meaning it would be premature to say whether the body is facing a budget crisis that requires state intervention.

“It went from a regulatory board to a licensure board. This was very clearly a change in scope of the agency,” Tierney said. “We would assume that as a result of the direction in the legislation, that the board would not have the same needs for staff."

Although the school board lost most of its powers, it gained some responsibilities that Superintendent Paul Craft told board members is racking up expenditure costs. Included in the state budget, for instance, was the mandate that certain unlicensed school personnel be enrolled in the state’s criminal background check system. The school board is on the hook for an expected $600,000 in increased costs associated with that new requirement.

The board has eliminated $300,000 in estimated expenditures, according to board meeting materials, including by consolidating board meetings into one day and axing three staff positions it couldn’t afford to fill. But its predictions are even worse than before; in January, Craft estimated a $2 million budget shortfall by June 2025. Now, the board is expecting to be $3.5 million in the red.

The school board claims that upward of $6 million of its expenditures are nonnegotiable. It plans to ask the legislature for $10 million, or else it will need to raise teacher licensing fees. 

“We shouldn’t look at this situation and assume the state board has done everything they need to do to transition,” Tierney said. 

With licenses needing to be renewed every five years, an additional $100 or so may not seem like a significant amount, DiMauro said, but many teachers hold multiple licenses. And any increase will most strongly impact those at the bottom of the pay scale – the minimum salary for public school teachers is $35,000 -- and new teachers more generally, as they face additional up-front costs for exams and provisional licenses.

Increasing teacher licensing fees would only add to the larger “tax on teachers,” Gregory Mild, a professional educator at Columbus City Schools, told the school board. He pointed to an analysis from the Learning Policy Institute that found that in 2023, Ohio teachers spent an average of $480 on classroom supplies. Most teachers are also responsible for the costs of their continuing education, which can run thousands of dollars every five years.

“Ohio’s legislators must be held accountable to foot the bill for the operations of the State Board of Education related to professional conduct investigations, teacher evaluation, territory transfers, and all other board functions required by Ohio Revised Code,” Mild said. “Licensure fees should never be viewed as a possible funding source for anything other than the operations directly related to the Office of Licensure.”

In Steampipe unbundled we showed how its plugins, which originally worked only with the foreign data wrapper loaded into Steampipe’s batteries-included Postgres, are now also available as stand-alone distributions that you can load into your own instances of Postgres or SQLite. Now Steampipe itself is unbundled: its dashboard server and benchmark runner have migrated to a new open-source project, Powerpipe.

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Graceful error handling is an essential aspect of well-designed software. It’s also tricky. This article offers an overview of error handling in React applications and how to use React error boundaries to handle render-time errors.

We can divide React application errors broadly into two types, and error handling into two aspects.

The two React error types:

• JavaScript errors: These are conventional JavaScript errors that occur in the code portion of a component.
• Render errors: These are errors raised by the rendering engine, emerging from the markup.

Note that the nature of JavaScript UI makes for tricky error handling. Aside from typical runtime errors, there are errors that spring from the “drawing” of the screen components. We are distinguishing these two types of errors here as “JavaScript errors” and “Render errors.”

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Visual Studio Code is a terrific software development environment, and not only because it has excellent code-editing features and language support. Thanks to its rich culture of extensions, VS Code supports many tasks besides editing. You’ll find VS Code extensions for everything from a speedier way to navigate the editor to effortlessly inserting placeholder text and images.

Here are 11 VS Code extensions that you might want to consider when putting together your development environment. Some could be extremely useful additions to your toolkit, and even part of your daily workflow. 

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• Today: Gradual clearing, breezy, high 52
• Tonight: Clearing clouds, low 32
• Thursday: More sunshine, breezy, high 53
• Friday: Iso. sprinkle, few clouds, high 61
• Saturday: Sct'd rain showers, high 63
• Sunday: Partly sunny, showers later, high 60

Happy Wednesday!

After a wet and windy Tuesday, we've got some improvements arriving today. Expect gradual clearing of the clouds as we head through the day, with breezy, but not gusty conditions. Highs will be a bit cooler, topping out in the lower 50s.

Then for Thursday, expect more sunshine, with a continued breeze, and highs in the low to middle 50s.

Friday looks to be one of our nicer days, with partly cloudy skies, and only an isolated sprinkle chance. Highs warm to the lower 60s during the afternoon.

Then this weekend, we are looking at scattered shower activity throughout Saturday. We're not talking real heavy rain, but it will be a day to keep the umbrella handy. Highs stick in the low to middle 60s.

For Sunday, we are looking at mainly dry conditions for most of the area, during the daytime hours. Our next system moves in Sunday evening, and brings more rain going overnight and into Monday. Highs Sunday top out near 60.

-McKenna

Intel Corporation has launched two new initiatives as part of its AI PC Acceleration Program to promote collaboration between software and hardware ecosystems, aimed at enhancing AI capabilities across over 100 million Intel-based AI PCs by 2025.

The first initiative, the AI PC Developer Program, is tailored specifically for software developers and independent software vendors (ISVs). Its primary goal is to provide developers with accessible tools, workflows, AI-deployment frameworks, and developer kits featuring the latest Intel hardware, including the Intel Core Ultra processor. This program seeks to streamline the developer experience and facilitate the adoption of AI technologies at scale.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Record jackpots in both the Mega Millions and Powerball lotteries have close to $2 billion up for grabs this week.

Tuesday's Mega Millions drawing is worth a jackpot estimated at $1.13 billion.

Tuesday's winning Mega Millions numbers are 07, 11, 22, 29, and 38; the Mega Ball is 04 and the Megaplier is 2X.

