Captain Dennis Tajer has taken to the skies as an airline pilot for over 20 years. He’s also the spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association and represents 15,000 American Airline pilots.

"This has been in the air for a long time and no one did anything about it," said Tajer.

He says the pandemic exacerbated a staffing problem carriers knew about by offering early retirements in what he calls a money-saving move and then failed to plan for a return to normal.

"They kept us from collapsing they weren't ready for the recovery," said Tajer.

Airlines were looking to save money during the 2020 pandemic shutdowns. The federal government stepped in with aid under the condition airlines couldn’t lay people off or furlough anyone.

"And then they took a hundred airplanes at American, and they retired them permanently. They didn't train pilots to go on new airplanes, and of those who retired, they did not train their replacements," said Tajer.

But things changed a year later as Americans started to travel again, and airlines added routes.

In 2021, the airline industry expected an increase of 42% in routes compared to 2019, according to data from Cirium Innovata a database tracking flight schedules across airlines.

More flights mean more pilots to get passengers to their destinations. But hiring more pilots doesn’t come without turbulence. In the past, airlines have turned to the Air Force as a pipeline to bring in pilots. But they’re also facing a shortage.

A congressional report in 2019 warned the Pentagon faced a shortfall of over 3,000 pilots, which it states has been "several years in the making."

"It was rare at the majors depending on the airline, to find someone who wasn't prior military. It was just the pipeline that was there everyone knew with the fall of the wall and the Soviet Union collapsing that the military wound down," said Tajer.

The FAA requires commercial pilots to log 1,500 flight hours for certification. And obtaining a commercial license after that isn’t cheap.

We looked at three different flight schools. A commercial pilot’s license price ranges between $30,000 to nearly $100,000.

"What young man or woman is thinking, 'Hey, I'm gonna go drop a $100,000, maybe make it, maybe not for a job that will come,'" Tajer said. "And go I'll be laid off, there will be bankruptcies, I'll be unemployed if you're looking at this as a business decision other than I just wanna fly what a horrid investment."

But some airlines are taking matters into their own hands. Phoenix-based Mesa Airlines recently purchased nearly 30 planes to help pilots build time toward their airline transport pilot license while trying to build a recruiting pipeline.

And American, United, Delta, Southwest, Frontier, and others are spearheading similar initiatives. Washington is also working toward a solution. In July, Republican Nebraska Senator, Deb Fischer, introduced the Let Experienced Pilots Fly Act. It would raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 — though pilots would only be allowed to fly within the U.S. — with a new emphasis on solving the issue.

Tajer believes it’s going to take time to get more new pilots in the cockpit.

"So, it's gonna take a while, and there's no magic switch. It takes a series of switches and everybody working together to get it done," said Tajer.

This means, for now, travelers and pilots are left having to pack their patience.

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SPRINGFIELD TOWNSHIP, Ohio —

Another shoe has dropped in the investigation of suspected abuse at Hillcrest Academy.

Hamilton County and Juvenile Court announced Wednesday afternoon they will end their contractual ties to Rite of Passage, which runs the treatment program for at-risk youth at Hillcrest.

The decision comes in the wake of allegations that surfaced within the past few days from a worker there.

An investigation is underway into whether a female staff member sexually assaulted at least one student.

There was an emergency Juvenile Court meeting about it over the weekend.

According to a joint statement this afternoon from Hamilton County Juvenile Court and Hamilton County Job and Family Services, "On Saturday, HCJC held an emergency shelter hearing to remove all 12 of the children the Court placed at Hillcrest. HCJFS is also in the process of relocating its residents. In addition, the County Administrator and the Administrative Judge have given notice that it intends to terminate its contract with Rite of Passage."

The statement mentioned there were 50 current residents at Hillcrest.

A dozen were placed there by Juvenile Court, six by Jobs and Family Services.

The rest of the residents were sent to Hillcrest by other entities from out of state.

Neither Hamilton County leaders nor anyone from Juvenile Court would say anything further about the separation, referring all questions to the Hamilton County Prosecutor.

As for the criminal investigation, the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office said there is nothing new to release at this time.

