Cheers to Cardinal Schools in Geauga County. Experts in autism education have deemed the district an exemplar of best practices for inclusion and support. Their “model classrooms” were videotaped in action earlier this month, and the footage will be shared with educators across the state and the country. Of additional note: Cardinal is connected to two district merger proposals that would, if successful, bring their expertise directly to students with autism in three other county districts.
Jeers to the board, administration, and sponsor of Gateway Academy, a charter school in Franklin County. Last week, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost announced that the school’s financial records were “incomplete, unauditable and inexcusable.” Thankfully, annual audits of charter schools are mandated under law in Ohio, and sponsors are held accountable when those audits uncover a mire such as this.
Cheers to wider publicity for the EdChoice Scholarship voucher program, no matter how it happens. Dayton City Schools would rather hold students hostage than let thousands of eligible kids leave with a voucher due to the persistent poor performance of their schools. Fortunately for families, the Dayton Daily News covered the district’s determination in a lot of depth…including a full list of the eligible school buildings, information on the income-based voucher program, and a peek at the private schools accepting voucher students. Excellent publicity for EdChoice, we’d say.
Double cheers to new school models AND Ohio’s Straight-A Fund. While Geauga County dithers and debates over mergers (see above), a new STEM high school in the area is going full-steam-ahead to open this fall. The iSTEM Academy was jump-started by a winning Straight-A Fund application last year and will be open to all students in the area who are interested.
Jeers to the seemingly endless turmoil in Youngstown City Schools. Mayor John A. McNally, echoing the district superintendent, recently said that without parental involvement, there’d be no meaningful success in the city school system. Leaders of two community groups, which include district parents and grandparents, responded that they can easily get parents into school buildings but that the administration has no mechanism in place for those parents to meaningfully help. What Youngstown could really use is more solutions and less hotheaded rhetoric.
