Statewide Stories of the Day
- Charters face strict standards (Enquirer)
- Projected deficits reflect funding cuts (Dayton Daily News)
- Gov. John Kasich's administration releases study to help local governments share services (Plain Dealer)
The Ohio General Assembly Wednesday set a deadline of March 31 for lawmakers to figure out how to measure the performance of charter schools that serve dropouts. If the state fails to meet the deadline, perpetually failing dropout schools will be shut down starting in 2015. Until now, they’ve been exempt from academic closure rules. Lawmakers and charter school organizations have been pushing for years to craft an alternate set of accountability standards that accurately measure the performance of dropout schools. Read more...
The area’s 10 largest school districts are projecting multimillion-dollar deficits by the year 2016, according to the new five-year forecasts submitted to the Ohio Department of Education. The forecasts, required annually by the state, represent the districts’ general fund monies. They include total revenues, total expenditures and fund balances for the last three fiscal years and the projected totals for the next five years. Read more...
COLUMBUS - Gov. John Kasich's administration on Thursday released a report to municipal groups encouraging them to move more toward sharing resources instead of raising local taxes or waiting for more state funding help. Call it a nudge or more of a shove, but Kasich policy adviser Randy Cole bluntly warned a small group in Columbus that embracing a shared-services approach might be local governments' only saving grace if they want to stay solvent. Read more...
Local Issues
- Schools probe attendance figures (Dispatch)
- Toledo area charter schools make plans to expand, grow (Blade)
- KnowledgeWorks acknowledges it won’t work in Youngstown (Vindicator)
- Putnam County students tech up (Lima News)
- Berea school Treasurer Randy Scherf files lawsuit against district; Ohio auditor releases findings for recovery (Sun News)
- Edison Local Schools sign drilling lease (WTOV 9 NBC)
- 9 laid off Lorain school employees recalled (Morning Journal)
Columbus schools retroactively alter thousands of student-attendance records at the end of each school year, casting doubt on the accuracy of the district’s state report card, current and former district officials told The Dispatch. The changes would affect attendance rates and test-passing rates because they affect the pool of students who are considered in school-wide totals. They also might have confused Franklin County Juvenile Court officials so much that the court dismissed legitimate truancy cases. Read more...
At least four new charter schools plan to enter the crowded Toledo education field next year, and an additional school with two sites in the area plans to open a new campus. Schools are planned in a former grocery store, a downtown office building, a once-shuttered Catholic school, and at the former Masonic Temple next to the Stranahan Theater. Combined, the schools plan to enroll hundreds of students, at a time when Toledo continues to lose population. Read more...
Youngstown - Whatever the immediate future holds for the city school district, it won’t involve KnowledgeWorks. “... our work in Youngstown has effectively been concluded” with the disinterest of the superintendent, Byron McCauley, a spokesman for the Cincinnati-based education reform organization, said in an email. KnowledgeWorks in a February visit to the city advocated what it called a “restart” or complete overhaul of the city school system, which is in academic watch based on the most recent state report card. Read more...
OTTAWA — Brad Schmitz, Glandorf, is concluding his fourth year attending a tech camp offered in Putnam County. The tech camp is a free computer camp open to all county students entering the sixth through eighth grades. “When I started I barely knew anything technical,” Schmitz said. “Now I know how to create games, use green screens and do many other things.” Schmitz is one of 28 seventh and eighth graders to attend the summer tech camp at the Putnam County Educational Center this past week. Read more...
BEREA - Berea school Treasurer Randy Scherf filed a lawsuit against the Berea school district in May regarding a dispute concerning health insurance reimbursements. A statement the Ohio Auditor Dave Yost released today deals with a similar issue. The statement said Scherf overpaid himself nearly $28,000 in medical insurance expenses. The July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 audit showed findings for recovery totaling $31,387, including $27,899 against Scherf and $3,488 in unrelated findings against a former employee for excess COBRA payments. Read more...
JEFFERSON COUNTY — Edison Local Schools have signed a lease with Chesapeake Energy, and now they've waiting on nearly $700,000 from the drilling company in July. However, this money isn't surplus -- without it, the schools would be in more financial trouble. "We would be in serious -- even more serious -- financial crisis, and, ultimately, the state would come in and basically do an audit," said Superintendent Dave Quattrochi. Read more...
LORAIN — At Thursday night’s Lorain school board meeting, Interim Superintendent Ed Branham announced one person’s retirement and that nine laid off employees will be coming back next year. Six of the nine are being rehired due to teacher retirements, another teacher is coming back because an employee accepted another position, and another will be coming back due an increase in special education enrollment. The ninth recalled employee, Cara Gomez, is a Race to the Top facilitator paid by federal money. Read more...
Editorial
- Got training? (Dispatch)
- Education matters (Beacon Journal)
- Education matters - Part 2 (Beacon Journal)
Learn a skill, support a family: This axiom was true for our grandparents’ generation, and a new study says it still holds. Technical education takes less time, costs less money and can command wages that will match or exceed those of some college degrees, according to the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. Don’t believe it? Have you paid someone lately to fix a car or a computer? Read more...
Ohio long has guaranteed that all students will be proficient in reading early in their schooling. Yet years later, too many students do not reach the mark, and their lives are diminished as a result, more often on public assistance, or in prison. On Wednesday, state Rep. Gerald Stebelton, the chairman of the House Education Committee, captured the exasperation of many Ohioans: “We are failing our children.” Read more...
Cleveland’s public schools long have been a drag on the city and region. Once models for urban education, today just 37 of 115 schools, enrolling about one-fourth of the district’s students, are rated “excellent” or “efficient.” To turn the situation around, Mayor Frank Jackson, the only mayor in the state with responsibility for a public school system, abandoned his usual quiet diplomacy to confront festering problems, charter school supporters, members of his own party and the powerful Cleveland Teachers Union. Read more...