- Here is yet another school district touting their new “online education program”, decrying the loss of money for kids who leave the district for charter schools (online or otherwise) and then implying that the kids come back to the district “even more behind” than when they left. Lots of problems with all of those anecdotal statements, of course, but let’s put those aside to focus on who is providing this valuable new service to the district’s students in their online venture for “non-traditional learners”. Vandalia-Butler City Schools has contracted with an online charter school to run their own E-school. Fascinating and bizarre. (Dayton Daily News, 8/3/15)
- So, if online charter schools are no longer foes for school districts, then who is? According to the leaders of 41 Southwest Ohio school districts, the state of Ohio is their enemy. The state has made it “nearly impossible” for their teachers to do their jobs via “unfunded mandates”. Oddly enough, Vandalia-Butler has yet to sign on to this enmity pact. (Cincinnati Enquirer, 8/3/15)
- However, in Columbus, it’s the Ohio High School Athletic Association that appears to be the more urgent bête noir. OHSAA’s distribution of newly-sports-eligible charter and STEM school students evenly and randomly among district high schools statewide resulted in all but one Columbus school being “upsized” to a larger division, in some cases two or three divisions upward. This is, obviously, an “adult problem” that will likely be easily solved by some open-minded and clever coaches, but for now it’s all knee-jerk anger. Luckily, Columbus City Schools’ legal budget is stretched to the max with data-scrubbing-related bills so that their threat to sue OHSAA over charter students will likely turn out to be a road not traveled. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/5/15)
- Several of central Ohio’s “wealthy suburban districts” (as the article puts it) are experiencing explosive growth in their student populations. Also growing, albeit less explosively, is tiny inner-ring Whitehall City Schools and rural/suburban hybrid South-Western City Schools. Guess which group is complaining? What is interesting here is that, just as school districts regularly claim no firsthand knowledge of why families/students might choose to leave them (and therefore can do nothing concrete to retain them), they also claim no firsthand knowledge of why families/students flock to them (and therefore can be “victims” of any enrollment boom). Weirdly consistent. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/2/15)
- And to dig into this weird phenomenon a little further, one of those “wealthy suburban districts” – New Albany Plain Local Schools, also one of the highest-performing districts in Ohio – has released the preliminary findings of its school-funding task force, convened with the help of the local community foundation. Despite the continued growth of its student population, the task force found that the district's expenses are increasing two times faster than its revenue. What’s top on the list of fixes to help the district live within its means? Health care and step increases for teachers which, if “fixed”, would solve the identified funding problem by themselves. Luckily, there are a number of other recommendations further down the list. (ThisWeek News/New Albany News, 8/4/15)
