- The Dispatch took a look at Fordham’s latest report – a pretty downbeat assessment of Ohio’s online schools. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/2/16)
- Speaking of online schools, Ohio’s largest such school was on Monday given a court-ordered deadline of 5:00 pm Tuesday to turn over student log-in information the state has requested in order to complete an attendance audit. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 8/1/16) The school did not meet that deadline and instead will submit the requested docs – and thousands more besides – on Friday. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/3/16) But lest you think from that Dispatch piece that this was a one-sided process, here is Gongwer to disabuse you. In fact, the impending Friday info-dump was agreed to by both the school and the state, as was the notion of the state dropping its pending lawsuit against the school – the suit from which much of the current legal to-ing and fro-ing sprung. (Gongwer Ohio, 8/2/16)
- Lots of news from Youngstown since Monday. First up, editors at the Vindy opined very strongly in favor of the district CEO cutting off funding for the board’s legal efforts to invalidate the Academic Distress Commission and his own position. Kudos to them for noting that this might not actually stop the lawsuit as there are other parties involved. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/2/16). Remember the runner-up candidate for Youngstown CEO – Tyrone Olverson? First, Krish Mohip contracted him to review central office staffing. And now, he is on that staff, joining the team as Chief Academic Officer. Wow. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/2/16) It is important to note that the CAO announcement was made retroactively as the dude actually started full time on Monday. The good folks at the Vindy wasted no time in getting an interview with CAO Olverson. Everything he says here is awesome. I cannot stop myself from picturing Mohip and Olverson on horseback, riding through the dusty scrub into the Valley. Unlikely pardners who find themselves in an unruly, forgotten, despondent town that needs a new sheriff and a trusty deputy to clean things up once and fer all. And you cain’t stop me neither. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/3/16)
- A few other odds and ends from Youngstown. The school board, the interim supe, and the district CEO had markedly different responses to that disastrous report on the district’s transportation system we told you about earlier this week. While board members were busy discussing who knew what when and the interim supe lamented the lack of a written report before now (despite knowing of the ongoing problems), the CEO was busy reporting on the Herculean efforts already undertaken (in the month since he started the job) to correct the ginormous amount of problems the report enumerated. Despite the prodigious effort, district buses will not be back on the road before the start of school at Youngstown Early College High School next week. Yes, you read that right: the start of the school year at the one shining gem in the district’s portfolio is already marred by a years-long, heads-in-the-sand blame game over transportation. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/3/16) Meanwhile, the board pondered a couple of other items at this week’s meeting, including alternatives to summer school (“Perhaps we can reduce the number of students that end up having to resort to summer school if we improve, or punch up the instructional day throughout the year”) and a 20% annual attrition rate among teachers (“If our folks were coming to school, coming to work on a more regular basis, this whole thing that we’re talking about would not be as important.”) Sheriff! (WKBN-TV, Youngstown, 8/2/16) Lastly, Innovation Ohio offered their lame cut-and-paste prescription to fix what ails Youngstown City Schools. How cut-and-paste, you ask? Well, they could change every instance of “Youngstown” in the report to “Lorain” and have a new publishable piece ready for next year. And how lame, you ask? Well, everything that Tyrone Olverson said in his interview with the Vindy was more valuable to the kids and parents of Youngstown than anything in this paper. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/2/16)
