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Education News for 10-11-2012

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State Education News

  • Yost has found evidence of deceit in some schools (Columbus Dispatch)

    • As members of the Columbus Board of Education listened from the audience, state Auditor Dave Yost said that interviews have produced evidence of “mal-intent” behind the changing of student data…Read more...

  • More state report card concerns (WKYC)

    • Cleveland School officials were able to see firsthand more state report card data today. As expected, the district is in academic emergency and could face falling under an academic distress commission's control…Read more...

Local Education News

  • Grades mixed on CPS school-choice push (Cincinnati Enquirer)

    • Cincinnati Public Schools has been working for more than two years to bring successful charter schools into its portfolio. But to date it has zero partnerships to show for it…Read more...

  • Frank Jackson and Eric Gordon campaign for tax increase; opponents raise objections (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • Mayor Frank Jackson and schools chief Eric Gordon continue pushing their message that the proposed new school tax is needed to help the schools and, in turn, the city and region…Read more...

  • Newark high-schoolers on edge (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Officials continued to keep a close watch yesterday after a Newark High School student reported that she had been raped before school on Tuesday morning…Read more...

  • Children Told To Leave School After District Said They Did Not Prove Residency (WBNS)

    • Family members said that they provided the Westerville City School District everything it needed for their children to attend. Just more than a month ago, a teacher sent the siblings home with all of their books…Read more...

  • CMSD Report Card’s Property Value Implications (WJW)

    • It is almost report card time for the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. A second round of preliminary report card data will be released next week. “(Tuesday) night, the State Board of Education voted to release the spread sheets…Read more...

  • TCTC studies land deal for solar project (Youngstown Vindicator)

    • By the middle of this winter, a crop of solar-collection panels could begin to emerge on 10 of the 30 acres of farmland between the state Route 5 bypass and the Trumbull Career and Technical Center…Read more...

Editorial

  • Role reversal (Columbus Dispatch)

    • Recent developments in Ohio’s public schools make it clear that school boards should be more independent and watchful, not less, to guard against potential problems. More diligence by board members…Read more...

Education News for 04-06-2012

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Local Issues

  • Cleveland Teachers Union and Mayor Frank Jackson to continue negotiations next week over schools plan (Plain Dealer)

    • They'll be back at it again next week. Mayor Frank Jackson and the Cleveland Teachers Union concluded more than six hours of negotiations Wednesday night over the disputed parts of Jackson's school plan without reaching a final agreement, deciding to take a break from the talks over Easter weekend. Read More…

  • Cleveland education reform plan discussed at community meeting (News Channel 5)

    • CLEVELAND - Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Schools CEO Eric Gordon outlined the plan for transforming schools at a community meeting Thursday night. "We're focused on quality education," Jackson told about 60 residents who gathered at the Gunning Recreation Center. Read More…

  • Chardon High School student, employee called heroes for efforts during shooting in February (Plain Dealer)

    • In the frantic moments after shots rang out Feb. 27 at Chardon High School, cafeteria worker Cherie Reed held open a kitchen door, offering students a haven from chaos and evil. Travis Carver, a 16-year-old junior, heard the noises and thought they were someone popping paper bags. Then he noticed T.J. Lane. Read More…

  • Olentangy bomb ‘threat’ no joke, teen told (Dispatch)

    • Hours before he boarded a plane that took him and his family to Kuwait yesterday, a teenage boy admitted to a Delaware County Juvenile Court judge that he had joked about blowing up his school the day before. Mohamed Mahmoud, 15, pleaded guilty today to inducing panic at Olentangy High School, which was evacuated and searched by authorities in response to what officials thought was a bomb threat. Read More…

  • Parents asked to weigh in on Beavercreek redistricting plan (Dayton Daily News)

    • Beavercreek City Schools officials want to hear from local parents about plans that affect where their children will attend school in 2013-14.< District officials held a public forum Wednesday at Beavercreek High School to present three sets of initial redistricting maps, and put those maps online Thursday. Read More…

Education News for 04-03-2012

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Statewide Education News

  • High school courses with weighted grades still spark debate (News-Herald)

    • Fast-paced and intelligent discussion centered on the classic novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in Nicole Costigan’s advanced placement English class. Costigan’s class at Kenston High School is one of about 20 at the Geauga County school which offers weighted grades, a system in which higher points are assigned to more challenging courses than those offered in the regular curriculum. For example, a weighted “A” in an advanced placement class might carry five points, whereas a non-weighted “A” in a less difficult class is assigned a standard four points. Read More…

  • Leaders challenge report on cheating SFlb (Vindicator)

    • BOARDMAN - Boardman schools Superintendent Frank Lazzeri became irritated when he read an Atlanta Journal Constitution investigation that listed his school district among those suspected of cheating on standardized tests. “I thought it had to be a mistake,” he said. No one from the newspaper contacted anyone in the district administration, he said. The investigation last month flagged Boardman, Youngstown and Warren schools for possible cheating. Read More…