The Instagram account Dear White Staffers is a popular meme page geared toward people of color working on Capitol Hill and in government agencies.

In recent weeks, however, it's become a forum for staffers to anonymously share stories about issues they have faced working for specific members of Congress. And it could have a real impact on both the conditions congressional staff deal with and changing who gets to work in Congress.

Earlier this month, a group of congressional staffers announced an unprecedented effort to unionize. This is the byproduct of years of work done by people who haven't been well paid in an environment that still isn't especially diverse.

To clear up some misconceptions here, these are white-collar jobs that require dressing up, but working in the halls of Congress doesn't exactly mean you're making bank. 

Staffers, especially at the entry-level, can have full-time jobs working in Congress and have to rely on government benefits like food stamps or work a second job just to afford to get by. 

Take Don Bell, for example. He now works in career development at the University of Connecticut School of Law, but he worked more than three years on Capitol Hill as a Senate staffer in the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal and served as president of the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus.

He loved his time on the Hill and credits the office for getting him a stipend even before he was brought on full-time and for promoting him and supporting his development. But early on, he started out unpaid and had a second job you wouldn't expect a congressional staffer to need.

"I was a lawyer by day working on policy and a cashier at Wal-Mart at night," Bell said. "And as you can imagine, those were very long days, going from one job to the other, just trying to make it financially. I came to D.C. with nothing coming from a family that didn't have any means."

And that required some major sacrifices. 

"By the time I started full-time in Senator Blumenthal's office as the judiciary legislative correspondent, I was two weeks away from defaulting on my student loans," Bell said. "So I put all of my chips in the middle of the table to have the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill."

It might come as a surprise, but these staffers are often the ones actually writing the laws. Members of Congress are public faces, and they have a wide range of work, including committee meetings. But when it comes to how the sausage is actually made, markup meetings — where the bulk of any given bill gets written — are usually attended by staffers, sometimes even low-level ones.

All those cost issues don't even account for internships, which were unpaid for a long time on Capitol Hill. When you factor in the cost of living, transportation and other essentials, interning could cost thousands of dollars. If you're stretching out every dollar, even some small things can be a challenge. 

Carlos Mark Vera was an intern on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

"It's little things that you normally think about," Vera said. "You have to wear professional clothing every day. I only owned one suit, so my family had to kind of pitch in to buy me another one. So it definitely was a struggle."

His experience struggling to afford an unpaid internship led him to found Pay Our Interns — a group that's pressuring offices on Capitol Hill and other government agencies to, essentially, pay their interns. He argues that not paying interns really limits the pool of who can do it.

"You need housing, so that's rent, any professional clothing, transportation, and we know that on average, an unpaid internship can cost $6000 for three months. So unless you have that money just lying around, it really puts a lot of folks that are working-class middle class at a disadvantage."

There's been some positive change on this front. Every congressional office now has money set aside  — each House office has $25,000 set aside specifically to pay interns.

But those funds haven't necessarily led to congressional offices hiring a representative set of interns.

A report last year by Pay Our Interns found that 76% of paid congressional interns were white, even though white students make up just 52% of the national undergraduate student population. 

And that gap, which is reflected in full-time and senior staff too, has consequences for who gets to shape policy. Ruby Robles, a current Capitol Hill staffer and a spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Staffers Association or CHSA, says it affects a lot of members of the group.

"A lot of us [are] Latinos, but some of us, we migrated to this country," Robles said. "We are first-generation college students, and then we made our way all the way to Washington, D.C. A lot of us are working on Capitol Hill because we are we want to work in public service. It's the American dream, but the higher pay issues, sometimes they become a barrier for many people."

A survey by Issue One, a nonpartisan group looking to reduce the influence of money in politics, found that 13% of all Capitol Hill staff — over 1,200 people — made less than the salary MIT estimates would constitute a living wage of $42,610 in Washington, D.C. But if you look at staff assistants, the most common entry-level full-time job on Capitol Hill, that rate jumps to 70% making less than the estimated living wage in D.C.

The low pay means, sometimes, the only people who can take these staff jobs are people supported financially by their parents. That leads to the population of staffers skewing whiter and wealthier. And as a lot of current and former staffers are pointing out, it shuts out many people of color and people who don't come from privileged backgrounds.

