- We’ll start with the good stuff. Kudos to the Canton Repository and reporter Kelli Weir for this fantastic story—and timely reminder as the new school year begins—that Ohio’s new Afterschool Child Enrichment (ACE) program is open for business! We get a great look at some summer camps which a private school family were able to afford thanks to ACE and a nice look at some of the afterschool options coming up for other eligible Stark County families. Additional props for making sure to remind readers that school type attended doesn’t matter and that kids from ages 6 to 18 can participate. Not to mention the links to more information. Awesome! (Canton Repository, 8/12/22)
- Staying on the good side of the ledger for a moment, Steubenville City Schools gets a nice shout out in this piece from the Christian Science Monitor on successful recovery from the pandemic learning slide. By “reopen[ing] quickly for in-person learning five days a week in fall 2020 with safety measures in place,” hiring a bunch of tutors immediately, and having teachers run “solution teams” to address issues such as student absenteeism and family engagement, Stuebenville’s supe says that spring 2022 test scores were “pretty close to what we’ve always gotten.” And regular readers of these clips will recall that Steubenville was often held up as a high-poverty district doing well by its students long before anyone ever heard of SARS-CoV-2. (Christian Science Monitor, 8/11/22)
- However, we fall off the cliff pretty hard with this piece about the lawsuit against Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program. As usual, aspects of how the voucher program works are misstated, both by folks who know and hate it and by folks who simply don’t know enough about it to know they’ve got important details wrong. Additionally, while the group suing over the program includes Wooster City Schools on its list as party to the suit, the district supe denies this on the record. Sounds like the perfect recipe for a story that should have been held back for a bit more fact checking. We're available for that, folks. Any time. (The Daily Record, 8/11/22)
- And speaking of lawsuits, the promised temporary restraining order was filed against Sylvania City Schools’ new busing plan this week. At issue is the proposed circuitous and lengthy transportation routes for resident students attending private schools. School starts Monday. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 8/11/22)
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