A long year
KIPP Columbus leader Hannah Powell is among the educator voices heard in this piece looking at all that has happened in the year since Ohio schools were ordered closed due to the growing pandemic. KIPP has only recently moved from a fully-remote to a hybrid education model, but more than half of school families opted to remain fully-remote.
Transportation fix?
As more Ohio school districts return students to in-class learning, especially in urban areas, old and intractable difficulties with transporting students attending schools of choice are resurfacing. The Fordham Institute’s Jessica Poiner recently took a look at transportation provisions in the state budget bill that could, if enacted, go a long way toward resolving these longstanding barriers to school choice.
Enrollment boost
Data from Clark and Champaign County public schools show that two charters bucked the trend of declining enrollment over the last year. The leader of one of those schools, Cliff Park High School in Springfield said that most of what they have been doing to support and attract students is not new. “The staff has worked very hard to create a safe and welcoming environment that draws in students,” he told the Springfield News-Sun, “and causes them to talk to friends and family.”
The same work in a new way
Students at Toledo School for the Arts are still as creative and hard-working as ever, even though disruptions wrought by the pandemic have required them to find new ways to present their work. Here’s a great look at how they made the mantra that “the show must go on” a reality this year.
Positive pandemic pivot
Here is a great look at how Miami University’s teacher training program forged a partnership with Ohio Connections Academy last year to allow its seniors to do their student teaching in the fully-online school so they would not lose an hour of that precious training time with students. An inspiring model in a number of ways.
Fellowship
Learn to Earn Dayton’s Anytown fellowship program aims to help high school students find their voice and to speak up and advocate for change to fight such systemic ills as racism, sexism, and classism as students have experienced them. The program is being piloted at DECA High School and one other school this year.
