Gadfly Bites 11/25/19 – Treasurers say the darnedest things

1. I hate to be an old I Told Ya So, but it seems that Dayton City Schools’ plan to boost student attendance by spending massively on public transportation has moved the needle barely a jot. (One school building’s attendance has actually gone down more than 4% from last year to this!) We have noted in these Bites that other districts have found little benefit from such a transportation boost, although they spent far less to thus educate themselves. What’s worse, no one interviewed here seems to have any idea why it hasn’t worked or what else to do except to lob “maybes” (along with some sketchy-sounding stats) and keep on a-spending. Hmmm… I wonder if the plan helped charter or private school attendance at all? That’d be ironic, wouldn’t it? (Dayton Daily News, 11/25/19)
    
2. The ongoing flushing of millions of dollars down the toilet of transportation-for-attendance is just part of the reason why Dayton’s expenditures will likely increase more than 14% above original projections this year. And why they will continue to increase over the next four years even as income is projected to decrease. But hey, it’s only money, right? (Dayton Daily News, 11/25/19)
    
3. Speaking of interesting things said by district treasurers, Piqua City Schools’ financial guru Jeremie Hittle hit a lot of talking points last week during the presentation of his district’s five-year financial forecast, which looks a little shaky after this year and next.  To wit: Dude opines that vouchers are unconstitutional, even while explaining them incorrectly. Dude says that the state’s recent largesse on wellness funding for schools is not really welcome because the district doesn’t need it and “the state’s going to pull it in two years” anyway. Dude also downplays a massive explosion in the district’s healthcare costs (after somehow having a zero percent increase in same over the previous five years). While he thinks he and his green eyeshade can just keep the district out of the red for this year and next, he seems to have his hopes pinned on the next biennial budget for some stuff he likes more. (Troy Daily News, 11/22/19)
    
4. Speaking of (humorously altered) talking points, Vindy.com takes a look at all of the local school districts who ended up on the state’s dad-blamed “challenged districts” list this year. There are a lot of them, locally and statewide, and that makes some folks as nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Just like the consarned voucher eligibility list, as noted above. For those dastardly charter schools are allowed to start up in challenged districts—you know, to commit the unpardonable sin of providing alternatives for parents who might have the utter temerity to feel their children are not being best served in the district—and that could mean a lot of ding-danged competition soon. NOTE: While some of the more colorful descriptive words I’ve used may not be in the official talking points; the spirit is unchanged. (Vindy.com, 11/24/19)
    
5. We end today where we began: on the school bus. Three independent private schools in northeast Ohio are banding together to provide transportation for their students. I’m not sure I follow this entirely. Is this in addition to district-provided transportation which is already available? Is it an expansion/merger of something that already exists among the schools individually? Or is it entirely new? Whatever it is, it ain’t cheap. And I think those dollar signs fogged my brain so much I couldn’t get the actual point. (Cleveland.com, 11/24/19)

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