Gadfly Bites 7/21/25—Trimble trouble

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1. Only two stories to look at today, but both are pretty interesting. First up: Dayton City Schools is changing the way it serves students who have been removed from their homeschools due to “behavioral issues”. The discussion here seems to assume that we all know what this term means and which kids we’re talking about, but there definitely seems some wiggle room within the eligibility criteria because the group includes some who have been formally suspended and some who have not…presumably dependent on the numbers and types of issues they may have experienced or have caused. We also don’t know how many kids may be served here, but we do learn that everyone thus identified last year was on “home instruction”, which cost the district about $210,000 to pay for “home instructors”. This year, students with behavioral issues (suspended or not) will be concentrated in a single district building instead—repurposed from an administrative satellite space—called Jackson Center. Interestingly to me, it does not seem as if this change is mean to be a cost-saver. At least $75,000 of work is needed to bring the building back up to snuff for educating students (and giving them a functional cafeteria) by the start of school in mid-August and at least $72,600 will be spent on School AI, a program to “support student learning and explain complex concepts to students”. So we’re already up to about half the cost of last year’s services for this group of students before we even get to the payroll amount needed for actual humans to staff the place, which we are not told at all. Of course, Dayton doesn’t need to economize on anything, being one of the only big-city districts in the state that is swimming in dough. So obviously the motivation for this change is something other than money. I have a strong suspicion, given district leaders’ most common talking point in recent years, but who knows if they’ll ever ‘fess up to the real reason no matter what it is. (Dayton Daily News, 7/21/25)
   
   

2. Our other interesting piece today concerns the resignation of Trimble Local Schools superintendent John Hurd. My long-standing, long-suffering subscribers (greetings to all 10 of you (fool)hardy souls) will recall that Trimble was ultimately placed in fiscal emergency status by the state of Ohio after many months of begging steadily-worsening fiscal projections—kick-started by mistaken double-spending of a grant award and exacerbated by a revolving door of temporary treasurers who missed the telltale signs of trouble. You will also recall that district leaders were handed a reduction in force plan approved by the teachers union at the start of this mess, which the elected school board refused to accept for no discernable reason. Supe says he resigned in frustration last week over “increasing overreaching involvement” of the board into daily business…and not in a good way. But elected board members don’t seem worried at all. They’ve got an interim in place already—recruited from the local ESC and already touting operations she wants to change to help save money—and are getting ready to place a levy request on the upcoming ballot, but I feel like everyone (still) involved is forgetting something important: the fiscal emergency panel that they were begging for for months is actually in charge of their spending. Nothing will happen without their OK, and they are not mentioned at all in this nearly 1000-word piece. Seems to me like it could be a long summer down there. (Athens Independent, 7/18/25)

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