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Busing concerns guaranteed to continue next year
We learned this week that South-Western City Schools is cutting nine bus routes for next school year, citing a lack of drivers, rendering dozens of students “impractical to transport”. At least one resident family—using an EdChoice Scholarship to send their children to a Catholic school—feels targeted by the cuts. No wonder, since all nine of those routes impact charter and private schools. That family reached out to a local news outlet for help. “Some (districts) are following the law and transporting students as they have received the funding to do,” School Choice Ohio spokesperson Beth Lawson told NBC4 News in Columbus. “Unfortunately, others have found creative ways to avoid providing this transportation, which essentially denies school choice for families who rely on it to access the best education fit for their children.” What’s worse, the district hints that more cuts could be on the way if their driver recruitment effort falls short.
“As a community, like family.”
Here’s a fantastic look at the first graduating class of Steel City High School in Lorain: a dropout-recovery charter school which is also celebrating the conclusion of its first year of operation. Fifteen students earned their diplomas after dropping out or nearly dropping out of other schools in the area. Said graduate Miguel Negron of his eventful year in Steel City: “As a school, a place I know of where if I had nowhere else to go — which I basically didn’t — I knew I could go there. I knew that was definitely the place and the way for me.” Kudos to students, families, and staff for a successful first year and best wishes to all the graduates as they move on to a new stage of their lives.
Zoning rules? Again?
Here’s yet another story about charter school opponents trying to use zoning rules to prevent a new school from opening, although one might be inclined to be a tiny bit more charitable in this case, because the requirements on California’s district schools are numerous, stringent, and expensive. They include strict prohibitions on locating near freeways (due to concerns about road noise damaging young kids’ hearing), detailed air quality studies conducted before a site can be approved, and rigorous requirements around earthquake proofing for any new construction, just to name a few. Since charter schools are exempt from many of these rules, a sympathetic person might be led to believe that charters have an unfair advantage. However, one’s inclination to charity goes out the window when a) you see residents of L.A.’s East Valley try to use them as a weapon to stop a new charter from coming to their community anyway, and b) you remember that California’s chronically-underenrolled district buildings (nice and safe from noise and smells and temblors of course) are also fighting off charter co-locations with a similar regulatory zeal.
Speaking of co-location
Lots of district school buildings across Florida are also underenrolled (or even vacant), and legislators there wanted to do something to return them to practical use. Hence the passage last week of Senate Bill 1708, which allows for charter schools to co-locate inside empty or chronically-underused district school buildings. This AP coverage focuses on the opponents of the bill and the process of its approval, but the details of the legislation (also in there, but you have to look hard) are interesting.
Breaking (cyber) ground
Staying in Florida, here’s a brief look at the “groundbreaking” Innovation Academy of Excellence, which will serve grades 6-8 in the state capital starting next fall. The school is billed as the first “AI-integrated” middle school in the country. Founders—which include Tallahassee State College and Tallahassee Collegiate Academy High School—say that artificial intelligence will be embedded and integrated throughout the curriculum and that students in the new school will learn how to use AI ethically and efficiently. The future is (almost) here.
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