Gadfly Bites 12/10/25—“Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive”

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1. As widely expected, the appointed board of Cleveland Metropolitan School District voted (unanimously) yesterday to accept the school closure and consolidation plan proposed by mayor Justin Bibb and district CEO Warren Morgan. It was virtually unchanged from its original version and will result, among other things, in the closure of 23 underutilized buildings. There’s no timeline provided for the actual implementation, but given how quickly the plan was released, debated, and adopted, one assumes it will all happen sooner rather than later. Incredible work by all involved to solve a big problem with what appears to be minimal fuss. (Cleveland.com, 12/9/25) There’s also no mention in the foregoing clip of what will be done with the buildings once they are closed. As I have said many times before, closing schools is just the first step. The only way CMSD really gets any relief from its ginormous budget problems—which is the point—is by selling all or most of them as quickly as possible. While we know that charter school operators are supposed to get first crack at any closed buildings being sold, we also know that a) it doesn’t always happen that way, despite state law, and b) some of those buildings will be unappealing to charter or private schools for various reasons. That’s why this national Center Square piece is so timely: Turns out Ohio is one of the top states in the country at turning closed school buildings into apartments, with Columbus being the poster child of the Buckeye State. The unstated irony, as I know all six of you dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers know, is that some of those Ohio apartment conversions (and indeed other “public” uses that eventuated) only happened because of insider deals designed to keep interested charters from grabbing closed schools in the first place. But let’s focus on the positive here, shall we? There will be should be hopefully will be more than enough closed school buildings on the market in Cleveland to go to any charter operators, private schools, and apartment developers who might want them. I know Clevelanders are mighty competitive and despite my Cbus roots, I believe The Land can successfully boost the numbers of all three types of reuses above whatever Columbus has done so far. Here’s the chance for them to prove it! (Center Square, 12/9/25)
   
   

2. Meanwhile, we have a much more typical version of “responding to financial challenges” coming to us from Toledo. We first discussed on Monday how Toledo City Schools has suddenly become aware of a looming budget crater on the horizon. It should have been obvious to anyone paying attention due to years of steady student enrollment loss, but, again, let’s try to stay positive and assume district officials and their supporters were really as taken aback as they say they were. That would also be the more-generous explanation as to why they are lashing out against irrelevant boogiemen and why their initial proposals to fix the problem seem so ill-thought-out. One case in point: The proposal to move the whole district to a four-day week, which superintendent Romules Durant here likens to a sort of permanent vacation state. “When you come back to work after a three-day weekend, don’t you feel more refreshed?” he asks rhetorically. “We think we will have better employees, teachers, and students.” (Toledo Blade, 12/9/25) Also on the boss’s mind: Becoming more “competitive”, to attract students away from the competition. “The traditional model for public schools needs to change,” he says in this piece. “TPS already has plenty of magnet schools but that would expand in this new plan.” The four-day school week and a proposal to outsource social services are also part of that putative competitive edge: “What it is, is TPS not trying to be all. It’s TPS doing all with partners who are experts in those lanes who can provide those services at the same level or maybe even higher level because that’s what they do.” Story developing, as they say in the biz. (13 ABC News, Toledo, 12/9/25)
   
   

3. And budget problems are not just impacting school districts these days either. The City of Columbus is, for the moment, unable to commit the funds it originally promised for the city’s “Columbus Promise” scholarship program. We can debate the merits of the thing in the first place (your humble clips compiler did not originally and still does not find it all that helpful or valuable—especially since it only applied to district students anyway, a perennial bugbear for me in these things), but any prolonged public dustup over it, no matter how it turns out, will unfortunately reflect badly on Columbus City Schools. While they’ve got lots of things to angst over right now, this should not be one of them. It has nothing to do with the district itself, nor its students or parents. Rather, this is all about politics—the mayor, the city council, and the institution receiving whatever funds end up getting committed—and here’s hoping any further reportage will emphasize that fact strongly. Or, to be more positive, perhaps it will all just go away entirely really fast and no one will speak of it again. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/9/25)
   
   

4. After slogging through the preceding clips, it seems almost quaint for us to end on a story about student transportation. Ah the good old days… Youngstown City Schools discontinued busing for high school students back in 2024. Not in order to save money, per se, but because they couldn’t maintain consistent staffing levels due to chronic driver absenteeism. However, as a school zoning reconfiguration plan comes together for the 2026-27 school year, the elected board members are hatching a plan to reinstate busing for high schoolers…which would of course include charter and private school students as well. Let’s stay positive for now and see what happens. (Vindy.com, 12/10/25)

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