Recent actions by school boards in Northeast Michigan.
∫ The Alpena Public Schools Board of Education’s Property Committee on Monday learned the committee overseeing the district’s bond-funded renovations had reviewed the design budget for changes at Ella White Elementary School.
Trustee Steven Donajkowski, who serves on both committees, said the district is on track with its plans and the amount allotted for Ella White. He said bids for Wilson, Besser and Lincoln elementaries are expected in January and the committee will review those on Jan. 12.
Associate Superintendent for Business and Operations Mary Lyon recently shared with the full Board of Education that its insurance company paid the district $37,873 for 146 Chromebook laptops and 719 carrying bags damaged by mold when they were stored last summer at Thunder Bay Junior High School. She said the money would be put in the district’s long-range technology fund for future Chromebook purchases.
An Independent Patients Commissioner is set to be appointed to act as champion for people who have been harmed by medicines or medical devices.
Baroness Cumberlege, who recommended the new role in a landmark report earlier this year, announced that the government had budged on the issue after initial resistance.
She welcomed the move saying: Had there been a patient safety commissioner before now, much of the suffering we have witnessed could have been avoided. Image: Marie Lyon s daughter was born with a deformed arm after she took Primodos
But she added the risk still remains and further urgent action is needed to protect patients from potentially harmful drugs.
Nicola’s first and only birthday
Jo Moreno’s baby girl did turn one, but died days after this photo was taken. She was just one of hundreds of victims of an appalling medical scandal. Fifty years on, Lorraine Fisher meets the families still fighting against a tide of shocking cover-ups and injustice
Sitting in an armchair, tenderly cradling her sickly 11-month-old daughter in her arms, Jo Moreno made a deal with God. ‘Lord,’ she prayed, ‘if you let me have her for her first birthday, you can take her.’
Jo got her wish: a few days later her beautiful little girl Nicola was blowing out a solitary candle on her cake, surrounded by her doting family. But within weeks Nicola was in hospital again, never to come home. The health problems she’d been born with had overwhelmed her young body and she stood no chance of survival.