Gadfly Bites 6/24/26—Churchillian advice

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1. You can add Dayton City Schools to the list of districts worried about possible budget holes in the near future, although they are, as noted here, not nearly in as bad a shape (“historically…better off financially than the state averages”) as many others. Lots of folks are quoted here as to the reasons for budget instability—notably, however, no one from Dayton City Schools—including Fordham’s own school funding guru Aaron Churchill. “Schools, generally speaking, should be reducing their employee headcounts consistent with enrollment declines,” he explains, bringing staff-to-pupil ratios “back to historical norms from a decade ago.” At the same time, districts “also need to clamp down on spending on ineffective staff, programs, (and) tech that do little to deliver results for students.” Right on! (Dayton Daily News, 6/24/26)
   
   

2. Personally, I think the elected board that controls Akron City Schools’ budget could benefit from taking that righteous Churchillian advice to heart. Here’s why. The details of this story have been decades in the making and super twisty, so I will spare you the full recap. But suffice it to say that the same elected board members who put their thumbs on the scale during the last contract process for selecting a provider to transport special needs and homeless youth to district buildings (who also allowed that preferred provider to upcharge them $4 million on that contract) have once again rigged the system to reward a preferred provider without regard to spending and budget concerns. “If this was all about the bottom line, about funding,” explained the company president whose lower bid was tossed out on a technicality, “then they were not fiscally responsible tonight.” Tonight. Last night. Tomorrow. Last week. Next week… (Signal Akron, 6/24/26)
   
   

3. In a very timely blog post, the superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland was recently discussing this very topic. “A quick perusal of the news lately…finds plenty of people convinced that the state has reduced its investment in public education,” writes Frank O’Linn. “And they all somehow similarly point to Ohio's relatively small investment in school choice as the source of their ills.” This is false, he says, and lays out the truth. Ohio spends “more on primary and secondary education than at any other time in state history. And state education spending will continue to increase, per the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.” Neither, he says, can private school vouchers be blamed for districts’ budget woes. “EdChoice is, in fact, the best value for taxpayers in Ohio. The EdChoice Expansion scholarship, which became available to every Ohio household on a sliding scale in 2023, ranges from $616 to $8,408, and averaged payments of $4,958 per pupil in fiscal year 2025.” That all sounds practically Churchillian to me. (Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, 6/22/26)

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