Air Pollution

By implementing a new 20 percent coinsurance payment for employees on the district’s health insurance plan, the Abbotsford School Board on Monday followed the lead of several other districts in the area that are trying to blunt the effects of rising premiums.As a member of the Marathon County Children with Disabilities Board, Abbotsford is one of six area school districts in a consortium that co...

Firefighters who respond to fires at lithium-ion battery storage units and other energy facilities are likely to be very limited in what they can do to extinguish the flames, according to Phillip Rentmeester, Marathon County’s emergency management director.“The current guidance for firefighting on this is to let it burn,” he said at a Public Safety Committee meeting last Tuesday. “Isolate ...

Each May about 4 million young people graduate from high schools across the country.The ceremonies are similar. Family, friends and relatives gather on football fields or gymnasiums. Music plays and young people in robes solemnly process. Speeches are given. Tears are shed. There is polite laughter as the school official delivers the same joke for the 23rd year in a row. Names are called. Diplomas...