- At the end of the last House Rules Committee hearing on Common Core repeal, the chair halted testimony late in the evening saying that the next witness (a supporter of the bill) was so important that more committee members should be here to hear her. Well, the heck with that. Supposedly, there’s going to be a Rules Committee hearing tomorrow with no further testimony and a possible vote on the bill. Why the change of tack? The chair now double-negatively says, “I'm not sure that at this point that we haven't heard what everybody possibly has to say." And the bill’s co-sponsor says, "I was ready to vote it out a while ago.” Hmmmm... We shall see. Link (Gongwer Ohio)
- Back in the real world, the state superintendent has approved an updated academic recovery plan for Youngstown City Schools, which gives more authority to the academic distress commission over the school board. It also limits the number of school board meetings to two per month. How’s that for intestinal fortitude? Oh, and it also sets some very concrete goals for both the short- and the long-term to improve the district’s academic performance. Not exactly the state takeover the Vindy’s editors were asking for a few months ago, but they’ve got to be pretty OK with this as a compromise. (Youngstown Vindicator)
- Our friends at Learn to Earn Dayton are helping to spearhead a new push to get high school seniors into and through college. While this is a nationwide effort and is going on throughout the Buckeye State, it should be noted that Montgomery County is the only county in Ohio where every public and Catholic high school signed up for the college application push in November. Nice. (Dayton Daily News)
- Some Stark County schools are seeing class size increases – some from an overall population increase, some from staff reductions. Some folks are happy about this; others are not. Interesting look into allocation of classroom seats. (Canton Repository)
- Looks like contract negotiations in Lexington schools are going better since we last reported on them. Some progress is noted by both sides and strike talk has cooled for the time being. (Mansfield News Journal)
- Negotiations are a little less good in Lorain schools, where the board has filed two unfair labor practice charges against the union. Hopefully the upcoming talks with the assistance of a federal mediator will help ease things at bit. (Lorain County Chronicle Telegram)