The result is a less diverse workforce. The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimated in a 2020 report that people of color made up just 13.7% of all top-level House staff, and just 11% of all top-level Senate staff.

And that can make a real difference when crafting policies.

"Congressional staffers are essential in ensuring that the policy being made has been effectively vetted and is reflective of the hopes and aspirations of constituents across the country, and so if we don't have a diverse set of people, skills experiences in those decision-making rooms is much more likely that we aren't going to get the best policy for people at the ground level back home," Bell said.

And while staffers of color are at the forefront of this recent push, and many of those are Democrats, the issues we’re seeing here affect staffers of both parties from all backgrounds.

Audrey Henson is a former congressional staffer from a low-income background and a current Republican congressional candidate in Florida. She was the founder of College to Congress, a group that provides financial support to congressional interns and staff. She's no longer with the group, but the shock she felt when she found she'd be paid $25,000 a year for her full-time job still sticks with her. 

"I'll never forget when I filed my tax returns in 2013 as a Capitol Hill staffer, and after I submitted them, the first page that came up was It looks like you qualify for Medicaid and food subsidy benefits," Henson said. "That, to me, almost felt like a dagger in my heart because I was working for a boss that was anti-subsidy and that really showed me, wow, the way that our Congress works, the way that they treat their staff, this is absolutely backwards."

The circumstances may have been tough for a lot of current and former staffers on Capitol Hill, but folks on the Hill see the emergence of the recent unionization effort and more public criticism of working conditions as an opportunity for things to change.

"I think that there's some room for change here, and also there's really going to be a really big push," Henson said. "So I am hopeful that hopefully, the national attention that this has gathered will lead to change."

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MADEIRA, Ohio — Madeira High School quarantined eight students and one staff member after contact tracing showed that they had been in close contact with a student who tested positive for COVID-19, superintendent Kenji Matsudo said in an email sent out Wednesday afternoon.

In this situation, close contact constitutes being within six feet of another person for more than 15 minutes, according to the email.

The school immediately began cleaning and sanitization procedures

Matsudo said that all families should do daily health checks of students before leaving for the bus or going into the school building.

Some Tri-State colleges are back in the classroom Monday, and there are some changes in place at these schools to keep students and staff healthy and safe.

Northern Kentucky University and the University of Cincinnati are back in session, and both schools have mask policies in place for their students.

"Unfortunately, the risk of infection with the delta variant of COVID-19 is very high in our region and we must take steps to protect our campus community," NKU officials wrote in a release. "Given the high level of community spread of the Delta variant... we have no choice but to require masks indoors on campus for all persons, vaccinated and unvaccinated."

NKU will provide reusable masks to all faculty, staff and students. Limited quantities of disposable masks may be available at the Welcome Center, Student Union and University Center Information Desks, Steely Library Distribution Desk, and Campus Recreation during normal business hours.

NKU is offering free COVID-19 vaccines at their Health, Counseling and Wellness office. Call 859-572-5650 or email hcsw@nku.edu for an appointment. Kentucky residency is not required.

UC is also requiring masks for all students, regardless of their vaccination status. Outdoor masks will also be required for people who are not fully vaccinated if they cannot also maintain social distancing.

Students who are vaccinated can send a picture of their vaccine card to UC Public Health. Students who are not vaccinated must either show proof that they have recently tested negative or receive a COVID-19 test from the university and consent to restricted campus access until their results arrive. UC will provide COVID-19 tests for students.

UC will also hold a drawing each week for students who have been fully vaccinated to win cash prizes of $2,500 or $5,000. The university plans on distributing $50,000 this semester for the drawings.

The Butler County Care Facility continues to struggle to find workers despite a raise in union wages as several management positions remain open, and the new federal vaccination mandate could complicate matters.

The county has spent about $554,000 this year on contracted front-line workers to man the county-owned nursing home. The commissioners have had a contract with Professional Review Network Inc. for a facility administrator and this week agreed to extend the contract on a month-to-month basis, it included an $85 per hour increase up to $200.

