Gadfly Bites 12/20/24—Dirty pool

This is the last edition of Gadfly Bites to be published in 2024. Thanks so much for reading and subscribing and putting up with my occasional curmudgeonly attitude! We'll be back on Friday, January 3 to catch up with the final clips of this year.

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1. Normally when you buy something in bulk, you get a discount. But when you’re talking about two publicly-funded entities in Dayton, you actually pay more. To wit: The elected school board of Dayton City Schools voted this week to pay $15 above sticker price to the transit authority for every bus pass it purchases for high school student transportation next year. The total is estimated to be an additional $400,000. If you can believe it, charter school student transportation requirements get the blame for the exorbitant cost, rather than the shameless quasi-governmental cash grab that is clearly happening here. (Dayton Daily News, 12/18/24)
   
   

2. In case you missed it, the lame ducks in the legislature concluded their quacking late Wednesday night. I’m not sure all the details in this Cleveland.com coverage of education bills are fully accurate (it was a long, rollicking night after all), but it is at least true that SB 295 was rolled into other legislation and ultimately passed. This, I’m sure you’ll recall from earlier editions of the Bites, is the school closure bill that Fordham’s own Chad Aldis provided opponent testimony upon a while back. (Cleveland.com, 12/18/24)
   
   

3. Interestingly, another Christmas present that passed in the session-ending marathon was an additional $4 million in administrative funding to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. It is noted in the coverage above that the extra money is needed to fund the department’s defense against the never-ending voucher groucher lawsuit. Speaking of which, I’ve no idea why Lorain City Schools had not joined the grouchers before now, but the elected board of that district voted unanimously this week to spend $12,000 a year of its state per-pupil funding in order to sue that very same state, looking to end the EdChoice Scholarship Program forever. Charming. (The Chronicle-Telegram, 12/20/24)
   
   

4. Of course we can’t revisit our friends in Lorain without remembering the vociferous opposition that arose there as a result of a state declaration of Academic Distress…and the commission that nominally oversaw the district afterward. And that brings us to another blast from the past: Krish Mohip, former CEO of Youngstown City Schools when it was under the auspices of an Academic Distress Commission. The response to Mohip’s tenure was also vociferous (and especially nasty) in Youngstown, and it seems that history may be repeating itself. Mohip was recently appointed to lead New Proviso Township schools in Illinois, and while he says that he’s “extremely excited to be here,” it feels from this coverage that he may be the only one. “Take note to the way you were pushed through as a caution,” said one elected official in response to the new supe. “As quick as you came is as quick as you can leave.” That lovely sentiment came not from a school board member, but from the elected mayor of the town of Maywood, who had that statement read into the record of the most recent school board meeting by an elected township trustee! That’s some dirty pool, y’all, but I guess if all your opponents are making themselves known so clearly, you know who to trust: No one. (Forest Park [IL] Review, 12/17/24)
   
   

5. “I can tell you here, on behalf of everyone here and our entire community, we are not giving up and we are not going away.” So says the board chair of Noor Islamic Center, which has sued the City of Hilliard for denying their plans to convert an empty office building into a community center. There are probably lots of reasons why the Hilliardians (for surely that is what they must be called) oppose the project—despite multiple accommodations made by the center to respond to planning and zoning concerns raised by the city over many months—but this city planner and school choice advocate with a long memory can’t shake the feeling that Noor including a private school component in the building is high on the list of deal breakers, no matter how many other changes are made. (Columbus Dispatch, 12/19/24)
   
   

6. To end on an up note today: Kudos to the hard working staff and volunteers of education non-profit Toledo Tomorrow, who are holding several college-access events in Frogtown over the holiday break. Sounds fantastic and hugely helpful and valuable to students. I have become more and more cognizant through researching and presenting these clips three times a week for the last ten years that organizations outside the traditional education system are doing yeoman’s work to try and fill in what kids are missing. This despite lesser funding, fewer staff (mainly volunteers, I reckon), and not enough recognition of their vital work. (I will quibble that this coverage only mentions Toledo Public Schools students, and if TT isn’t helping charter and private and STEM school students, I will obviously withdraw my kudos.) But I ask you, dear readers: Is there any traditional public school anywhere in Ohio doing anything to help their students make any forward movement (academics, college, career, anything) over the next two weeks? I strongly doubt it, but if you do find one and send it to me, I’ll feature it big and loud in the next edition. I might even try not to quibble with it, unless there’s a quibble too obvious to ignore. (Toledo Blade, 12/20/24)

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