Gadfly Bites 4/17/24—Novelty, solvency, quality

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1. OSU professor, Columbus gadfly, and Fordham friend Vlad Kogan has little confidence right now in Columbus City Schools’ latest facilities taskforce to do what is necessary to right size the district. Among other things, he points out in this opinion piece that the criteria being used by the taskforce to rank buildings for possible closure are seriously flawed, focusing highly on students transferring into the buildings from outside their attendance boundaries (opting in like that is somehow a bad thing that must be stopped) and ignoring a building’s academic outcomes entirely. He says it’s not too late for the taskforce to change tack and do the right thing, but that may be the one thing he’s wrong about. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/16/24)
   
   

2. Following up on Monday’s sole clip about the full-court press on Ohio’s teacher preparation programs, here’s a look at Governor Mike DeWine and DEW Director Steve Dackin’s reading rainbow road trip, taking their message directly to the hallowed halls of higher ed. They were at Youngstown State University on Monday, and everyone there does indeed seem fully bought in to the science of reading. “This plan is being taught at every level at YSU,” said future teacher Zoe Belcik. “In working with…students, including those with emotional and learning disabilities, I’ve seen students who came in at a (level) 2, they go after about two-and-a half-months to a 7 or 8.” (Vindy.com, 4/15/24)
   
   

3. Following up on the recent financial travails of Mt. Healthy City Schools that we’ve discussed here (come on guys, we’re only averaging three clips a week these days—keep up!): After successfully begging to be put under the most stringent state fiscal oversight, the district has been approved for a loan of $11 million from the state’s School District Solvency Assistance Fund. Putting aside the fact that there’s no such thing as a Charter School Solvency Assistance Fund (mainly because I’m the only one thinking of that), there’s still lots of important points to note in this brief piece. Including the fact that this is the largest such loan ever provided by the fund, that the district’s financial issues reportedly “stemmed from declining enrollment while adding staff and expenditures,” and that the district’s plan to lay off dozens of staff members is now on hold…because of that miraculous infusion of fine green “solvent”. (Fox 19 News, Cincinnati, 4/15/24)
   
   

4. And continuing on with our theme of perks that districts get which charters don’t (face it, subscribers, that theme is almost always under the surface with me even when I don’t point it out), here is a novelty for you: A mayor and a district superintendent presented a joint “state of…” event last week. Why? According to the director of the county’s chamber of commerce, it’s because “You can’t separate the city from the school district, their relationship to one another is vitally important to them both.” And indeed they sure sounded like they were joined at the coin purse hip as they rhetorically divvied up the putative spoils of projected future economic and population growth. 110 percent of it. (The Chronicle-Telegram, 4/17/24) Speaking of which, let us return to Washington Local Schools in Toledo for a moment, where another shoe has (perhaps predictably) dropped in their school construction saga. Immediately upon receiving approval for a permit to build a new middle school—approval which you will recall required considerable city and county assistance to overcome residents’ concerns—the elected school board voted unanimously to spend $1 million to buy additional land in the area to relocate their athletic fields. (Toledo Blade, 4/15/24)

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