COMPILER’S NOTE: Gadfly Bites is taking a summer vacation next week. It will return with a wrap up of the previous week’s stories on Tuesday, August 18. Regular thrice-weekly publication will resume on Wednesday, August 19.
- I’m not sure why the current Academic Distress Commission in Youngstown was fretting last week about what good they can do for the district while awaiting the new commission arriving in October. The information that will emerge from this staffing audit they authorized for the ever-shrinking district will be invaluable. Even the school board president says so. And then the new commission will, hopefully, act upon the findings. (Youngstown Vindicator, 8/6/15)
- Remember that dustup over upsizing of high school athletic divisions due to the new eligibility of charter and STEM school students? Complaints and litigation threats successfully tabled the division changes yesterday. Adults solving adult problems like adults, eh? Hope someone remembers that there are lots of newly-eligible students who will need the adults to think of them at some point. (Columbus Dispatch, 8/6/15)
- Speaking of adult problems, Governor John Kasich said the following this week in regard to state board of education members’ criticism of the Ohio Department of Education: “You just shake your head that people aren’t grown up enough to know that education’s not about adults, it’s about children.” (Columbus Dispatch, 8/5/15). In response, editors in Akron opined in favor of said criticism. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/6/15)
- Let’s stay in Akron for a moment. If you cast your minds back a year or so, you may remember Gadfly Bites covering an audacious plan by two former elected officials with “issues” to beg and borrow and proselytize their way to creating a summer reading program for inner-city Akron kids. Well, fast-forward to this week and the second year of the Leap Frog program is in the books. Despite some hiccups with their tax-exemption status, the guys and their motley band of disciples in their donated church basement spaces are claiming vital community support and huge reading gains (again) for their avid young students. So fascinating. (Akron Beacon Journal, 8/6/15)
- Lest you think that Toledo Public Schools reserved their newly-voted largesse just for teacher salary increases, here is a story about the restoration of transportation services in the district, cut to state minimum levels in 2010. (Toledo Blade, 8/7/15) District officials are predicting that 11,000 students will avail themselves of transportation this year, an increase of about 50 percent from last school year. However, only elementary and middle school students will be taking the familiar yellow school buses this year. High schoolers in Toledo will be taking city buses via passes paid for by the district. The Toledo Area Rapid Transit Authority has staffed up and obtained over 40 new buses (also paid for via the district) in the expectation that it will be providing 300 bus-hours of service per day for TPS students, or 54,000 bus-hours over the course of the school year.(Toledo Blade, 8/6/15)
