Ashton Marra
Ashton Marra covers the Capitol for West Virginia Public Radio and can be heard weekdays on West Virginia Morning, the station’s daily radio news program. Ashton can also be heard Sunday evenings as she brings you state headlines during NPR’s weekend edition of All Things Considered. She joined the news team in October of 2012.
During the legislative session, Ashton focuses on the state Senate, bringing daily reports from the inner-workings of the state’s upper house on West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s nightly television show The Legislature Today.
Ashton comes to WVPBS from ABC News’ morning program Good Morning America where she worked as a production associate. Ashton produced pieces for the broadcast, including the first identified victim of the Aurora, CO, movie theater shooting and the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, as well as multiple entertainment news stories.
Before her time at GMA, Ashton worked as an intern on ABC’s news assignment desk, helping to organize coverage of major news stories like the Trayvon Martin case, the Jerry Sandusky trail, tornadoes that ravaged the South and Midwest and the 2012 Presidential election. She also spent 18 months as a weekend reporter for WDTV based in her hometown of Clarksburg, WV, breaking the story of missing Lewis County toddler Aliayah Lunsford. Ashton’s work from that story was feature on HLN’s Nancy Grace in October of 2011.
Ashton graduated summa cum laude from West Virginia University in May of 2012, where she was named WVU’s Reporter of the Year. She covered government for the P.I. Reed School of Journalism’s bi-weekly newscast WVU News and also served a semester as the WVPBS bureau reporter.
When she isn’t reporting, Ashton enjoys cooking and is an avid supporter of the arts, including theater, music and dance. She is a huge fan of musicals and touts her collection of Playbills from the Broadway musicals she’s attended, which grew by nearly 30 in her 9 months living in New York City.
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One in five teachers do not report incidents of violence they experience in their classrooms, according to a study led by an Ohio State University researcher. The study, paid for by the American Psychological Association, surveyed 3,403 K-12 teachers in 48 states. More than 2,500 responded that they had experienced some type of physical or verbal abuse by a student, a threat of violence, or an inappropriate sexual advance. -
Inequities in the dollars used to fund schools have been a problem in Ohio for decades. Education funding depends on local home values, business investments, levies that pass or fail, and in some areas, it also depends on whether a natural gas pipeline runs through your school district. In a fairly rural district in Northeast Ohio, the construction of a controversial pipeline could mean a multi-million-dollar windfall, and after years of belt-tightening, district officials are dreaming up potential ways to spend it. Cloverleaf Local Schools
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A group of ten Cleveland students and educators will hit the skies Wednesday morning heading for the island of Puerto Rico. The trip, which overlaps with the school district’s spring break, isn’t necessarily for fun. The group from Lincoln-West High School will be volunteering at a southern Puerto Rico elementary school and orphanage. “In the elementary school, we’re going to create a mural for the community and also plant a [vegetable] garden there,” teacher and translator Awilda Morales said.
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Thousands of Ohio students held demonstrations Wednesday pushing for stricter state and federal gun laws in order to make their schools safer, but one... -
White nationalist Richard Spencer has backed out of public speaking events scheduled at colleges and universities across the country. He’s also dropping... -
Thousands of Ohio students held demonstrations Wednesday pushing for stricter state and federal gun laws in order to make their schools safer, but one… -
More than 100 teenagers at Rocky River High School joined thousands of their fellow students across Ohio Wednesday who observed 17 minutes of silence in... -
More than 100 teenagers at Rocky River High School joined thousands of their fellow students across Ohio today, observing 17 minutes of silence in honor... -
The Ohio State University and more than a dozen other Ohio colleges and universities have vowed to defend the admissions of students who are disciplined… -
The leader of Akron’s public schools says he’s withdrawing his name from consideration to lead the largest school district in the state. Superintendent...