  • Group tackles autism awareness, education (News-Journal)

    • ONTARIO - Members of a Crestline group launched more than 100 glowing balloons Monday night from the parking lot at the Richland Mall to draw attention to the month of April as Autism Awareness Month. The group gives autistic children a voice through the gift of Apple iPads. The computer devices help the children with communication and language skills, according the Cookies for iPads group. In March the group gave away eight iPads and other gifts, said member Reba Hunt, who has sold many home-baked cookies for the project. Read More…

  • Local Issues
    • Vote expected soon by council on mayor's plan to transform Cleveland schools (WEWS 5 ABC)

      • CLEVELAND - Mayor Frank Jackson’s plan to transform the Cleveland Metropolitan School system is a step closer to having city council support. At Monday’s meeting, council had planned to vote on a resolution supporting the plan, but that has been pushed back. “I’ll vote for it,” said Ward 9 councilman Kevin Conwell, when speaking about the resolution. He said he feels any bill taken to the floor has little chance of passing in Columbus. Read More…

    • PV cuts approved for 5 teachers, 1 secretary in emotional meeting (Chillicothe Gazette)

      • BAINBRIDGE - At the end of an emotional one-hour meeting Monday, the Paint Valley Board of Education suspended the contracts of six employees in a move that's expected to save the district $423,000. The board emerged from executive session and passed, by a 4-1 vote, a resolution suspending the contracts of five teachers and the superintendent's secretary. Board member Judy Williamson cast the dissenting vote but declined to explain why. Read More…

    • Mayor predicts progress in teacher talks (WKYC 3 NBC)

      • CLEVELAND - Tuesday may be a pivotal day in Mayor Frank Jackson's crusade to pass and enact a plan to reform the academics of Cleveland schools, make changes in teacher contracts, and pass a desperately-needed levy. At City Hall, the school reform plan is being called, "a defining moment" for the city. On Tuesday, the mayor, school superintendent and teachers' union leaders will wrestle with the two biggest remaining issues blocking union buy-in into the plan. Read More…

  • Editorial
    • Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson isn't blinking on schools (Plain Dealer)

      • For more than two hours last Thursday, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland schools CEO Eric Gordon tried to explain their plan to speed the transformation of public education in the city. They answered questions from the curious and the skeptical: teachers, parents, homeowners and a pair of students from John Adams High School who said they were on their 11th biology teacher of the year. Read More…

    • Locally and nationally, graduation rates need a big push (Plain Dealer)

      • A 90 percent high school graduation rate by 2020 for every state in the union may seem impossible. The national rate in 2009 was just 75.5 percent. But it can be done. Wisconsin reached that goal in 2010, and Vermont is close, according to the recent report "Building a Grad Nation," which studied U.S. high school graduation rates between 2002 and 2009. Ohio needs just 15,000 more students to graduate in 2020 to join the exclusive 90 percent club, the report's authors say. Read More…

    • Education News for 03-22-2012

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    Statewide Education News

    • Top school official asks Marion business leaders to help (Marion Star)

      • MARION - Ohio's students should have all the opportunities in the world. Ohio Superintendent of Public Instruction Stan Heffner started off his Tuesday speech to the Marion Rotary Club with those thoughts, saying state officials want to make it so. The way to do so, he suggested, is by expecting more from schools. Heffner's talk at the Palace Theatre's May Pavilion outlined those expectations as he said current standards are outdated compared to the knowledge and skills needed today. Read More…

    • Cleveland schools plan not necessarily for other districts (Columbus Dispatch)

      • In a rare display of bipartisanship, Democratic and Republican legislators from both chambers of the General Assembly declared yesterday that they will work together to pass legislation to overhaul the long-troubled Cleveland school district. Gov. John Kasich has held up the plan developed by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson as a possible model for Ohio’s urban districts and perhaps others in the state. Read More…

    • Spare classes that directly affect students, board advised (Newark Advocate)

      • Two classes to be affected by a reduction in force approved by the Granville Board of Education Monday night directly affect students and should be spared, their defenders say. During the public comment section of Monday's meeting, five speakers including two high school students urged that middle-school Family and Consumer Sciences teacher Barb Blatter be retained and a full roster of her classes be taught. Read More…

    • Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's school plan gets show of support from bipartisan group of lawmakers (Plain Dealer)

      • COLUMBUS — A bipartisan cast of Statehouse lawmakers stood with Mayor Frank Jackson Wednesday and pledged to move forward soon with a dramatic reshaping of Cleveland public schools through legislation. While the lawmakers, including two Cleveland Democrats -- Sen. Nina Turner and Rep. Sandra Williams -- stopped short of fully embracing Jackson's school plan, they sounded ready to shake up the status quo. Read More…

