- I’m going to go out on a limb to suggest that Dr. David Lawrence has harbored the ambition to lead Dayton City Schools for quite a while now. We talked on Monday about his quick action to undo recent operational changes within days of being named interim superintendent. In this interview, he talks boldly about “changing the culture” in Dayton. Not next year. Not next week. Not even tomorrow. Changes—his changes—are already in full swing after two weeks on the job. Amazing! The full interview video is here. (WDTN-TV, Dayton, 7/24/23)
- There are a lot of similarities in these two stories. Both are about ostensibly STEM-based summer camps. Both feature young student campers who seem eager to attend. And both include quotes from the kiddos gushing happily about all that they learned and experienced. But the differences between the two camps seem important to me as well. To wit: One of them is put on by an independent science education consortium and counts the children of GE engineers among its campers this year. (Local 12 News, Cincinnati, 7/24/23) The other is put on by Alliance City Schools and seems to put at least as much focus on creative writing and storytelling as it does robotics. Probably more. Just sayin’. (Canton Repository, 7/26/23)
- There is a whole lot of blather in this story about the “philosophy of the right configurations of…buildings” in Youngstown City Schools. (I mean, how could there not be? It’s Youngstown!) This includes the de facto fungibility of the term “capacity”, the undefinable nature of which appears to be code for “we’ll always find a reason not to downsize”. But let me do the math for you that neither the building configuration committee nor Vindy.com appear willing to do: We learn here that there are 4,178 students (!?) and 14 buildings in the district. If all the kiddos were evenly distributed, that would be less than 300 per building. With that in mind, check out the minimal options being bandied about here off the tops of district officials’ heads and see if you think anyone is really thinking about the “best and most practical” uses of those buildings. I think you know what I think. (Vindy.com, 7/25/23)
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