- As I write this, your humble clips compiler has not seen anything to indicate what’s happening in Cleveland Metropolitan School District classrooms this morning, but absent any news to the contrary, one assumes that union teachers held to their previous statement and stayed home as they promised they would. One also assumes that this missed first step will slow down CMSD’s efforts to return students to those classrooms. Lt. Governor John Husted, appearing on local TV news on Saturday, definitely seemed to have those assumptions. And he did not sound pleased about it. (WKYC-TV, Cleveland, 3/6/21)
- The founder of the new-ish news site The Land is a CMSD parent. He penned a commentary piece for Chalkbeat in which he opines that he is “worried about the long-term effects” of extended fully-remote learning in his district. You’ll have to read it to see what specifically he’s talking about. It was not what I was expecting from the first glance. (Chalkbeat, 3/5/21)
- Related to the above, 12 of 14 districts and charter schools in Clark and Champaign Counties saw a decrease in student enrollment from 2019 to 2020. The two gainers were both charter schools, BTW. The details provided by school leaders in this piece are interesting on both counts. Districts who lost students seem pretty clear on where they went and why. The one charter school leader interviewed also seemed pretty clear on where his influx of new students came from and why. (Springfield News Sun, 3/7/21)
- Speaking of knowing stuff: lots of testing going on in Kettering City Schools’ classrooms since the return of hybrid in-person learning in late January. Testing for understanding, testing for achievement levels, testing to make sure their kids don’t slip through the cracks. (Dayton Daily News, 3/7/21) Staying in Montgomery County for a moment, last week’s move to a fully in-person learning model in Dayton City Schools was hampered by daily bus driver shortages. As noted, this is really nothing new for the district or the families it serves. What is somewhat new is that there seems to be no workable plan on the horizon that even pretends to fix the problem. The superintendent’s suggestion—that parents who are able to get kids to and from school themselves should do so—doesn’t seem like it would be all that helpful since there’s no way for the transportation folks to know who will/won’t be riding and thus can’t adjust covered/uncovered routes. And while the suggestion from the head of the bus driver’s union—that the district offers more pay to attract more drivers—is completely doable given the millions of Covid-relief dollars the district already has already with more still to come, it doesn’t seem like the administration wants to give up on those contracts with the local transit agency just yet. (Dayton Daily News, 3/8/21)
- I personally find this inside look at East Cleveland City Schools’ effort to force high school kids to return to hybrid in-person learning after nine months of an all-remote learning model to be really depressing. While it is termed a bold, mold-breaking plan—eliminating the remote option for kids who were demonstrably struggling with it—the numbers provided suggest it was largely a failure. Even more depressing are the reminders of the district’s longstanding status as “academically distressed”, long predating SARS-CoV-2 and likely to remain long after. Almost as if the rona isn’t the problem at all. (The 74, 3/7/21)
- In case you hadn’t heard, the executive budget proposal being debated in the Ohio House of Representatives includes, among its many education provisions, a plan to make FAFSA completion a requirement for graduation for nearly all students in the state. Testimony was heard on the provision in a subcommittee on Friday and the arguments for and against—as well as the breakdown of who was making those arguments on each side—was oddly fascinating to me. (Gongwer Ohio, 3/5/21)
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