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Following up
Last week, we noted that Dohn Community High School in Cincinnati experienced some fiscal troubles that derailed the start of the school year and resulted in the departure of more than 50 staffers, including the long-time superintendent. This week, we learned that Cincinnati Charter School Collaborative, the entity that ran Dohn for years, was also terminated by the school’s board and is now under investigation by the Auditor of State’s office.
Disrespect, disappointment, and a legal dispute
Earlier this month, charter school students in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, were turned away from a community-wide college fair, despite having scheduled meetings with recruiters there. The district on whose grounds the event took place says the students of Gillingham Charter School were invited by accident and were disinvited before the event with the explanation that it was intended for traditional district students only. Gillingham officials sued the event organizer—an educational service center in the region—alleging a number of serious constitutional and civil rights violations for both the exclusionary nature of the fair and for the treatment students and staffers received on site. Last week, district lawyers responded, saying the suit was without merit and asserting that an agreement had been reached regarding the rescinded invitation long before the date of the fair and that Gillingham’s arrival at the fair was an “orchestrated and premeditated” act in contravention of that agreement.
Ohio charter school students learning and building community
Middle school students from Heir Force Community School in Lima recently spent the day at Ohio Northern University, working with and learning from engineering students there. It’s an annual event designed to get youngsters excited about science and going to college. Sounds awesome! Also super awesome: Maritime Career Day in Toledo, hosted by the National Museum of the Great Lakes earlier this week. High school students from far and wide were invited to the event to help raise awareness of the “huge cross section of maritime careers” available to them in the region. Kudos to the students of Maritime Academy of Toledo—whose unique charter school has already helped prepare them for such careers—for joining in to educate their peers.
Novel efforts to combat chronic absenteeism
Two of the leaders of Caliber Public Schools, a charter school network in California, discussed their efforts to cut down on chronic student absenteeism. These focus on nonpunitive approaches involving data analysis, family outreach, and something called “Mystery Fridays”. You’ll have to read the piece to see what that is! By the end of the 2023-24 school year, the network had reduced chronic absenteeism by more than 13 percentage points, from 40 percent to 26.8 percent. And in the first month of 2024-25, they report an average of 95 percent daily attendance.
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