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Not very neighborly
We learned last week that the legal effort to overturn denial of a use permit for the L. Hollingworth School for the Talented and Gifted to expand its pre-K program in one Toledo neighborhood came to naught. Thus the mood for school staff and families is decidedly downbeat this year. Even worse: their “neighbors”, who were instrumental in the way the permit process ultimately played out, decided to double down on their antipathy toward the school. Superintendent Terrence Franklin tells 13 ABC News, “They found it funny that we now own property that we’re not able to expand our property on. That was the big joke in the neighborhood.” Disgusting, but not at all surprising.
Restitching the community fabric
The Columbus Dispatch this week reported that charter schools are among the entities taking the lead in repurposing millions of square feet of unused office space in and around the city to new, productive uses. The ones that can successfully get use permits, that is.
The quiet part out loud
Of course, expanding the number and geographic spread of charter schools will serve to highlight the already-critical inability of many school districts to successfully transport charter students to and from their buildings every day. Ohio Education Association president Scott DiMauro opined this week against not only the law that requires districts to transport resident students attending charter, private, and STEM schools but also against Attorney General Dave Yost’s current efforts to enforce that requirement on the perennially-deficient Columbus City Schools. His suggestion that lawmakers should all become bus drivers if they really want to help solve the problem scrapes the bottom of the rhetorical barrel. Of more use is the op-ed from a Columbus City Schools parent who, while echoing union sentiments, also expresses that it is wrong for the AG to “bully” the district for prioritizing students attending their own buildings over resident students attending other options. Which is clearly what is happening—and which is definitely flouting the intent of the law.
Inexplicable charter scapegoating
Dayton City Schools superintendent David Lawrence last week actually suggested that it was the state requirement that his district transport charter school students—again, a process the district has been habitually bad at—that was at the heart of a fight among students at a public library branch last month. To wit: If Dayton didn’t have to bus charter (and private and STEM) students, all district-attending students could have a yellow bus home immediately after school and wouldn’t have to hang out at the library waiting for a ride or an RTA bus. No crowd of kids, no fight. Disingenuous, myopic, and entirely unhelpful. Luckily, other community leaders provided legitimate proposals to give kids more options after school—options which have been sorely lacking for all Dayton young people for many years.
A bad start to the year
The 2024-25 school year has gotten off to a troubling start at Dohn Community High School in Cincinnati, according to the Enquirer. The school’s sponsor is investigating financial operations after receiving reports of unpaid vendors. One of those vendors provided the school’s math and reading curricula. No payment, no materials. Thus, students received minimal instruction for the first two weeks of September—when school was supposed to start—and their school year did not officially begin until October. In response to all of this, the superintendent was fired, along with 50 other staff members. New leadership is now in place and the financial situation is said to be coming back under control, but questions linger and the school’s future remains uncertain.
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