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The governor visits
Governor Mike DeWine and First Lady Fran DeWine visited Springfield Sports Academy this week, to get a firsthand look at the charter school’s unique mix of athletics and academics. DeWine had praise for former Ohio State football great Braxton Miller’s efforts to give back to the community and to support young students to success.
The state of transportation, aka the blame game
From the perspective of the Ohio School Boards Association, there appears to be plenty of blame to throw around for the state of student transportation across the state. The driver shortage is due to Amazon hiring away all the potential drivers for themselves; lack of route flexibility is due to the fact that “nobody wants to start at 10 o’clock when there’s buses available”; and, as ever, there are still too darn many kids districts are responsible to transport courtesy of charter and private school choice.
New funding formula—and more—proposed
Speaking of student transportation in Ohio, a new bill unveiled in the State Senate this week would, among many other things, take this job away from districts and create countywide systems across the state to serve all students who want it, regardless of school type attended. That may not make as much news as, say, ending all local school property taxes and replacing them with a single statewide 20-mill property tax and a 1.75 percent sales tax increase—which this bill also proposes—but it’s still pretty big.
Defending Hope
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was asked this week about the impending expansion of the state’s Schools of Hope program, which would allow charter operators to take up space in any district building whose enrollment and utilization falls below a certain threshold, and which has generated a lot of angst among traditional school districts and their supporters. “Being able to provide operators…some existing infrastructure that’s not being utilized makes economic sense,” he said in defense of the plan, and “it also helps attract folks to come in and do it.” Meanwhile, one of those folks—Eva Moskowitz, whose Success Academy network has chosen to expand out of New York City for the first time—took to the pages of The Washington Post to explain why she did so. “Miami alone has 130,000 empty desks,” she writes. “Rather than wasting that capacity, Florida will fill it with schools that can change lives — removing one of the biggest barriers to growth and ensuring that taxpayer dollars are used as intended: to educate children.”
Good news/bad news from Indiana
First, the good news: Efforts to forge alliances between school sectors continue in Indianapolis, following a flurry of new state legislation aimed at centering student needs and parental choice in a new and cooperative system. In that spirit, the Indiana Department of Education last week approved a three-year program that will allow more than 50 Indy charter and private schools to pilot projects that would use transportation and building resources collaboratively, rather than competitively as in the past. Exciting stuff. However, the bad news shows us that “competition” between district and charter schools is still alive in the Hoosier State, and just as detrimental to students and families as ever. To wit: the elected board of Richland-Bean Blossom Community School Corporation in Ellettsville quietly voted to no longer compete against Seven Oaks Classical School, a charter located in the same town, due to their general concerns about charter schools “stealing funding” from districts. Seven Oaks students found out about this decision the hard way: when their middle school cross country team was uninvited to a countywide meet they were prepping for that is being hosted by the district (even though it’s not THEIR meet). Despicable and indefensible.
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