Building up
Utica Shale Academy, a mining/extraction career-focused charter school, has purchased a new building to help them expand and serve more students in eastern Ohio. Kudos!
Welcome to suburbia
Lincoln Leadership Academy has proposed a new charter school to be located in a former office complex in Hilliard. While things seem to be moving along OK so far, there are hints that zoning requirements, a notoriously blunt instrument used often in suburbs to control land uses (and to weed out “undesirable" uses”), could represent a hurdle to the academy’s plans.
A win-win?
A district high school in Akron was forced to suspend its football season when there were not enough players in the building to field a team. Now officials are proposing recruiting charter and private school students to the team—a move which has been allowed for years in Ohio but never put into practice here for some reason—to reconstitute their football program. Fascinating.
Parental choice FTW
Continuing a pandemic-era trend, traditional district enrollment across Wisconsin declined again between September 2021 and September 2022. Where are the kids going? Private and charter schools chosen by parents and families.
New source of funding?
Missouri’s state treasurer has proposed the creation of a $10 million revolving loan fund which could be used by charter schools across the state to repair buildings and renovate classroom space in their facilities. The effort faces an uphill battle, especially after an earlier legislative push to boost funding for charters was vetoed by the governor, but supporters hope that the limited nature of the loan fund will help it come to fruition.
Improving students’ lives
Can attending a high-performing charter school help young people live healthier lives? A fascinating new paper reports that students in strong charters in California reported better mental and physical health and less engagement in injurious activities. And while there was one major exception to this positive pattern, all the data are interesting and important.
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