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Time to stop
Ohio lawmakers have been trying for years make it easier for charter school operators to purchase underutilized school buildings. But districts—and latterly other bureaucrats with the same agenda—have continued to find new ways to disrupt and complicate the process. Fordham’s Aaron Churchill says it’s time for them all to get out of the way and let charter schools relocate, build, and grow.
Speaking of growing
Luckily for Utica Shale Academy, they have strong support in their community and from numerous state and local organizations looking to better serve students in Appalachian Ohio. USA has recently taken ownership of a vacant office building in downtown Salineville that will house classrooms, administrative offices, and space for career-tech programming. The best part: The school will now be expanding to junior high grades this fall. Awesome! A public open house is slated for May.
Bright Horizons
Horizon Science Academy has operated in the former home of Lorain Catholic High School for 15 years, but has not fully utilized the massive space in that time. However, with enrollment growing in leaps and bounds, long-planned expansion into the former natatorium space is finally underway. Nice! Meanwhile, a former Horizon student from Toledo, aerospace engineer Tyrone Jacobs, Jr., was profiled in the Blade this week. He describes in detail a rough early life, how he defied all of the negative influences, and how he was able to focus on his education in science and engineering with the help of quality school choices. A great piece and an inspiring life story.
“Better Together”
A petition signed by over 1,000 city residents was delivered to the Indianapolis Public Schools board this week, calling for increased partnership between the district and several high-performing charter schools. While the charters are serving their students well, especially Black and Hispanic students who are outperforming their district peers in reading and math, they are not part of the Rebuilding Stronger partnership in which select charter schools share in an array of district resources. Here’s hoping the effort can expand to accommodate these worthy and enthusiastic new partners.
More data on competitive effects
A new report on the competitive effects of charter school expansion looks at data from the Sunshine State, where an increase in access to charters leads to improvement in reading performance and a decrease in absenteeism rates of students who remain in their district schools. The effects are modest but significant, and accord with numerous similar studies previously undertaken. You can access the full report at this link.
A complex view from Cincinnati
There’s a lot going on in this story from the Queen City—including discussion of public safety concerns downtown; youth violence in the community; and the sometimes-contentious transportation relationship among districts, charter schools, and public transit agencies—but the gist of the situation looks like this: Leaders at Dohn Community School, in an effort to take student transportation into their own hands in response to a myriad of concerns, spent $400,000 to buy used transit buses and outfit them for their use. However, their plan fell afoul of state regulations and they were forced by the Department of Education and Workforce to stop. Students are back to using district- and transit-provide transportation and the old troubling issues are rising again.
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