Gadfly Bites 7/11/25—Fixer upper

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1. Could this be the very last slate of Ohio Teachers of the Year nominees as determined by the 11 district-elected members of the state’s Board of Education? The pin has been pulled via the budget bill and the timer is now counting down to the end of each elected member’s current term, after which those seats will not be filled again. Some of the occupants will go quickly of their own volition, I reckon, while others will stay to the bitter end. But I am hoping that we don’t have to wait until those last bitter individuals hit the exits for the Ohio Teacher of the Year structure to get a much-needed revamp. Why? Because the new state board of education is required to include members representing district, vocational, charter, STEM, and private school sectors. Teachers in those last two categories have never been eligible for Teacher of the Year before; and despite their nominal eligibility, charter school teachers have been vastly underrepresented—to the tune of zero or near-zero recognition—over decades of this rigged contest. (I can’t be bothered to check, but I’m pretty confident in this last statement without doing the actual math.) So yeah, even if some elected state board members won’t leave the premises until the moment before the locks are changed, I’d be totally jazzed if the demo crew got started with renovating the place around their sad, lonely cubicles right away—starting with a whole new look for Teacher of the Year 2027 nominations which fairly evaluate every teacher in all of our schools. (Ohio State Board of Education, 7/9/25)

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