The county has paid $72,930 for the temporary administrator. Last year during the height of pandemic when vacancies soared the home paid $1.24 million for temporary workers.

The top job at the county-run nursing home — which pays between $84,223 and $124,800 — has been vacant since former administrator Chamika Poole resigned last October. County Administrator Judi Boyko told the Journal-News the hourly increase was included because Professional Review Network was “grossly undercompensated” under the previous agreement.

She needed a new month-to-month agreement in case she finds a new administrator soon.

“The county is continuously seeking candidates and evaluating qualifications for compatibility at the facility. Based on the greater market of health care candidates have been few and far between,” Boyko said. “I thought I had identified a candidate but terms couldn’t be reached.”

The director of nursing also recently quit and they have posted that position. Human Resources Director Laurie Murphy said there are 4 to 5 vacant nursing positions and 10 to 12 openings for front-line workers. She said they are hoping the pay raise in the recently negotiated union contract — from $13.35 to $15 per hour — plus generous county benefits will help them attract more job candidates.

“There remains an overall shortage of clinical workers in the healthcare field and the hiring challenges we face are not unique to the Care Facility,” Murphy said. “The global impact of the pandemic and recent uptake in the Delta variant cases continues to impact hiring and retention across the entire healthcare industry.”

The assistant nursing director and assistant business office manager positions are also open. Boyko said they are holding off on filling those jobs because the daily census of patients has dropped to less than half capacity at around 50 in the 109-bed facility. Because of strict nursing home restrictions during the pandemic, families were choosing to remove their loved ones from congregate care.

“Since the census now has been below 50 we’ve been maintaining that just from a business operations and funding perspective,” Boyko said. “Definitely we will replace the director of nursing and we’ll just continue to monitor to see if there is a void without an assistant director of nursing and assistant business office manager.”

Adding to existing staffing issues, President Joe Biden has tied Medicaid funding to mandatory vaccinations for nursing home employees. The county home’s main source of revenue is reimbursement from Medicaid for patient care. Murphy said it is too soon to predict the impact of the new directive.

“The mandate was just reported yesterday and the actual regulation has not been issued,” Murphy said. “We will certainly continue to monitor the impact of the mandate and its implications on county operations at the Care Facility.”

Commissioner Don Dixon, who is in the elderly care field, said he personally thinks it’s a good idea but believes it could cause a “whole lot of problems.”

Commissioner T.C. Rogers said he is also concerned about the mandate’s impact on the Care Facility, especially with what is going on in the area where hospitals have already mandated vaccines for their employees.

“I’m also concerned about all of our hospitals which have made vaccinations mandatory for their medical staff and doctors have told me that they’re short-handed now,” Rogers said. “Yeah I’m concerned.”

Related video above: Louisiana doctors train with nurses to help with staff shortages

With the spread of the more dangerous and transmissible delta variant as well as lagging vaccination rates, states such as Texas are in the midst of a surge in COVID-19 cases that quickly halted a summer of reopenings.

And as Texas faces another rise in hospitalizations approaching a peak witnessed during the 2020 holiday season, officials are concerned over health care worker shortages.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that more than 2,500 medical personnel will be deployed to hospitals around the state to care for an increasing number of COVID-19 patients.

"The State of Texas is taking action to ensure that our hospitals are properly staffed and supported in the fight against COVID-19," Abbott said in a news release Wednesday. Details on where the additional medical staff were coming from, or where they would be deployed, have yet to be revealed.

There are only 368 ICU beds currently available throughout the state and 10,463 lab-confirmed COVID-19 patients in hospitals across the state, according to state health data Wednesday. Finding people to administer these beds is becoming increasingly difficult.

Dr. Esmaeil Porsa, president and CEO of Harris Health System in Houston, told the Texas Senate Committee on Health & Human Services on Tuesday that health care employees are "tired, overworked and constantly under siege."

Citing long work hours, constant exposure to COVID-19 infection, and yet another surge of patients who are generally sicker and require more attention, Porsa said staffs are reaching critical shortages that are difficult to fill.

"I have lost staff to fatigue and retirement," Porsa said, adding that one area hospital had 25% of its ICU beds unavailable because of staffing issues.

