Gadfly Bites 1/5/26—Final closeout

Today’s edition covers stories from the last weeks of 2025. Regular service for 2026 resumes on Wednesday.

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1. East Cleveland City Schools got some huge news right before Christmas: An official end to state oversight via an Academic Distress Commission. And this was no gift either; it was the well-earned culmination of years-long work to boost a swath of academic outcomes for their students. Just how it was supposed to happen. What a great story to lead off our year-end wrap up! (Cleveland.com, 12/24/25) P.S. – If you want to check out Fordham’s take on East Cleveland’s journey to better student outcomes, here’s what Jessica Poiner had to say back in November.
   
   

2. Speaking of a years-long effort, here’s an update on a group of students in one Cleveland Metropolitan School District elementary school who were in fourth grade the year that the Cleveland Promise program was launched. One of the original reporters returned to the school in late 2025, checking in with the students as they were in the midst of their eighth grade year and looking toward high school. Interesting stuff in itself—kids being kids, really—but the most important thing is that the Cleveland Promise was expressly meant to help boost more CMSD students into college with services and support (and yes, a promise of free college tuition when the day came) beginning in elementary school. What’s interesting—and unexpected, I reckon—is that the future plans expressed by most of the eighth graders revisited here don’t seem to require college at all. And certainly not four-year degrees. Even after all that boosting. (Cleveland.com, 12/24/25)
    
3. This opinion piece—by Susan Tave Zelman and Margaret Erlandson Sorensen—is touted as a New Year’s wish for “bipartisanship” in education reform in Ohio for 2026. But it sounds a lot more like “just do as we say because we say so” one-sided-ship to me. I hope they’re prepared to be disappointed…again. (Cleveland.com, 12/28/25)
    
4. Meanwhile, Ohio Catholic school leaders from across the state met and talked actual education in December, with some all-star guests including Gov. DeWine and Lt. Gov. Tressel, as well as representatives from the Ohio Department of Education and the University of Notre Dame. (Catholic Times, 12/26/25) There are a few Columbus-centric education updates in Catholic Times’ year-end wrap up—all of them very good news if I do say so myself. These include the fact that the very awesome Cristo Rey High School will be launching a middle school in fall 2026—beginning with sixth graders and adding seventh and eighth grades in succeeding years—and that two new parish-based schools are also being planned. All due to the fact that the diocese’s schools are currently at 90 percent capacity. Hallelujah indeed. (Catholic Times, 12/30/25)
   
   

5. Approximately 45 school districts across Ohio have been flagged as heading for potential fiscal deficits by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Here’s a look at several of those in northeast Ohio, with somewhat lackadaisical attention paid to the reasons why (student enrollment drops) and vigorous attention paid to the cuts that are going to be required for those districts to get out of trouble, regardless of whether these are the actual correct cuts to be making. (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/28/25) It’s bad enough that districts have not been paying attention to the signals they have been receiving for years about the need to right size their budgets. It’s even worse when the data they’ve been getting are erroneous, as has apparently been happening in Barberton City Schools for many months. (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/28/25)
   
   

6. And just to end the 2025 wrap up on the same high note where we began: Here’s another look at the Bio-Med Science Academy’s move to the campus of Kent State University. (Yeah, I know there’s no new information in here, but it’s such good news I had to cover it again.) The independent STEM school will consolidate its K-6 students into one building at a renovated college lab by fall 2027. Until that time, my most fervent wish is that at least one additional STEM school will be announced for somewhere in Ohio. (Akron Beacon Journal, 12/28/25)

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