Gadfly Bites 1/28/26—Are you in or are you out?

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

1. The talk of the week is the amount of school time districts are required to provide their students in the year. Both in terms of the mounting number of snow/cold day cancellations that could lead to make up days eating into summer break… (Cleveland.com, 1/26/26) …and in terms of yet another Ohio district preparing to implement a four-day school week this fall. Personally, all this academic "how little can we get away with" talk bothers me. (Cleveland.com, 1/26/26)
   
   

2. Of course we’re never too busy with other stuff to talk about money (and, honestly, it’s usually the underlying point of all those other clips anyway). So here’s a quick look at Ohio House Bill 643, which would place an upper income limit on families able to receive an EdChoice Scholarship. One bill sponsor calls the $500,000 cap “reasonable” and “fair”, and notes that any voucher funding not given to those top earners would be available to support lower-income families. However, while this coverage does note that only 1.8 percent of Ohioans meet or exceed that annual income threshold, it neglects to mention that many of these are probably older adults without school age kids or that the EdChoice amount for any kids who might qualify at that income point and actually get a voucher averages about $725 per kid per year. (Calculator here, courtesy of the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown.) This feels to me like the definition of a symbolic effort more than it does fairness for any actual people. But it’s School Choice Week and I’m celebrating real victories for real families, so I’ll say no more about it. (NBC4 News, Columbus, 1/28/26)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.