    Local Issues

    • Lake school board approves staff layoffs, closing of elementary (Toledo Blade)

      • Second-grade teacher Brooke Schulte, her voice quivering slightly, said she wasn't angry that she just lost her job and she still supported Lake Local Schools. Parent Jamie Blazevich wanted her 5-year-old son in all-day kindergarten next year so she plans to enroll him somewhere else, now that Lake's full-time kindergarten is gone. The two women were among several who spoke out Wednesday night as the school board unanimously approved closing Walbridge Elementary next school year and laying off eight teachers and 17 other employees. Read More…

    • State’s new graduate-rate method concerns Youngstown schools’ chief (Youngstown Vindicator)

      • Youngstown - Among the changes on the upcoming state report cards for school districts is an alteration in the graduate rate. The modification calculates the rate based on how many students graduate in four years or less after entering high school. Previously, the rate was based on an estimate of how many 12th-graders graduate. For Youngstown schools, the rate on the most recent report card would have been 58 percent, compared with about 68 percent based on the previous rate. Superintendent Connie Hathorn is concerned about the change. Read More…

    • Northridge school district to buy modular units for fourth, fifth grades (Newark Advocate)

      • JOHNSTOWN - Northridge will keep its existing modular units for its fourth- and fifth-grade students, after exploring options that ranged from consolidation to building a new, more permanent structure. The board voted, 4-1, to buy the existing intermediate school for $485,000 -- which should be paid off within four years -- instead of the permanent structure that would have cost up to $1.6 million, spread out during a 15-year loan. The district will continue paying $10,274 per month to rent the units. Read More…

    A Democratic Crisis in Cleveland

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    Is there a democratic crisis in Cleveland? Three issues suggest there might be.

    Issue 1

    Just over 4 months ago, 2,202,404 voters in Ohio voted to repeal Senate Bill 5 (SB5). SB5 being the draconian assault on working people and their ability to collectively bargain for fair and safe working conditions and pay. In Cuyahoga county the repeal vote was even more overwhelming - 69.2%. Yet the Mayor of Cleveland continued to introduce a plan that has widely been criticized for containing significant provisions of SB5

    Introducing a plan that contains provisions that voters have overwhelmingly rejected is an incredibly undemocratic move. No matter how strongly one might believe that certain policy goals are needed, in a functioning democracy the will of the voters should be seen as sacrosanct, not something that can be conveniently ignored, as appears to be the case with Mayor Frank Jackson and his "Cleveland plan".

    Issue 2

    The "Cleveland Plan" seeks to undermine democratically elected school boards by creating a Cleveland Transformation Alliance, that

    will be a public‐private partnership charged with ensuring accountability for district and charter schools in the city, communicating with parents about quality school choices, and serving as a watchdog for charter sector growth.

    Why is such an entity required? The vast majority of Ohio's school districts are highly rated while being governed by elected school boards. It's a model that works. Why does Cleveland need to create an unelected non-profit body that would lack the same level of accountability voters demand, while simultaneously adding another expensive layer of bureaucracy? Education leadership and decision making is already byzantine in Cleveland, being the only school district in Ohio that is controlled by a Mayor. Observers might ask why it was ever a good idea to place Mayors, who typically have no educational expertise, in charge of education to begin with.

    Issue 3

    Creating an unelected body to manage the "Cleveland Plan" is bad enough, but the plan also seeks to make that body secretive and have its deliberations not be subject to public records.

    The package of new legislation Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson says will once again “transform” Cleveland’s schools would create a new nonprofit group to make significant changes to the school district, including drawing together both traditional public schools and charter schools.

    But unlike school boards for both traditional public and charter schools, that new group would not be subject to state public records and open meetings laws. That means that residents would not have the right to attend the new group’s board meetings, for example, or to see records about the new group’s financial operations or decision-making process.

    It appears that the whole purpose of this proposed entity is so that it can be obscured from public view, unaccountable to tax payers and voters alike.

    Reading many of the central aspects to this "Cleveland Plan", one gets the impression that its architects believe one of the major problems with Cleveland schools is too much democracy, when the opposite is clearly true.

