Gadfly Bites 4/3/20 – Lost

1. How are Ohio schools—in all their variety—adapting to the long and getting longer school closure sitch? Let’s see what the news says. First up, the 200 Amish schools in Ohio have complied with the shutdown, but without electricity distance learning is impossible. Instead, families are visiting their school buildings in person a couple of days a week (observing proper social distance requirements) to pick up and return lessons on paper. (Wooster Daily Record, 3/31/20) A mixed bag of adaptations for schools in the Dayton area, including one suburban district sticking with printed work packets for the foreseeable future. It is interesting to note Dayton City Schools’ concrete plans to reteach next year’s students this year’s lessons. To wit: “all the standards missed since March 16,” said Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli. “Curriculum is working with teachers that will create these units for the district to use,” she added. (Dayton Daily News, 4/2/20) Teachers in Youngstown City Schools are said here to be “getting creative” to deliver their lessons during the shutdown. While there is talk of puppets, the medium that keeps cropping up in discussion is the very un-creative Facebook. Personally, I found this quote from a district teacher very interesting: “This year we started seeing the most growth we have ever seen in kindergarten, and we couldn't help but try to continue to reach our scholars despite the school shutdown.” For a couple of reasons. (Mahoning Matters, 4/2/20) Speaking of districts operating under the aegis—at least officially—of an Academic Distress Commission, it seems Lorain City Schools has yet to start any distance learning. Students in K-8 should receive a learning packet in the mail on Monday to get the ball rolling. District seniors will get a portion of the district’s website dedicated to them as they attempt to clear whatever bar there is remaining to them to be given a diploma. No word on what’s up with grades 9-11. (The Morning Journal, 4/2/20) Olmstead Falls City Schools is said to be heading into “Round Two” of remote learning, during which some actual remote learning may happen. District officials spent the first three weeks of closure (“Round One”, I guess) surveying local families as to their internet connectivity and in making sure those without were provided with—on the district’s dime ultimately—before starting online learning at some point next week. (Cleveland.com, 4/3/20) There is a widespread disdain for online education evinced in this piece looking at several schools and districts in Richland County. “No one got into teaching to teach online, but we're making the best of it,” said one teacher. “I've been speaking with a lot of friends at several districts. They've said they think teaching online is more work than teaching in the classroom, because it takes more steps to put it online.” And yet, another district seems to have known something that the rest of us didn’t: Shelby City Schools some time ago formed a posse of tech-savvy teachers (one in each building), whose super nerd powers came in handy just ahead of in the nick of time. “We saw the writing on the wall,” said the district supe, speaking of distance learning caused by the pandemic. “We got the [tech-savvy] teachers to teach educators over about two-and-half weeks before our buildings closed.” What they lack in interest, they make up in clairvoyance it seems. (Richland Source, 4/3/20)
   
   

2. The headline for this piece from Patrick O’Donnell—looking at remote learning efforts for district, charter, and Catholic schools in Northeast Ohio—really says it all: “Some schools embrace online lessons, others mired in Internet obstacles during coronavirus shutdown.” For the record, CMSD seems to have no plans for any learning at all, relying on outside academic resources posted on its website. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, 4/3/20)
    
3. The state has made changes to its College Credit Plus program due to all this chaos, including an extension of the application date for next year’s classes and, most importantly, the ability for high schoolers to get credit for pass/fail classes. Because a lot of colleges are going that route. (Columbus Dispatch, 4/1/20)
    
4. Speaking of colleges, Ohio State University students have lost their on-campus summer semester. All classes will be online instead. They are probably not the last ones. Link (The Lantern, 4/1/20) Finally today, here’s a look at the lives of the nearly 200 college students still living on empty campuses in Stark and Summit counties. They are still here because they didn’t have anywhere—or anywhere safer—to go when their colleges shut down. Stark indeed. (Canton Repository, 4/2/20)

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