Gadfly Bites 2/13/23—“It may never be a perfect system”

1. As I was reading this piece about the efforts of Licking Heights and Southwest Licking school districts to reduce chronic absenteeism after a Covid-era pattern of same proved stubbornly persistent, I couldn’t help but wonder what the numbers had been in these districts before the pandemic and how they had handled the issue back then. We get one half of the answer in the very last paragraph: “I can tell you what we’re doing now…is significantly leaps and bounds better than what we were doing before.” And while we don’t get the answer to the first part of the question, the remote learning aspect of Covid disruption is blamed for the problem as it currently stands. Thus, look out for the point at which chronically absent students in Southwest Licking are switched into the district’s Digital Academy “if they are more comfortable” with that option. Go Warriors, indeed. Additionally, I have some follow up questions about the kid who was “banned from the bus” but was driven to school by a staffer. (Newark Advocate, 2/12/23)
   
   

2. My dedicated Gadfly Bites subscribers (all 11 of you lovely souls) know very well the first question I have whenever discussing one of these “community surveys”, gathering “input from the public”, which are regularly conducted by school districts in Ohio: How many of the inputters are district staff members and how many are parents or students? Neither you nor I will find the answer in this coverage of Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s survey efforts, conducted on the occasion of the search for a new CEO, but there is a handy link to the full presentation slides. Answer: Teachers outnumbered parents and students combined, with a raft of other district employees piling on top. With those demographics now firmly in mind, it is interesting that the survey listed “school choice” at top of the pile of the “programs parents and residents want CMSD to keep and develop”. The citizens have spoken…I think. (Signal Cleveland, 2/9/23) Meanwhile, among the mish-mash of extremely-Cleveland-sounding news bites, the list of newly-appointed members of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance board includes a Breakthrough Schools parent. Nice. (Signal Cleveland, 2/13/23)

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