"I always see the silver lining, but I am frightened by what is coming," Porsa said.

It's not just that the hospitals are full, Porsa said Thursday morning.

"What is concerning is the rate by which our COVID-positive patients are increasing," Porsa told CNN's Brianna Keilar. It took only five weeks for the hospital system to go from a baseline of 11 patients to its peak recently, compared to the three months it took during the winter surge, he said.

"If this continues to go at the rate that it is right now — and again, I emphasize that I don't see any intervention, any mitigating interventions being put in place to try to slow this down — this would be a disaster."

Health care systems strained

Because hospitals are filling up and there is less staff available to intake patients, a bottleneck effect is compounding ambulance availability, creating "risks for delays in emergency response to the next call in our community," Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.

"In an EMS system as busy as Houston's, detention of EMS crews at the hospitals will result in increased response times for the entire system," Peña told CNN on Wednesday, noting that ambulance crews are waiting more than an hour at hospitals in some instances.

The fire chief said strategies such as utilizing COVID-19 tents would be beneficial in relieving the bottleneck at hospital emergency departments.

The Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital that set up tents to handle the overflow of patients recently had 130 patients in its waiting room, which is designed to hold at most 70, Porsa said.

"The idea of the tent is that as people screen positive for COVID-19, we can send them to the tent for them to continue their diagnostics and treatments until they figure out what to do with them," he said.

When asked about comments he made to CNN affiliate KTRK regarding a patient left on a stretcher inside an ambulance for five and a half hours waiting for a hospital bed, Peña said the patient was a man in his 60s who was in stable condition.

"He was evaluated at the hospital by medical staff, including blood lab tests and X-rays, all while on our ambulance stretcher because there was no room available for the patient to be transferred to. The patient's symptoms/chief complaint resolved sometime after the physical assessment at the hospital. So for many hours he was stable and symptom-free, but still on an emergency ambulance stretcher," he said.

"Keeping a patient on an ambulance stretcher and an ambulance unit out of service for this long is not acceptable. This is not good for the patient, it is not good for our ambulance crews and it is not good for our community," he said.

Peña says his message to the community is that anyone who can get the COVID-19 vaccine should do so immediately.

"The vaccine will help protect the recipient and help reduce the stress on local hospitals. People who are hesitant to get the vaccine due to any comorbidities should consult their primary care physicians for advice," the fire chief said.

But because it takes weeks after inoculations to gain full immunity, Porsa said in his Senate testimony that even in the rosiest of scenarios, the surge is likely to continue in the near future and immediate measures must be taken.

"Even if the entire population of Texas got vaccinated today, we do not really, logically expect any impact on the numbers a month from now," Porsa said. "There is no way my hospital is going to be able to handle this. There is no way the region is going to be able to handle this."

State vs. local control over masks intensifies

While experts say that vaccinations are the key to controlling the pandemic and lessening hospitalizations over time, other mitigating actions such as widespread mask-wearing can help stop the spread of COVID-19. Yet mandates have been fiercely rejected by Texas state leaders opposing local control and decision-making.

Gov. Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a petition on Wednesday attempting to block a Dallas County mask mandate issued for schools and businesses.

Judge Clay Jenkins' emergency order, Abbott and Paxton say, violates the governor's latest executive order on COVID-19 which says that no governmental entity, including school districts, could require mask-wearing.

"Attention-grabbing judges and mayors have defied executive orders before when the pandemic first started, and the courts ruled on our side — the law. I'm confident the outcomes to any suits will side with liberty and individual choice, not mandates and government overreach," Paxton said.

Abbott and Paxton's statement doesn't mention San Antonio and Bexar County, who have been granted a temporary restraining order against the governor's mask order and announced their own mask mandate, or Houston's Fort Bend County, which announced Wednesday a temporary restraining order of their own.

"The virus is not a political issue, and it's not an issue that we can resolve by way of ignoring it, and following GA 38 (Abbott's mask order) would have had the local officials here in Fort Bend County ignoring the virus," Fort Bend County Attorney Bridgette Smith-Lawson said after a judge granted their emergency health directive request.