Good morning, Cincinnati! Here are your morning headlines.
• Campbell County Schools Superintendent Glen Miller abruptly announced his retirement after he was charged with domestic violence. Miller has been on paid administrative leave since he was arrested last Wednesday night at his Erlanger home after his daughter called 911 to report that he has struck his wife in the head and neck. Miller told police his wife’s injuries were a result of an accident, but his story didn’t quite match his wife and daughter’s versions. He was booked into Kenton County Detention Center and charged with domestic violence that same evening just after midnight and released the following afternoon. Miller has been superintendent of Campbell County Schools for four years. His retirement will go into effect November 1. In the meantime, Associate Superintendent Shelli Wilson will be placed in charge of the district.
• Cincinnati State is considering a partnership with private testing and consulting firm Pearson to attempt to boost its enrollment and retention rates. The college seems to have hit a rough patch. Current enrollment is just below 10,000, 10 percent lower than a year ago, it faces a state-mandated tuition freeze and president O’dell Owens recently departed after tensions with the board of trustees. Cincinnati State is reportedly discussing a 10-year contract with Pearson that would give the company control of its $550,000 marketing and recruiting budget in exchange for 20 percent of students’ tuition recruited above the college’s quota of 4,000. If it goes through, this contract would be the first for the New York-based company, which earns much of its revenue through K-12 standardized test preparation. Given the college’s not-so-great reputation for relying heavily on test scores, the college’s faculty senate has urged the administration to wait on the contract until the results of spring recruitment are in.
• Child poverty is down in Cincinnati, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, but the rate is way above state and national averages. According to the survey, child poverty is down to 44.1 percent from 51.3 percent in 2012, but it’s double the national average of 21.7 percent and near double the state average of 22.9 percent. City Health Commissioner Noble Maseru has suggested targeting the poorest zip codes first to begin to further bringing that number down, but no concrete plan has been put in place.
• Infamous Rowan County clerk Kim Davis apparently secretly met with Pope Francis. According to Davis’s lawyer, officials sneaked Davis and her husband, Joe, into the Vatican Embassy in Washington D.C. last Thursday afternoon where the Pope gave her rosary beads and told her to “stay strong.” During his first visit to the U.S., Pope Francis did not publicly support Davis by name but instead stated that “conscious objection is a right that is a part of every human right.” Davis spent time in the Carter County Detention Center for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. She and her husband were conveniently already in Washington D.C. to accept an award from conservative group, the Family Research Council.
• Cincinnati is a travel hotspot, or at least, “on the verge of a hip explosion,” according to Forbes Travel Guide. According to the magazine, Cincinnati has a hilly landscape much like San Francisco’s without the San Francisco prices, and the newly gentrified, or “revitalized,” Over-the-Rhine is like Brooklyn before the hipsters took it over. Other reasons the third-largest city in Ohio makes “the perfect weekend getaway” include Skyline cheese coneys, a ton of German beers and Kentucky whiskeys to choose from and a “surprisingly impressive array of luxury hotel options.”
That’s it for today! Email is nkrebs@citybeat.com, and I’d love to hear from you!
This article appears in Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2015.