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Ohio Gadfly Daily

Gadfly Bites 8/19/24—The moral of the story today: Resolve your administrative issues, or else...

Jeff Murray
8.19.2024
Gadfly Bites logo

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

  1. Fordham’s (and Akron’s) own Jessica Poiner took the Editorial Board of her hometown newspaper to task this weekend for their recent editorial in full-throated (but erroneous) support for the voucher groucher lawsuit and for Akron City Schools’ decision to spend precious taxpayer funds to participate in it. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/18/24)

  2. Maybe those funds are more precious in some districts than others, because Portsmouth City Schools learned last week that $6.3 million of theirs cannot currently be located. This piece is brief, but packs in a whole lot of OMG bombshells that hint at a larger, more troubling story. These include: “Treasurer on leave”, “shakeup on the board,” “replacement of the Superintendent,” and “state officials serving a search warrant on the district offices.” Yowza. (Scioto County Daily News, 8/16/24)

  3. Non-chartered, non-tax supported schools in Ohio (a.k.a. “508” schools) don’t usually get this much positive attention in their hometown papers, but the story of Canton Christian School made the cut. And it’s pretty interesting. A group of local parents whose children were aging out of daycare and needed Kindergarten placement found that all of their local private schools were running big waiting lists these days (hmmm…. wonder why that is?) and placement was not guaranteed for the fall anywhere. Despairing of having anywhere to send their children (and, unnoted, no one seemed interested in the traditional district option; just sayin’), the parents explored the idea of creating their own religion-focused private school through the section 508 process and were able to get everything together in a matter of two months. Amazing. Helping along the way was Malone University, who provided space, and a large group of teachers who left their employment at the daycare over the summer due to “unresolved management issues”. Super interesting stuff. (Canton Repository, 8/19/24)

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Policy Priority:
School Funding
Topics:
Governance
Tags: Akron Akron Public Schools Ohio

Jeff Murray is a lifelong resident of central Ohio. He previously worked at School Choice Ohio and the Greater Columbus Arts Council. He has two degrees from the Ohio State University and lives in the Clintonville neighborhood with his wife.

He is proud every day to support the Fordham mission to help make excellent education options more…

View Full Bio

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