Category: CNN Regional

By Alexa Liacko

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    ATLANTA (WUPA) — Marietta City Schools said a yearlong ban on cellphones in its middle schools is paying off, with district leaders reporting improvements in student focus, classroom behavior, and teacher stress – results now being studied in partnership with Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

For the past year, students have been required to place their phones in magnetic locking pouches from the first bell until they leave campus. The program applies to students at Marietta Sixth Grade Academy and Marietta Middle School, where devices are unlocked only at the end of the day or during emergencies.

District leaders say the policy was developed with input from teachers, parents, and staff and approved unanimously by the school board.

Marietta City Schools is also working with researchers from Emory University and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to analyze the impact of reduced screen time on students’ academic performance, behavior, and emotional well-being. The partnership includes surveys and classroom data intended to help quantify changes in engagement, learning, and social interaction.

While administrators expected resistance, many students say the daily lock-up has not been a setback.

“Yeah, it’s kind of annoying you can’t be on your phone during school, but we focus, we learn,” said Elisha White, a 13-year-old eighth grader.

Another eighth grader, Mary Paxton, said the policy has helped students practice communication skills they will need beyond school.

“It brings aspects that we’re going to need in everyday life into school life. Like, it’s important to be able to talk to a person and make them feel like they’re the only one in the room. And with a phone, you’re not going to be able to do that if you’re looking on Instagram while talking to a person,” she said.

Not all students agree.

“I would use it for music so I could focus better, and now that I no longer can do that, my mind is racing constantly. I can’t focus on what the teacher is saying half the time,” said 13-year-old Jalen Franklin.

Teachers said the shift has been noticeable.

“The difference has truly been life-changing,” said Georgia studies teacher Linda Skaggs. She said the pouches have allowed her to spend less time on discipline and more time teaching.

According to Skaggs, her class’s state test scores have increased by an average of nearly 20 points since the policy began.

“They’re arguing over, you know, a loyalist and a patriot, like it’s happening today, where that didn’t happen two years ago. Two years ago, they were worried about who they were going to meet up with at the end of the class. So, it just – it makes my heart happy, having them be kids because this is it. This is one of the last years they get to be kids,” Skaggs said.

Marietta City Schools Superintendent Grant Rivera said district data mirrors what teachers are reporting.

“Students reported a 22% improvement on their ability to better learn in classrooms. That’s out of the mouths of the very kids we’re intending to serve. But equally as significant, 100% of our teachers have reported that they feel less stressed and better able to do their jobs,” Rivera said.

Rivera said the middle schools have also seen decreases in bullying incidents, disciplinary actions, and requests to leave class.

One of the biggest concerns from parents has been how students would communicate during emergencies. Rivera said the district’s approach prioritizes safety and clarity.

“What we have to acknowledge is that we don’t need children trying to text their parents. What we need is children listening to the directions of adults in that moment, and we’ll keep kids safe,” he said.

Rivera said teachers can unlock the pouches once students are safe in the event of an emergency.

With positive changes inside classrooms and more interaction around campus, Rivera said Marietta is using its data – including findings from its research partners – to inform conversations with state leaders about cellphone use in schools.

“Georgia has always been a leader, not a follower, and I encourage our legislators to be brave in their pursuit of doing right by children,” Rivera said.

District leaders say Marietta’s experience suggests that a real connection can come through louder than any notification.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Patrick Damp

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    PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Central Catholic High School has unveiled what they’re calling the most ambitious capital campaign in the history of the school.

It’s being called the “Centennial Campaign: Rooted in Tradition, Building For Our Future.” The goal of the campaign is to raise $55 million for campus improvements ahead of the school’s 100th anniversary in the 2027-28 school year.

The project will be broken down into three phases.

The first phase will be a renovation of the Brothers’ House, which houses the De LaSalle Christian Brothers who serve on the campus. This phase was completed during the 2024-25 school year, and it modernized and expanded the facility to create accessible, dignified living quarters and enhanced community spaces.

They also repurposed the underutilized sections of the facility to house the Offices of the President, Admission, and Finance and Administration.

Phase two will be the construction of a new student center, and the school is preparing to break ground on the new, 102,000-square-foot center.

It would be the largest campus construction project since 1927, when the main building was built.

The new student center will include a regulation-sized gymnasium, fitness center, season team locker rooms, a TV studio, lecture hall, dining hall, and student gathering spaces.

This would replace the nearly 50-year-old gym on campus.

The third and final phase will be the main building enhancements. That would include the installation of an elevator to ensure ADA compliance, upgraded security measures, and modernized climate control.

It will also create extended space for the fine arts program, as the dining hall and athletic facilities will be moved to the new student center.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

KDKA

By Patrick Damp

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    PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Central Catholic High School has unveiled what they’re calling the most ambitious capital campaign in the history of the school.

