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- This is potentially a great story. It looks at three efforts at Dayton City Schools’ Belmont High School to help students with varying levels of disability gain skills to head out into the world of work. The anecdotes provided by students, parents, and teachers indicate that Project Life, Project Search, and the Adult Transition Unit all sound very promising. But the only data provided—that all three programs are underenrolled and only exist at Belmont—are less than positive to me, as is the fact that the district’s academic coordinator for the Office of Exceptional Children says outright she has only these stories and no numbers to share. More hard data, especially on how many program participants graduate and move on to jobs, would help tell the story properly and, if positive, boost participation as well. (Dayton Daily News, 1/28/24)
- Central Ohio is not in the path of totality for the upcoming solar eclipse. Yet several local school districts—Columbus, Reynoldsburg, and Dublin a mismatched trio among them—are inexplicably joining their pusillanimous peers in the path by calling off school entirely that day. Others, including academic high-flyers like Bexley and Upper Arlington, are calling off early. Amazingly, the local news suggests that the closures here are in part intended to allow local students to travel to an area of totality to watch the thing. Say what?! Wouldn’t that just assist in creating the very havoc they are all trying to avoid and actually facilitate more students being “trapped” in the middle of the potential traffic/cellphone/sewer/restaurant problems they fear? I admit that I have completely lost the thread here. (10TV News, Columbus, 1/28/24)
- Finally today, in a story that seems at first blush very bad indeed, we learn that Cleveland Metropolitan School District has repurposed $17 million of the $20 million grant provided to the district by philanthropist MacKenzie Scott back in 2022, and is using it to plug part of a deficit in the general operating budget. Why so bad? As this piece explains, the money had originally been designated as a school-community-wide grant program where students oversaw the reviewing of applications and awarding of funds. In the first (and now only) round, approved grants funded music therapy, student travel and college campus visits, programs for victims of crime or parents and students grieving a loss, creation of a calm space for students struggling with mental health, teacher wellness programs, and tuition reimbursement for CMSD employees seeking education degrees, among other things. The students and staff members responsible for the program were, it seems, blindsided by the abrupt dissolution of the program and cancellation of all future grants. The other thing, only touched on here, is the fact that the budget hole is largely the inevitable result of a “fiscal cliff” clearly predicted for districts who used emergency Covid-relief dollars to fund recurring expenses against advisement. (Cleveland.com, 1/28/24)
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