    Education News for 03-16-2012

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    Statewide Education News

    • Governor Kasich discusses fracking, taxes and schools (WKYC 3 NBC)

      • CLEVELAND - Governor John Kasich says he will do anything he can to help get Mayor Frank Jackson's Cleveland School transformation plan passed. He declined to talk about possible outcomes if the plan does not pass. Right now no Democratic lawmaker is willing to sponsor the bill that is intended to create more quality schools, change school governance, change teachers' seniority rights and pass a November levy. Kasich talked about this in an exclusive Thursday interview with Tom Beres. Read More…

    • Youngstown school officials given more freedom (Vindicator)

      • Youngstown - The commission overseeing the city school district’s academic recovery has given administrators more freedom to trim staff and determine class size but wants the final say on any district reorganization. The commission on Thursday eliminated the effective date and notice requirements regarding teacher layoffs. Under the teachers’ contract, the district must notify teachers by April 30 if they are on the reduction-in-force list for the next school year. Read More…

    • Tutoring helps raise test scores (News-Sun)

      • SPRINGFIELD — Two intensive tutoring programs helped raise test scores in four of five areas last school year at Springfield High School. Through an Ohio Graduation Test boot camp and a Winter Institute, the number of students testing at advanced and accelerated levels increased by 9 percent, said Chris Shaffer, campus director. Students testing at limited, basic and proficient levels decreased by 7.5 percent. Passing the Ohio Graduation Test, which students at Springfield and other high schools took this week, is a requirement for graduation. Read More…

    • Ohio Gov. John Kasich wants legislative sponsors for Cleveland schools plan; Mayor Frank Jackson asks for patience (Plain Dealer)

      • CLEVELAND - Gov. John Kasich says Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson seems to be having trouble finding a legislator from the Cleveland area to step up and sponsor his schools plan in Columbus. But Jackson said he deliberately has not asked anyone to sponsor the plan yet because he wants legislators to be comfortable with what he is proposing. "That's not what they tell us," Kasich said Thursday after a luncheon speech in Cleveland. "I've been told for five weeks we are going to have co-sponsors. We have to get them soon." Read More…

    Local Issues

    • Outrage over Westerville pay-to-play plan isn’t unanimous (Dispatch)

      • Some parents are relieved that Westerville school leaders plan to charge athletes more than twice as much to participate — they feared a bigger increase. But other residents say the district should be more lenient after voters approved a March 6 levy that will cost taxpayers an additional $221 per year on a $100,000 home, starting in 2013. School administrators unveiled a plan on Monday to charge $240 per high-school sport, up from $100, and $120 for middle-school, up from $50. Read More…

    • North Ridgeville schools superintendent prepares to unveil staffing cuts, pay-to-play plan (Sun News)

      • NORTH RIDGEVILLE - Schools Superintendent Larry Brown will unveil a plan March 20 for staffing cuts and a pay-to-participate program beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. Brown, speaking during a North Ridgeville Chamber of Commerce luncheon March 15, said the plan is necessary to avoid a $1.3 million deficit by the end of the next school year. Brown talked for about an hour, outlining the district’s various accomplishments and discussing its need for additional revenue. Read More…

    • Painesville Schools launches D.O.G.S. to emphasize male role models (News-Herald)

      • Painesville Schools have launched a new program that seeks to bring fathers into the school buildings. Maple Elementary is the first school in the district to launch the WATCH D.O.G.S. program, or Dads of Great Students, which began in 1998 and is now in more than 2,000 schools across the country. The program looks to give students positive male role models, whether it be dads, uncles or grandfathers, and provides an extra adult to watch over the school. Read More…

    • Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson's proposed panel to review charter schools could meet behind closed doors (Plain Dealer)

      • CLEVELAND - Mayor Frank Jackson's proposed panel to hold Cleveland's public charter and district schools accountable would be able to work behind closed doors, according to the latest draft of laws needed to create it. Proposals given to state legislators last Saturday call for the Cleveland Transformation Alliance, which would have the power to block new charter schools from opening if they did not meet standards, to be exempt from state open meetings or open records laws. Read More…

    • Ledgemont facing budget cuts, seeking new board member (News-Herald)

      • The need to balance a tightly squeezed budget has prompted Ledgemont School Board members to make cuts in personnel. “No one’s happy about doing it but unfortunately it has to be done,” said District Treasurer Kelly Moore following a board meeting this week. Reductions include the elimination of seven teaching positions, a high school special education tutor, and an elementary aide; and modifying the full-time status of a music teacher position to part-time. Read More…

    • It is cheaper not to fire principal accused of misconduct, officials say (Journal-News)

      • MADISON TWP. — The decision not to fire Madison Elementary School Principal Matthew Gray following numerous incidents of misconduct, including a physical altercation with a student last May, is one of cost-savings, according to school officials. The Madison school board unanimously voted March 5 not to renew Gray’s contract, which expires July 31. The day after the board action, Superintendent Tom York said Gray was told to work from home the remainder of the school year. Gray will continue to receive his annual salary of $78,763. Read More…

    • Hilliard schools official resigns amid financial probe (Dispatch)

      • A Hilliard athletic director transferred more than $10,000 from a tournament bank account into personal accounts as “mad money,” according to an investigation that apparently prompted his resignation. An accountant who handled the investigation also questioned Neill “Chip” Ebert, the athletic director at Hilliard Bradley High School, about a $40,560 gap between the deposits reported to the Ohio High School Athletic Association and what ended up in the tournament accounts over a 2-1/2-year period. Read More…