It’s being called the “Centennial Campaign: Rooted in Tradition, Building For Our Future.” The goal of the campaign is to raise $55 million for campus improvements ahead of the school’s 100th anniversary in the 2027-28 school year.

The project will be broken down into three phases.

The first phase will be a renovation of the Brothers’ House, which houses the De LaSalle Christian Brothers who serve on the campus. This phase was completed during the 2024-25 school year, and it modernized and expanded the facility to create accessible, dignified living quarters and enhanced community spaces.

They also repurposed the underutilized sections of the facility to house the Offices of the President, Admission, and Finance and Administration.

Phase two will be the construction of a new student center, and the school is preparing to break ground on the new, 102,000-square-foot center.

It would be the largest campus construction project since 1927, when the main building was built.

The new student center will include a regulation-sized gymnasium, fitness center, season team locker rooms, a TV studio, lecture hall, dining hall, and student gathering spaces.

This would replace the nearly 50-year-old gym on campus.

The third and final phase will be the main building enhancements. That would include the installation of an elevator to ensure ADA compliance, upgraded security measures, and modernized climate control.

It will also create extended space for the fine arts program, as the dining hall and athletic facilities will be moved to the new student center.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By De’Jah Gross

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    CINCINNATI (WCPO) — Grief can hit hard during the holidays.

But for brothers Everette Jr. and Jeff, grieving their father is what brought them back together.

Friday, 89-year-old Everette Linton Sr. passed away, months after we first met him at a Mason memory care facility where he was living with dementia. Despite his fading memories, his heart remained focused on seeing his wife, Patricia, who was battling advanced dementia at another facility.

After months apart, the couple was reunited, and Everette got to enjoy something he had done for 30 years one last time — a semi-truck ride to visit Patricia.

“You know who I am, I’m your husband,” Everette said to his wife during their reunion.

The story resonated far beyond the couple’s love story.

Everette’s firstborn son, Everette Jr., said watching his father’s final wish play out on television revealed something to him about family.

“My dad showed me family was important to him because he took care of us when he was growing up, had respect for his wife. He’s a patriot,” Everette Jr. said.

Everette Jr. and his brother Jeff told us the story helped heal a rift between them, bringing the siblings back together during their time of grief.

“That whole process right there was from God,” Everette Jr. told us. “He didn’t tell anybody about it because we had some type of distinction between us all in the family, and news wasn’t getting out how it was supposed to.”

Everette Jr. lives in Boston and is working to get to his father’s funeral in Iowa in hopes of reconnecting with siblings scattered across the country. He said he sees his father’s story as an inspiration for other fractured families to heal.

“I’m trying to reconcile us together, and … apologize if necessary when my time comes, because I know I was probably in the wrong,” Everette Jr. said.

When asked how he plans to carry forward his father’s legacy, Everett Jr. emphasized the importance of family communication and humility.

“I hope that what comes out of this is that maybe some family member might see themselves in the situation that I’m in right now,” Everette Jr. said. “They might want to come from all of that and humble themselves and apologize. And think about everybody else, not just yourself.”

As the holidays approach, Everette Jr. said he hopes to be able to spend extra days with his family. Their father’s memorial is scheduled for January in Des Moines.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Ally Kraemer

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    BATESVILLE, Indiana (WCPO) — A new student wellness center at Batesville High School is providing students with a dedicated space to manage stress and anxiety during stressful times.

The Student Success Center, which opened after two years of planning and community fundraising, was designed with direct input from students. The goal was to create a safe space to pause, reset and receive guidance.

“It feels like you’re going into a spa because everything about this space was intentional from the color of the walls, to the sounds that would come in, to the color of the fabric, the texture,” said Lisa Tuveson, Wellness Coordinator for Batesville Community Schools.

The center features five distinct areas designed to support student mental health and wellness.

A smart lab allows students to use “Heart Math” technology to see in real-time how breathing exercises can reduce their heart rate and help them re-center themselves.

A community area enables the school to bring in partners from the community to provide specialized programming for students.

The center also houses three school counselor offices.

It also includes a small outdoor area, as research shows nature plays an important role in regulating the nervous system.

Watch what students like the best in the Student Success Center:

Junior Makena Moore spent time with fellow students to develop what students wanted in the space.

“We’ve been researching what could possibly help with anxiety or a lot of stress and we’ve come up with things like NeeDoh, which is a fidget toy, coloring books and an ice machine because we researched it was a reset for your nervous system,” Moore said.

The space was constructed out of two unused classrooms.

“When they were feeling anxious or overwhelmed or stressed, they wanted to find a space where they could find privacy, where they could go be by themselves so we knew it would be really important for them to have a privacy area,” Tuveson said.

“Some of them even expressed that they were hiding in the bathroom or in the media center, and we wanted to provide a space that they could go and have privacy, but also be monitored.”

