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- Fortunately, it is possible to read this story solely as a discussion of student enrollment data. As in: Dayton City Schools has been shrinking while the charter and private sectors in the region have been growing. That’s definitely all that my colleague Aaron Churchill is talking about here. I say “fortunately”, because if I were to focus on anything else for too long, particularly the comments of Dayton City Schools superintendent David Lawrence, I might hurl. The suggestion that his district “deserves a win” for doing nothing more so far than increasing the number of field trips offered is laughable. And the fact that the “win” that is “deserved” is only for him and his bureaucracy—and not for students or parents—is repugnant. Students can’t “come back” if they never chose you in the first place, and bossman’s insistence that “Disney-style” customer service methods will make a difference in their choice without any improvement in the product being offered to those customers shows that his efforts are not yet to be taken seriously and that those student enrollment trends discussed here will not likely be changing course any time soon. (Dayton Daily News, 3/4/24)
- Meanwhile, congratulations to Dayton’s Liberty High School, a longstanding dropout recovery charter school, on receiving two planning and zoning committee wins recently to move forward with building a brand new facility. Seems like the usual NIMBYs were there, saying the usual things (“right project, wrong location”, “too much traffic”, etc.). But it also seems like a whole bunch of YIMBYs showed up too, happy to endorse a positive use of a long-empty corner. “For 23 years, [the neighborhood] has waited for a project such as this,” said one speaker. How lovely. There are, it seems, lots of young people at risk of dropping out of…some schools in the area that remain nameless. Liberty has had a wait list for years, which is sad in a number of ways. But thank heavens that Dayton-area families in need of it have another choice like this one, and that that spaces will soon be able to serve even more of those students—in a nicer building with actual windows—who are looking for that choice. (Dayton Daily News, 3/5/24)
- Appropriate to the foregoing discussions, former state supe Susan Zelman talks about Ohio’s expanded voucher program in a Cleveland.com editorial today. “I still believe that the provision of enhanced school choice, if constructed properly, can provide mutual and collective benefit for all,” she writes. “However, this requires the state to step up in setting academic standards and quality oversight of any school electing to receive public funding.” Sounds good, Your Eminence. How about we start with the district schools that take the lion’s share of that public funding and move out from there? (Cleveland.com, 3/6/24)
- Finally, back here in the real world: Lt. Governor Husted announced the rollout of the new Ohio Career Navigator site at a meeting yesterday. “The bottom line is we have more jobs than we have people to fill them right now,” he said. “But there are barriers that stand in the way for people…and a lot of times those may be credentials that you could earn in a few weeks.” The new site is meant to be a step-by-step guide for Ohioans—young and old—to more easily plot their course to a new and/or better career path. Nice! (Statehouse News Bureau, 3/5/24)
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