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One Middle Tennessee school district will no longer accept doctor's notes to excuse student absences. Lawrence County School System officials announced the new attendance policy during a June 26 board meeting, where Director of Schools Michael Adkins cited high rates of "chronic" absenteeism among students. "You can bring all the doctor's notes you want, but it's still unexcused," Adkins continued. (Leyva, 7/28)

Anna Olson is set to finish her master's degree in school counseling at the University of Oklahoma next spring. Once that happens, she'll be able to provide much-needed mental health services. She says she never would have considered becoming a counselor if it weren't for a federally funded program that covered all the costs of her education. (Wallis and Pfeifer, 7/28)

Nancy Jensen believes she’d still be living in an abusive group home if it wasn’t shut down in 2004 with the help of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, which for decades has received federal money to look out for Americans with disabilities. But the flow of funding under the Trump administration is now in question, disability rights groups nationwide say, dampening their mood as Saturday marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. (Hanna and Hunter, 7/26)

You wouldn’t guess that Matt Keeth has a severe visual impairment from the way he skateboarded up and down Chicago’s Disability Pride Parade in the Loop — if not for the red-and-white striped cane he rolls in front of him. Keeth, 31, a southern Idaho native, had always experienced a small degree of visual snow — like television static in the eyes — but three years ago, he woke up to the more extreme visual snow syndrome, a neurological condition in which visual snow is accompanied by other symptoms such as headaches, migraines and vertigo. (Weaver, 7/26)

Dozens of people were accidentally dosed with THC, the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis, after consuming food served by a pizzeria in Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report shared Thursday. Famous Yeti's Pizza, a pizzeria in Stoughton, Wisconsin, is located in a building with a shared kitchen used by a state-licensed vendor who produced edible THC products, the CDC said. (Breen, 7/25)

When Jarvis Parker was looking to buy a house in Waterbury in late 2019, he had several basic criteria. He wanted to avoid properties with leaking roofs and flooded basements. And he needed a place with enough space for himself, his daughter and his now 4-year-old grandson. The modest two-bedroom home that Parker eventually purchased in Waterbury’s East End checked all of those boxes. (Brown, Carlesso, Daou and Rasekh, 7/27)

The Trump administration said Friday it’s investigating the Oregon Department of Education after receiving a complaint from a conservative non-profit group alleging the state was violating civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams. It’s the latest escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams nationwide. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. (Bellisle, 7/25)

Dr. Meena Seshamani says she’s focused on behavioral health and other priorities as she passes her 100th day heading the state’s Department of Health, though she avoided direct answers to many of The Sun’s questions on major health topics during a wide-ranging interview Wednesday. (Conrad, 7/24)

���ϳԹ��� News: California Looked To Them To Close Health Disparities, Then It Backpedaled

Fortina Hernández is called “the one who knows it all.” For more than two decades, the community health worker has supported hundreds of families throughout southeast Los Angeles by helping them sign up for food assistance, sharing information about affordable health coverage, and managing medications for their chronic illnesses. She’s guided by the expression “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (Sánchez, 7/28)