The Batesville Community Education Foundation raised about $230,000 for the project.

The success of the wellness center has generated interest from other schools in the district, with other buildings now requesting similar spaces for their students.

The timing of the center’s opening aligns with new research from Vanderbilt University highlighting the importance of protecting mental health during the holiday season, particularly for children and teenagers who may feel overwhelmed by seasonal changes and increased stress.

This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.

By Lysée Mitri

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    SACRAMENTO COUNTY, California (KCRA) — More than one year into KCRA 3’s investigation of a backlog of human remains tied to patient deaths at Dignity Health hospitals in the greater Sacramento area, a family is saying that they were just recently notified about a loved one who died 3 1/2 years ago.

“This isn’t something Hollywood could come up with. We are living a daily nightmare,” Nancy Louks said.

She said it was Dec. 1, 2025, when she learned that her brother, Charles Harvey, had died at Mercy San Juan Medical Center back on June 2, 2022.

After getting the news, her daughter started searching for the hospital online.

“Your stories started popping up. All kinds of information,” Louks said. “Devastation almost is not even a strong enough word.”

Harvey is one of dozens of patients over the last four years or so who have died at Dignity Health hospitals, like Mercy San Juan Medical Center, and whose remains were then stored at an off-site morgue without a death certificate for months or even years.

In at least four cases that KCRA 3 Investigates has identified, law enforcement had missing persons investigations open as families searched for their loved ones.

“What happened to these families is unacceptable. We know they were not given timely notification about the death of their loved ones,” Dr. Erica Pan, Director of the California Department of Public Health, said in an emailed statement.

However, Pan also said, “We remain committed to holding facilities accountable when they fail to meet established standards. As evidence of us upholding this commitment, after implementing additional monitoring at the facilities mentioned in your coverage, we can share there have been no additional or ongoing concerns regarding the storage of human remains.”

That statement was made within one week of Charles Harvey’s family reaching out to KCRA 3 Investigates with ongoing concerns.

“The state of California failed us as a family. That hospital failed us,” said Charles Harvey’s son, Jacob.

Harvey died at 67 years old. He was a U.S. Navy veteran, awarded the National Defense Service Medal for his time in the Vietnam War.

“He’s my big brother. I looked up to him,” Louks said.

She said they both lived in California for a long time, but she moved away to Arizona a few years ago.

“I had only moved one year before he passed away,” Louks said.

Harvey’s son, Jacob, lives in Indiana. Louks had to break the news to him.

“I had to make that heartbreaking call,” Louks said. “It was really hard. How do you tell somebody that? Your dad died, and it’s been three years, and he’s just sitting in a warehouse.”

“I never dreamed that I would ever be having this conversation. It just doesn’t seem real,” Jacob Harvey said.

He said his dad was a very private man.

“He was always private. He’s been like that his entire life. So, sometimes he’ll just disappear off the grid, you know, and then pop back up a couple of months later,” Jacob said.

When Jacob’s son did not get a birthday card in the mail from his dad in May of 2022, Jacob said he tried reaching out.

“I couldn’t get a hold of anybody, like he’s had 10 different phone numbers, but I’ve always had his email,” Jacob said. “I’ve always emailed him, and I never got anything back. And now I know why.”

After Harvey’s death at the hospital, he had been left without a death certificate for so long that Dignity Health actually had to go to court to ask for a delayed death registration and to explain the holdup.

“There’s no dignity in this. I don’t even know how they can use that name,” Jacob said.

Harvey’s case was one of at least two dozen that Dignity Health filed in probate court in 2024 and 2025. Each time, Dignity blamed the delay on what began back in 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic created a backlog…” and then, they said, “staffing issues arose” in order to address that backlog.

“Inexcusable,” Louks said, shaking her head.

A probate court ordered the creation of a delayed registration of Harvey’s death on September 6, 2024, but then Dignity Health went back to court to get an amended order in July 2025 to include details that were missing from its original application.

Harvey’s court order delayed registration of death ultimately shows it was not accepted for registration by CDPH Vital Records until August 12, 2025, one year after Dignity Health initially went to court to begin the process.

For weeks, Harvey’s family had trouble even tracking down the official records of his death.

Only after they did could they retrieve his remains from the off-site morgue where he had been kept without their knowledge for years.

“Our family was robbed the opportunities to properly grieve, to give him a decent Christian burial,” Louks said.

Dignity Health is fighting two lawsuits over allegations of failing to notify families and complete death certificates in a timely manner after patient deaths. Harvey’s family has now hired an attorney as well.

In a statement to KCRA 3 Investigates, Dignity Health said, “Our goal is to provide the best care and support possible for patients and their families. Unfortunately, we are unable to comment on pending litigation.”

Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.