- Cleveland Metropolitan School District is in hot water after rehiring three retired district principals without a public hearing. Under state law, a hearing is required when a retiree is rehired into a public position. This they did, five months after giving them the gigs in error. Gadfly wonders if all this public hoop jumping couldn't be easily avoided though: Shouldn’t Ohio altogether cease the practice of “double dipping” (i.e., when public-sector “retirees” receive both a public pension and a public-employee salary)?
- Fallout from the long-simmering data “scrubbing” scandal continues. Last week, the Ohio Department of Education referred seven school districts (Campbell, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Marion, Northridge, Toledo, and Winton Woods) to the Office of Professional Conduct to investigate whether individual staff members improperly withdrew students from the district’s attendance records. The shoe still remains to drop on Columbus City Schools.
- Information, information, information: The Cleveland Transformation Alliance will soon launch a new website www.clevelandta.org that includes much-needed school information for parents. The site will have Cleveland schools’ performance index score and its value-added rating, along with space for community ratings and comments.
- The state’s new teacher evaluation system is creating headaches for school administrators. Newark City Schools’ (central Ohio) superintendent estimates that his district’s school administrators will spend some 2,500 hours this year on evaluations. Fortunately, there may be relief on the horizon as Senate Bill 229 (passed the Senate and awaits hearings in the House) would loosen some of the state mandates on the frequency of evaluations for high-performing teachers.
