Gadfly Bites 7/24/26—Editorial fiat

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. You have been warned.

1. This story about the annual push by Ohio districts to fill up their open bus driver slots ahead of the new school year is rather pleasant. It not only avoids the tone of desperation that has pervaded other coverage of the topic in recent years, the business manager at Forest Hills Local Schools outside Cincinnati also makes the job itself sound pretty fun—even though he’d understandably rather hire a full roster of pros this year and not have to sub as a driver himself quite so often. Forest Hills is even holding a public event this weekend where anyone who has ever thought about getting behind the wheel of a big yellow bus can do so just to try it out (and maybe get a little recruiting pitch at the same time). How nice. (WVXU-FM, Cincinnati, 7/22/26)
   
   

2. Not so nice, IMHO, are the reportorial/editorial choices made in this piece about school transportation. In it, Ohio Capital Journal connects the annual driver hiring push to the new report by the Ohio Pupil Transportation Workgroup. The shade thrown on the group’s efforts, its findings, and even specific sentences in the report seems downright nasty to me. Not to mention their characterization of private school parents who just want busing to work for their kids as “demanding more”. That negative vibe also pervades the discussion of the actual job and the hiring process currently underway in districts across the state, including in the comments of several district officials. Honestly, I wouldn’t want to work for such bitter-sounding people, even at twice the state minimum wage. (Ohio Capital Journal, 7/23/26)
   
   

3. Finally today, here’s coverage of a new national report that ranks Ohio’s public schools as the fifth most racially segregated in the U.S. Not good, but also not super surprising for any of us in the education policy field either. The culprits are familiar (old school economic and housing segregation hard-wired into today’s district boundaries), but the proposed solution seems novel to me: “Especially in Ohio, a very high degree of segregation is happening between districts,” says Segregation Tracking Project co-founder Ann Owens. But since a “given district can really only…control what’s happening within its own boundaries,” it’s not up to them to solve the problem. (Hmmm…..) Anywho, for this reason, she says, Ohio needs to take charge and redraw school district boundaries itself (say what now?!) with the intent of encouraging racial and economic integration…or “develop plans that allow students who live in certain areas to attend schools in other districts”. (Did anyone on the editorial staff read this piece before it got posted?!) While perhaps not the target audience for all this, I for one LOVE these ideas and hope that the state gets started on them quickly, citing the report and its important recommendations to readily deflect any complaints that might arise. Sadly, I know we’re going to need more and better student-focused busing to accomplish either of them. So, I guess that leaves us right back where we started today. (Statehouse Newsroom, 7/23/26)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.