- Some central Ohio school districts ‘fessed up today about how aggressively they work to ferret out residency cheaters. The answer is: generally quite aggressively. I personally would not want to end up in the crosshairs of that Dublin lawyer for anything. Even more interesting are the ways in which these scofflaws come to districts’ attention in the first place. Quite a lesson for parents, I think. (Columbus Dispatch, 5/15/17)
- Long but fascinating look at the dangers inherent in chronic student absenteeism from presenters at a summit on the topic held recently in Cleveland. CLE has been working hard in the last couple of years to bring down the level of chronic absenteeism – clearly for good reason. There is a bit of detail on the district’s efforts in here as well. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/15/17)
- Speaking of Northeast Ohio, here’s a look at a program designed to help high school seniors in the area decide if they should pursue a career in teaching. It is run out of Parma City Schools and the director is a veteran of both district and private schools in the area. It is probably for that reason that she took a moment to wonder why there were no private or charter school students involved in the program in this, its second year. I’ll go out on a limb to say that she is probably the only person to have asked that question. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 5/15/17)
- Youngstown City Schools has received a grant from the Sprint-funded 1 Million Project to allow district students without high speed internet access to receive it. It is the next step in award-winning CIO John LaPlante’s efforts to give all district students laptops for use in school and at home in an effort to battle the “homework gap”. What’s even better – two private schools in the area (too small to apply on their own) were included in the district’s application and will also receive funding to provide internet access in the homes of their needy students as well. Fantastic! Kudos to everyone involved in this effort. (Youngstown Vindicator, 5/15/17)
- Gadfly Bites doesn’t land in Portsmouth very often, but this seemed too interesting to pass up. It seems that district teachers and leaders host regular education forums, open to the public and designed to showcase the work going on in classrooms, clubs, and extracurricular activities. Kind of like a district-wide “interest fair”. Very positive, very interesting. Probably well-received by parents and the community alike. (Portsmouth Daily Times, 5/11/17)
- We end today with some good news out of Fordham’s hometown of Dayton. First up, an awesome-sounding TFA teacher at Stebbins High School mixes local history and STEM (along with a huge dose of fun and challenging content) in her popular self-designed course. Nice. (Dayton Daily News, 5/12/17) After some pretty bad news regarding the district’s varsity sports program this year, the vision of the Dayton Public Schools foundation is turning to brighter things for the future: drumlines. It is their stated mission to bring back “enthusiastic halftime music” via high school marking bands and to beef up middle school music programs too. Fundraising and awareness raising have begun. (Dayton Daily News, 5/13/17)
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