New leadership
Veteran teacher and administrator Dave Taylor will take over this summer as superintendent of Dayton Early College Academy. Long-time leader Judy Hennessey is retiring. Judy’s work in building up DECA nearly speaks for itself, and she deserves all the kudos she will receive. Best wishes to Dave for an equally long and productive tenure at the helm.
New challenges
Dayton City Schools have proposed a new transportation plan (less than a year after announcing the previous new plan) in which yellow buses will no longer be used to transport charter and private school students living in district boundaries. Instead, all of those students will be subsidized by the district to travel via the local RTA to school. There are a ton of missing details in the “plan”, and charter school parents in Dayton have some pointed questions about the changes.
Getting into the business pt 1
Schools across the state are still working out just what next school year will look like. A number of districts, having heard from parents and teachers, have announced their intention to create their own fully online schools. It is interesting to see what is a necessity-inspired mindset change from the same suspects usually bashing online learning. A number of those districts, like Woodridge Local Schools in northeast Ohio, seem fairly confident in their ability to pull this off (“If we have to do virtual, we know we can do that,” says Superintendent Walter Davis) and are even hopeful that something good may come of it for them: Davis told the Akron Leader that the district hopes to “bring some students back” who may have gone to a charter school.
What attending an online school could do for you
Amber Bennett is a rising junior attending Ohio Connections Academy who recently earned an associate degree. She will be completing her last two years of high school while simultaneously working on her bachelor’s degree from the University of Notre Dame. While Amber may be a hard-driving outlier, her story illustrates rather well the topic of this story from The 74 regarding dual enrollment access. Students who felt let down by the remote learning provided during the pandemic shutdown or students worried about what next year may bring are all, apparently, making increased use of the online offerings provided by community colleges and universities this summer.
Getting into the business pt 2
In a pre-pandemic story, The 74 recently published this late-October look at Fugees Academy in Columbus. It is a network of schools geared to supporting immigrant and refugee children who have landed in the U.S. from across the globe. The school, it’s leader, and its mission are awesome and are well worth a look if you’re not familiar. We are told that the two extant Fugees Academy schools are private but that the flagship school in Atlanta is in the process of becoming a charter school. It is also suggested that future iterations in other cities and states may go that route from the start.
