Gadfly Bites 12/17/25—How clever of them

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

Despite explanations of the intent of state law from local charter school leader Andy Boy and Fordham Institute research director Aaron Churchill, elected school board members in Columbus voted yesterday to approve demolition for the four school buildings they previously voted to close. The demolition order had “nothing to do with charter schools,” quacked lame duck elected board president Michael Cole by way of response to Boy and Churchill’s concerns over why none of them were going to be offered for sale to other education entities prior to demolition—as the law requires. Cole went on to explain that these four buildings will instantly become neighborhood blights as soon as they are closed, despite the fact that they are all currently serving students and will continue to do so until they are officially closed—which may not actually happen for two years or more. Despicable. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/25)
Staying on topic, Canton City Schools has suddenly discovered that it too is facing a multi-million-dollar deficit due to continuing student enrollment losses and lack of right-sizing following therefrom. (Canton Repository, 12/17/25)
Cuyahoga Falls City Schools, also facing a deficit, is taking a slightly different tack toward “right-sizing”. They have been deliberately shrinking the number of students admitted via interdistrict open enrollment over the last couple of years—specifically getting rid of some “problem students”, we are told here—and using those lower numbers to justify eliminating staff. It’s gone so well, they’re now thinking about ending interdistrict open enrollment entirely. How clever of them. (Signal Akron, 12/17/25)
From closing borders to blowing them wide open: Laura Hancock continues her exploration of proposals from “the left-leaning New America’s Education Funding Equity initiative” (as she likes to phrase it) that redraw school district boundaries in three different ways, all of which are intended to bolster economic and racial heterogeneity among them in whichever new configuration may be chosen. This time, she looks at actual efforts to effectuate related changes in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. As you might have suspected, the Wisconsin plan (passed in the lower chamber and now sitting in the state senate) offers a big fiscal incentive for any districts that do consolidate. Meanwhile, Pennsylvania lawmakers are proposing a feasibility study on the topic. This feels like an opportune time for me to repeat my favorite saying—be careful what you ~~advocate for~~ ~~report on~~ wish for—but I know that all seven of you dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (Merry Almost Christmas, you crazy elves!) already sensed that would be the theme of my commentary in this matter. And I know none of us think it’s going to end here! (Cleveland.com, 12/16/25)
Because this piece is otherwise super awesome—touting the long-running successes of charter school network GEO Schools, profiling several amazing graduates, and noting that they are working on expansion to Cleveland in the next couple of years—I will graciously overlook the fact that the reporter erroneously states that CLE is the largest city in Ohio. (Black Enterprise, 12/16/25)
As part of the comprehensive effort to install the science of reading in Ohio schools, teacher prep programs in all colleges in the state were required to undergo audits of the ways they educate their teacher candidates to teach reading. The results of those audits were released yesterday, and one distressing aspect of the findings actually caused Gov. Mike DeWine to swear on the record during the press conference: Ten universities—including many of the largest institutions in Ohio—failed their audits because they had “one or more violations for banned teaching practices” such as three-cueing. (Not sure why anyone is surprised that the state that birthed Reading Recovery would have a hard time letting go of it, but here we are.) These schools now have another year to correct these violations (even though they are already a year beyond the original deadline for complying) or face the loss of certification for their teacher prep programs. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/16/25)