All jackpot winners in both lotteries have the option of receiving a lesser, one-time payment or receiving the full jackpot through annual payments over the next 30 years. Tuesday's Mega Millions jackpot is worth a one-time payment of $537.5 million.

Tuesday's jackpot is the sixth time the Mega Millions top prize has surpassed $1 billion, and the third time in the last two years.

The top 10 Mega Millions jackpots are:

1. $1.602 billion -- Aug. 8, 2023
2. $1.537 billion -- Oct. 23, 2018
3. $1.348 billion -- Jan. 13, 2023
4. $1.337 billion -- July 29, 2022
5. $1.100 billion (estimated) -- March 26, 2024
6. $1.050 billion -- Jan. 22, 2021
7. $656 million -- March 30, 2012
8. $648 million -- Dec. 17, 2013
9. $543 million -- July 24, 2018
10. $536 million -- July 8, 2016

Odds of winning the jackpot by matching five numbers from 1 to 70 and a gold Mega Ball from 1 to 25 is 1 in 302,575,350; the odds of winning any prize is 1 in 37. The odds don't change as they are not based on the number of tickets sold, but on the chances of picking the right combination of numbers.

No one matched the five numbers and the Powerball in Monday's latest drawing, pushing Wednesday's Powerball drawing to an estimated $865 million jackpot.

Monday's winning Powerball numbers are 07, 11, 19, 53, and 68; the Powerball is 23 and the Power Play multiplier is 2X.

Wednesday's estimated jackpot puts it fifth on the game's all-time jackpots. The one-time payout is worth an estimated $416.1 million.

The top 10 Powerball jackpots in the game's history are:

1. $2.04 billion – Nov. 7, 2022
2. $1.765 billion – Oct. 11, 2023
3. $1.586 billion – Jan. 13, 2016
4. $1.08 billion – July 19, 2023
5. $865 million (estimated) -- March 27, 2024
6. $842.4 million – Jan. 1, 2024
7. $768.4 million – March 27, 2019
8. $758.7 million – Aug. 23, 2017
9. $754.6 million – Feb. 6, 2023
10. $731.1 million – Jan. 20, 2021

Players must match five balls numbered 1 to 69 plus a Powerball numbered between 1 through 26 in order to win the jackpot.

The odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, and those odds never change because they are not calculated based on the number of tickets sold, but rather the odds of picking the five white ball numbers as well as the Powerball. The odds of winning any prize in the drawing is 1 in 24.9.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) -- Columbus community members came together to raise concerns about property taxes in the city.

On Tuesday, members of the community made their voices heard at a forum hosted by a group of non-profits, the Livingston Partnership. The group includes APDS, Gertrude Wood Community Foundation, Rickenbacker Woods Foundation and Livingston Area Merchants Association. 

"It's really important because we have a lot of residents that really don't understand the process," Gertrude Wood Community Foundation Executive Director Jennifer Jordan said. "Don't understand the process for tax levies, don't understand where the money goes and they are really concerned about their property taxes going up."

Many shared their frustrations and anger. Some said they feel they are being pushed out of their homes as they see the impact of recently passed levies and property tax hikes.

Members from the county auditor’s office, Columbus City Schools and Columbus Metropolitan Library addressed the crowd and answered questions. Some Columbus residents shared that their property taxes more than doubled.

"People have lost their houses because they can't afford to pay their property taxes," Columbus resident June Upchurch said.

Some people came as a voice for the community, hoping to bring the answers to questions back to others. 

"When they got the tax bill, they start screaming like, how am I going to do this, I can't afford this. I've got a fixed income," Family Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Frederick LaMarr said. 

The Franklin County Treasurer emphasized the resources available and how people need to reach out if they are struggling.

"We are 100% serious about finding what is necessary to help you stay in your home," Franklin County Treasurer Cheryl Brooks said. 

Columbus Metropolitan Library representatives spoke about how the money will help libraries serve the growing population. 

Columbus City Schools spoke about what the money in its levy will be used for as well as efforts to increase transparency.

"Transformation is not free and it's not okay that we continue to just piece together public education because it is public education. At the end of the day it's our job to advocate for our students," Columbus Board of Education President Christina Vera said. 

Vera added that in the next year, there will be itemized budgets for each school building posted on its websites to increase transparency. 

Many plan to continue asking questions to make sure they know where the money is going.

"I just don't understand why the taxes have gone up triple for everyone over here. It's not fair and I'm upset," Columbus resident Paula Palmer said. 

For those hoping to bring their home value down, the deadline for the board of revisions is April 1. More information can be found here. 

Resources for support can be found here. 

• Apple vs U.S. DoJ
• G.M.'s Unbelievably Horrible Driver Data Sharing Ends
• Super Sushi Samurai
• Apple has effectively abandoned HomeKit Secure Routers
• The forthcoming ".INTERNAL" TLD
• The United Nations vs AI.
• Telegram now blocked throughout Spain
• Vancouver Pwn2Own 2024
• China warns of incoming hacks
• Annual Tax Season Phishing Deluge
• SpinRite update
• Authentication without a phone
• Are Passkeys quantum safe?
• GoFetch: The Unpatchable vulnerability in Apple chips

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Hosts: Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

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Oracle has released GraalVM for JDK 22, an update to the Java runtime with ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation that brings support for Java 22 features.

Released on the same day as Java 22, which was published March 19, GraalVM for JDK 22 can be downloaded from the project website. Most features of JDK 22 are available for Graal JIT compilation and Native Image AOT compilation. Java 22 features supported in both Graal JIT and Native Image include string templates, the class-file API, unnamed variables and patterns, structured concurrency, and scoped values.

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