Gadfly Bites 9/27/24—Between a rock and a hard place

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Look, I’m trying very hard not to succumb to the “crisis” narrative some folks are pushing in regard to the elected board of Columbus City Schools. There are, in my estimation, many opportunists among them whose agenda is anything but the improvement of academic outcomes for students. And indeed some of these folks are responsible for creating the issues the board is trying (admittedly not very effectively right now) to address. But man, the evidence in their defense is really thin. To wit: We are told in this piece that Columbus City Schools would like to expand what is termed one of its “greatest academic successes” to more students. It’s CTE-related, but that’s not the point. The point is that this “great success” is achieved by a mere 28 students (out of two giant urban high school senior classes) each year. Expanding is a good thing, obvs, but if that tiny positive outcome ranks as one of your best efforts, dear leaders, you have very little ammunition to fight those haters with. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/25/24)
Speaking of which, Columbus City Schools officials have not, says Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, complied with the requirement to bus charter, private, and STEM school students who were previously declared impractical to transport while everyone awaits the resolution the state’s lawsuit against the district. “Every day of inaction from Columbus Schools puts parents between a rock and a hard place,” he says. Thus, Yost filed an emergency motion in the Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday to force that transportation to begin immediately. (Columbus Dispatch, 9/25/24) Fordham’s Aaron Churchill, interviewed in the OCJ, is not buying the argument that there are appreciably more private school students this year needing transportation due to the expansion of EdChoice vouchers to near-universal status. “They’ve been required to bus students to private schools” for a long time, he says, “whether they’ve been on a voucher or not.” So “there hasn’t been a change from a busing perspective.” That Aaron—so practical. You can always count on him to debunk the false narratives with the utmost in logical economy. (Ohio Capital Journal, 9/27/24) The Supreme Court gave Columbus City Schools until Monday to formally respond to Yost’s motion. The district released an informal response late yesterday, saying they are “working to identify routes” on which to transport approximately 120 specific students and are “trying to minimize the negative impact” that doing so “will have on other students.” (CW Columbus, 9/26/24)
There’s transportation trouble of a different stripe in Cincinnati City Schools right now. Officials from the city police department and the city transit authority spoke up at an elected school board meeting this week, listing a series of recent incidents in and around transit hubs that these officials say are the direct result of too many high school students using their district-issued bus passes to congregate, get out of control, and cause trouble after school. This beef between ~~unions~~ agencies over transporting high schoolers goes back a few years, as the piece points out, and does not seem likely to be sorted out by the adults in charge any time soon. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 9/26/24)
And staying in the Queen City area for our final clip of the week: Leaders of Seven Hills School, a popular and well-regarded private school in the bucolic Cincinnati suburbs (so bougie it doesn’t take EdChoice Scholarships at the moment), have decided to close one of their two decades-old campuses and consolidate operations in one to-be-expanded campus. In this piece, they explain how they came to this conclusion and how the transition will be done over the next three years. Will every family love it? Probably not. But they’ve all got plenty of time to either get used to the change or find another option, and the school’s leaders have been thoughtful and deliberate about communicating the need for the change and providing information and clarity for families through the process. Sounds like the ideal way to do a school closure/consolidation to me…even if you can’t win everybody over in the end. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 9/26/24)