Gadfly Bites 8/3/20 – Celebrations

1. In case you were wondering, Big Walnut High School’s super spreader event in-person graduation happened as scheduled on July 25. 198 of the district’s 250 graduates attended in person while a handful hung out in their cars in the parking lot to snag their sheepskins. Ironically, the remaining folks who didn’t want to attend the event at all are being asked to come to the school in person to pick up their diplomas. (ThisWeek News, 7/31/20) Also happening in-person: a summer literacy bootcamp for rising Kindergartners in Richland County. (Richland Source, 7/31/20)
    
2. The majority of this story is an overview of Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s current online learning plan for the first part of the school year. It seems like maybe a tad bit better than the spring (kids will actually be graded A-F on…something) but there seems to be some obvious holes and unanswered questions if you ask me. (Which, of course, no one has done.) But that important information is subsumed quite a bit by the headline and the peripheral discussion about the district putting any thought of implementing their “mastery” model on hold. As I have opined here before, their version sucks, quite frankly, and I ain’t sad to see it on the back burner. (The 74 Million, 7/30/20)
    
3. Golden Bridge Academy, a charter school in Lima, is on the move to a prominent location in the town square. Everyone quoted here sounds pretty happy about it. (Lima News, 7/31/20) Here is a yet another fantastic story about the work that Partnership Schools is putting in in Cleveland as they work to open their first schools outside of NYC. This particular story is about a family-owned construction company—with deep ties to the diocese and the schools—helping to connect the outside organization to the roots of the Catholic education experience in Cleveland. An excellent read. (Partnership Schools blog, 7/29/20) Do you know what it means when a media outlet says, “There is no cost to attend [XYZ new school], which is funded by the Ohio Department of Education.”? It means that XYZ is charter school but we don’t want to say it because we usually say bad things about charters and this is one that we like. Such is the story of Flex High School, a dropout recovery school soon to open in suburban Richmond Heights. The model is praised (CTE, flexible schedule, and graduation-focused), the principal gets to say things like “Once we get their test scores back, we tailor the curriculum to meet their needs” without question, the fact that Flex is pretty much a “chain” of schools is put forward as a positive, and even the fact that they are opening for in-person classes on August 17 is presented as unequivocally good. And of course: no “c word”. Good luck, everyone! (Cleveland.com, 7/31/20)
    
4. Finally today, Toledo City Schools is celebrating (?) a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding the findings of a discrimination investigation against students of color and students with special needs in the district. I was interested to note that whatever efforts were supposed to be put in place to mitigate the lack of support for those students as found by DOJ (that is, everything in the agreement) have already been implemented. It may be just my old jaded self talking, but I think that means things right now are as good as they are going to get for these particular district students. Celebrate that if you will. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 8/2/20)

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