Gadfly Bites 8/13/25—Robert’s your relative

News stories featured in Gadfly Bites may require a paid subscription to read in full. Just sayin’.

When I was a kid and newly-enamored of the British TV series Doctor Who, I wrote a lot of my own stories involving the Doctor and his companions having new adventures of my own devising across time and space. It was great fun. Being an American—and a young one at that—I knew very little about English customs or manners or history or language—educated mainly via Who and Monty Python—but I wouldn’t let that deter me. I used what I knew (every character said “pip pip cheerio”, “spot of tea”, and “hang about” at least once, even the alien bad guys), invented some stuff (don’t know if Brits use “on holiday” figuratively, but I’ll give it a try), and elided the rest (“The Doctor flashed his most winning smile to the guard, trying to look as English and as friendly as possible….”). At the time, I thought, “Who would ever know?” But today I cringe at the thought of every problematic (as in: dead wrong) sentence I wrote. I bring this up as prelude to this U.K. news report on the school bus transportation situation in Dayton/Ohio. Given the amount of errors, elisions, and suppositions upon which it rests, I can only assume it is meant to be a sort of Americana fanfic written by a British person who knows as much about how school buses work in this country/state/city as I knew about darts, GCSEs, and parliamentary procedure at age 10. (The Guardian, U.K., 8/11/25) Not to be outdone by foreigners showing off that they don’t know what they’re talking about, Dayton City Schools has responded to their situation the only way they know how: with a ridiculous, expensive, and doomed lawsuit against the state. (Dayton 24/7 Now, 8/12/25) Meanwhile, the Chair of the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee is responding to all of this overblown Daytonian (and English) ridiculousness with some Columbus straight talk of his own. Among his suggestions: Tightening the allowed definition of “impractical to transport”, significantly boosting the amount of payment given to parents in lieu of providing transportation to their kids, and giving state transportation funding directly to charter and private schools who take on the job themselves. All of which we can file under Be Careful What You ~~Wish For~~ Fib to a Gullible Foreign News Source About. (ABC 6 News, Columbus, 8/12/25)
Whew! By contrast to the Guardian’s reportorial nonsense above, when my colleague Jessica Poiner speaks on the record about something, you know you can take that information to the bank. This time, the topic is the state of the teaching force in Akron City Schools. While others quoted in the piece are ready to jump to their pet reasons for there Definitely Being a Shortage of Teachers That Must Be Addressed Immediately—constant attacks on public education, lack of funding, insultingly-low pay, etc.—Jessica calmly explains that the true details of the problem remain largely unclear due to a lack of desperately-needed data on hiring/retirements/vacancies/etc. in specific schools, grades, and subjects. “It’s so localized,” she says, wisely and without drama, “that it’s really hard to pinpoint one specific or two specific reasons because it varies so much based on the location.” Get the data, then we’ll know. (Signal Akron, 8/12/25)
Kudos to IGS Energy and its “earn and learn” effort as described here—a paid internship program that includes students at Columbus State Community college participating as part of the Columbus Promise scholarship program. The young man featured in this piece seems to be doing great in school and at his work for IGS. Their belief that interning in a field you are studying would enhance your learning is legit and I don’t doubt that they will offer him a good, career-ladder job as soon as he graduates. Two things still nag at me, though. One is that my research indicates that IGS hasn’t had a ton of takers for this program over the years (and that some of those who did join up likely were adults rather than Columbus Promise students). And the other, as my longstanding and long-suffering subscribers will recall with a grimace (“When will he stop with this?!” I hear you shouting to the uncaring wind.), Columbus Promise is for Columbus City Schools students only, locking out tens of thousands of charter, private, and STEM school kids across the city who would also grab and capitalize on this kind of opportunity with similar gusto if they only had access to it. Just sayin’. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/12/25)
Finally today, here’s another great look at the new Dreams Academy private school opening next week. What began as an afterschool program to teach soft skills and positive life lessons to young Black men in Akron has evolved into a fully-fledged academic institution designed to intervene in children’s lives much earlier—the school will initially enroll kindergarten through second grade boys—in order to start them on a positive and productive path before negative influences arise. Students will be shown a whole world of productive possibilities for their lives and given the education and support they need to pursue whatever dream they choose. Awesome! Interestingly, we also learn that the founders initially intended for the school to be a charter, but were supported by the nonprofit venture philanthropy The Drexel Fund to envision a private school model instead. Everything about this sounds great (love the shoutout to the EdChoice Scholarship program too) and I wish students, staff, and families a fantastic inaugural year. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/12/25)