Gadfly Bites 7/15/26—Abide by the law and benefit; flout it, and pay big time

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1. How things are supposed to work: The Summit Academy charter school network was the successful bidder to purchase a closed Canton City Schools building earlier this week. Canton’s elected school board voted in February to close Belle Stone Elementary as part of its effort to consolidate buildings, right-size their footprint, and to boost their precarious budget. At the end of the school year in late May, the closure was immediate. And by mid-July, the process was complete. Belle Stone had multiple charter operators interested and the resulting auction finished with a sale price nearly three times higher than the appraised value. No inefficient underutilization of the property, zero future maintenance costs, and nearly three quarters of a million more bucks in their coffers. Win win win.  (Canton Repository, 7/14/26) How things are not supposed to work: Elected leaders of North Canton City Schools and the City of North Canton voted this week to approve a complicated land swap deal (which we talked about before) in which a number of properties changed hands for a total of about $4. All this despite community objections to several aspects—especially the lack of concrete plans for any of the land or buildings. But as we have previously reported—and as is repeated in this piece—the driving force of the deal is the district trying to avoid the state mandate to sell their soon-to-close middle school to charter or private school competitors. Transparent, disrespectful, and fiscally irresponsible. (Canton Repository, 7/15/26)
    

2. To end on a happier note: Linden Tree Montessori is a brand new PreK-2 charter school opening soon in Columbus. The school currently rents space from a church in the North Linden neighborhood, but a) it’s almost full up already, and b) leaders plan to add a grade per year until it reaches PreK-8. Which means Linden Tree will be looking for a bigger building in the next couple of years. Will there be an unused district building they could buy? Will an ironclad state law be able to help them do so? Let’s hope they get a Canton outcome and not a North Canton outcome when the time comes. (ABC 6 News, Columbus, 7/13/26)

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