Gadfly Bites 10/20/25—Right on the money

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1. I know the voucher grouchers quoted in this piece are trying to raise alarm at the combined cost of all of Ohio’s private school tuition programs for the 2025 fiscal year. $1.09 billion is a big number after all and it is larger than the amount predicted by the Legislative Service Commission. But I’m with my colleague Aaron Churchill, who is matter-of-fact here about the stunning accuracy of that forecast. Being off by just $50 million in a big program like this—with a ton of highly-variable moving parts over more than a year of time—is as close to being right on the money as you’re likely to find in the annals of state government budgeting. (Ohio Capital Journal, 10/20/25)
   
   

2. Several school district leaders are trying to raise very sudden alarms in this piece also; having somehow just realized that another state budget provision (signed into law more than five months ago) was going to hit them in their bottom line. You can read the details of the issue here, but I regret to say I am not terribly sympathetic—to either the supposed problem or the sudden realization thereof. Surely these guys have many lobbyists whose (highly-paid) job it is to tell them what is in every piece of legislation—enacted or otherwise—and how those provisions will impact their clients. Especially when it comes to the balance sheet. Don’t they? (They do.) And even if they don’t (they do), Aaron has written helpfully about this issue several times before in his usual highly-accessible fashion. And he was right on the money as usual. (IdeaStream Public Media, 10/20/25)
   
   

3. State Representative Kevin Ritter waxes rhapsodic about his recent visit to MAGNET in Cleveland—a wide-ranging program supported by local employers, non-profits, and the State of Ohio—designed to cultivate high-tech skills in students and adults to help fill the pipeline for manufacturing talent in northeast Ohio. He’s talking specifically about something called the Experiential Robotics Platform, their newest whiz bang training and excitifying effort, which will be deployed at a number of buildings in Cleveland Metropolitan School District this year. Sounds good to me as far as it goes, but of course I would like it much better if it weren’t so darned exclusionary. Here’s hoping that charter, private, and STEM school kids in the region are at least permitted to participate in MAGNET programs in other ways…should they ever want to. (Columbus Dispatch, 10/20/25)

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