“Banning books give us silence when we need speech. It closes our ears when we need to listen. It makes us blind when we need sight.” — Stephen Chbosky, American writer and producer. It started innocuously enough. A teacher in Stratford brought in books from her own collection to supplement those in her classroom. By itself, this is nothing extraordinary. Most, if not all, teachers have

As Taylor County board members continue to chip away at the budget process, they must work to avoid getting tunnel vision on potential increases in ambulance costs. In recent years there has been a shift away from an on-call, primarily volunteer model of delivering emergency medical services to one that relies on more fulltime equivalent staff. This shift has resulted in skyrocketing personnel

For the past year the Rib Lake School District has been working toward a proposal to address current and future needs of the district. School board members, administration, teachers and other staff have worked with engineers and architects to identify places in the district’s buildings that need to be addressed as well as identifying ways to improve the use of the school buildings to increase

A decades-long relationship to provide ambulance service to county residents is teetering on a knife’s edge over ongoing dissatisfaction with coverage in rural areas and spiraling labor costs. Taylor County stands at a crossroads when it comes to how to provide emergency medical services. Down one path there are those on the county board who would like to see the county take over complete operation

School starts this week. We all know what this means. We all know what we should be doing to keep ourselves and others safe on the roads. We all know we shouldn’t be fiddling with our phones or trying to navigate through 23 touch screens on our vehicle’s dashboard in order to turn up the radio when our favorite song comes on. We all know our hands belong on the steering wheel and our

Star News Editorials On a recent summer afternoon, the driver on a motorcycle was heading south on Hwy 13 in the city of Medford when a car turned in front of him to enter a parking lot. He ended up being airlifted with serious injuries. The driver of the vehicle told police she had not seen the motorcycle or driver before the collision. The story is not a unique one to this area. Across