Gadfly Bites 3/23/22—“Less buildings make you more efficient”

Gadfly Bites 3/21/22—So hard

Not much to talk about today, but at least the clip we have features my colleague Aaron Churchill talking about a topic near and dear to all of

Gadfly Bites 3/18/22—Heads in the sand

Data guru Aaron Churchill is quoted here and some of his Fordham-produced data is cited as well on the topic of enrollment declines in Miami V

Gadfly Bites 3/16/22—Let’s call it wordsmithing

Lots of inaccurate and misleading information here, if you ask me, regarding the financial situation in Ross Local Schools.

Gadfly Bites 3/14/22—Debunked but still in use

Trust me, none of these elected school board members in Berea are any better informed about school choice than they were before the

Ohio Charter News Weekly – 3.11.22

Charter innovations

Gadfly Bites 3/11/22—Everybody needs a Yugo sometime, I guess

Don’t look now, but it seems that a number of Ohio school districts are tentatively starting to declare victory against the Covid slide in student progress and achievement.

Gadfly Bites 3/9/22—Schools of choice, people

A seeming hodgepodge of clips today, but the throughline is delish. Check it out. First up is an opinion piece from a long-time columnist at the Dayton Daily News with whom I am not familiar. Perhaps he has never written about education previously?

Gadfly Bites 3/7/22—Woe and whoa

While the days of multiple Columbus City Schools buildings “pivoting to remote learning” due to huge numbers of absent staff members seem to be over for now,

Gadfly Bites 3/4/22—I believe the proper term is “between gigs”

I am reasonably sure that some of you, my lovely readers, occasionally say to yourselves, “Gadfly Bites is being too hard on this or that media outlet; surely it is not skewing coverage of certain topics as much as our humble clips compiler thinks.” Perhaps you are correct from time to time, but piec

Gadfly Bites 3/2/22—Before the roadshow

Unnecessarily cranky headline here, if you ask me, but a generally even-keeled story on Ohio’s so-called “backpack funding”

Ohio should follow Maryland’s lead on spending federal Covid relief dollars

Over the course of the pandemic, the federal government has sent billions of dollars in emergency funding to states via three separate relief acts. A large portion of the appropriated funds within each act were earmarked for K–12 education, with the largest available funding stream being the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, or ESSER.

Gadfly Bites 2/28/22—The network broadens

Following up from our Youngstown bombshell on Friday, current CEO/future superintendent Justin Jennings says he is excited for the work ahead.

Gadfly Bites 2/25/22—Stable, structured, and accountable…to us

We’ll start today’s clips with what might seem at first to be a bit of a shocker: Current CEO Justin Jennings has been chosen by the elected school board as the su

Gadfly Bites 2/23/22—Not crazy

We’re back from vacation and snarkin’ about pieces from 2/17 – 2/23. Glad you’re still here reading it all!

Gadfly Bites 2/16/22—“It takes upscaling the workforce”

Gadfly Bites is on vacation Friday and Monday. We’ll be back on Wednesday, February 23 with however much snark you can stand.

Gadfly Bites 2/14/22—You can just feel the love for students and families, can’t you?

An opinion piece posted in the Dispatch late on Friday is ad

Gadfly Bites 2/9/22—Down to the penny

Here’s a long piece from the Columbus Dispatch—there are other localized versions in other outlets across the state also—

Gadfly Bites 2/7/22—Love/Hate

A subset of northeast Ohio teachers and other school staffers speak out in this piece, no one holding back about why they are all s

Gadfly Bites 2/4/22—From lake to shining lake

In case you might have missed it since it’s not strictly an education story, Intel recently announced it was going to build an enormous silicon chip production facility in exurban central Ohio, promising thousands of good new jobs to the region.

Gadfly Bites 2/2/22—The kids WILL be all right…won’t they?

Yesterday, the Dayton Daily News published an op-ed in support of the EdChoice voucher program<

Gadfly Bites 1/31/22—All night long

As we have noted here many many times, state fiscal intervention in school districts is literally exactly the same as Academic Distress Commissions with regard to academics. Why, I ask you for the millionth time, is the district response always different?

Gadfly Bites 1/28/22—Newsworthiness is in the eye of the beholder

I was a little flippant about the ADC district audit story on Wednesday (how not unusual, I hear you all cry), so I decided to look at the media coverage a little more closely today.

Gadfly Bites 1/26/22—New elected board present, same as the last two

It is, purportedly, a new day in the three Ohio school districts still nominally overseen by Academic Distress Commissions.

Gadfly Bites 1/24/22—Even the definition of “flexible” is not stable in a pandemic.

I said I wasn’t likely to clip stories about schools opening/closing/going remote unless they were excessively interesting to me. This one qualifies. Pickerington City Schools in suburban central Ohio has created a new plan to deal with staff shortages due to the pandemic.

Gadfly Bites 1/21/22—Thank U, Next

Career-themed schools are still a thing in Toledo City School District, including what we’ll call

Gadfly Bites 1/19/22—Wacky Wednesday

An interesting discussion of the importance of education in the Black community comes to us from Lima.

Gadfly Bites 1/14/22—Can we send a phalanx of bunnies to DC?

Ohio is one of 19 states whose state chapter withdrew from the National Association of School Boards last year in reaction to….well, you know.

Gadfly Bites 1/12/22—Bureaucracy strikes again

Last week, it was the new school funding system delayed due to the…intricacies...of operationalizing new legislation.