Gadfly Bites 1/13/21 – …and you shall receive

1. Elected school boards across Ohio are holding their organizational meetings in the early part of January, with varying levels of drama emanating from them and into the pages of the local news. We have discussed Youngstown City Schools (the Board that Should Not Even Exist) and Akron City Schools (“We just got a letter. We just got a letter...”) and now we have Sylvania City Schools. A long-serving elected board member dropped the mic her keys, resigned on the spot, and left the building just as the “organizing” portion of the meeting began. You’ll have to read Facebook the piece to learn about her reason for doing so, but I’ll bet you can guess it had nothing to do with students, curriculum, learning, or anything like that. It didn’t. ‘Tis the season, I guess. (WTOL-TV, Toledo, 1/11/21)
    
2. Here is an interesting look at the future of school funding legislation in the new year. There are some interesting, moderated voices in here, including from legislators on both sides of the aisle. Perhaps this year could end up being an improvement on the last one. (Fulton County Expositor, 1/12/21)
   
   

3. One big thing that may influence the funding legislation process differently this time around: truckloads of money coming to school districts in the form of more federal Covid relief. Akron City Schools is a case in point. Elected school board members there (hopefully all “rowing in the same direction”, per instructions) told the ABJ that they are expecting at least 40 million in unexpected dollars imminently. Because of this, they seem ready to scrap previous plans to put a levy on the May ballot and instead start figuring out how to spend down their “windfall”. (Akron Beacon Journal, 1/13/21)
    
4. Snap! Columbus City Schools’ superintendent announced yesterday that the district would disregard local health guidance and restart winter sports practices this Friday. They have been on hold since mid-November (No word on the restart of in-person schooling, which has been on hold since March 2020, as the piece notes.) Competitions are slated to begin on January 24, the very day that a statewide curfew and a local stay-at-home advisory are currently set to expire. With some caveats, as you might imagine. You would think that having just 40 kids protesting the other day would not have been enough to change the supe’s mind (never mind the elected school board, members of which were not involved in the decision and just might have something to say on the issue down the line), but it turns out that there are only around 1,000 winter sports athletes in the state’s largest district. Seems kinda small to me. But obviously mighty. (Columbus Dispatch, 1/12/21)
   
   

5. Finally today: It’s history, man! The creation of the Cleveland Scholarship Program way back in the 90s is cited in a Forbes piece as a bipartisan success story from the state of Ohio. “We were losing 50 % of our end product and it was time to stop the hemorrhaging,” said former Cleveland City Councilwoman Fannie Lewis (a Democrat) of her mindset at the time. “And when I read an article about choice it was the thing I made up my mind to become a part of.” She partnered with Republican Governor George Voinovich to create the first voucher program in the state. Easy peasy! The piece goes on to say that we need more of this across-the-divide magic in the modern day. As you might imagine. (Forbes, 1/12/21)

Did you know you can have every edition of Gadfly Bites sent directly to your Inbox? Subscribe by clicking here.