Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > December > 23 > Entry
Last minute school law changes
As the lame duck legislature rushes last minute bills to the governor, there are some that affect education.
A couple thoughts on the implications of the rushed changes:
Vouchers
I’ve already written about how the expansion of the voucher program affects Dayton. But I can’t help but wonder why lawmakers, if they want more Ohioans to try vouchers, don’t take a more direct approach.
This further expansion of the eligibility rules again demonstrates how the program’s small enrollment was disappointing to supporters of the idea. This move is designed to use up more of the state-approved vouchers that so far have gone unused.
But when I was writing about this early in the year, some of the strongest advocates for vouchers were parents who have already chosen private schools and are scraping every dollar to make it work. Those parents have never understood why the state just doesn’t make families already attending private schools eligible for vouchers.
Does that cast the net too wide? Well, perhaps the law could add some limits. An income threshold could reserve vouchers just for the poorest private school families.
School buildings
Another change lawmakers pushed is designed to help charter schools. Many of them are now in unsuitable buildings because, short of raising private funds to build a new school, there aren’t many great options for school appropriate space.
Charter supporters feel public school districts should play fair and sell unused buildings to charters but fear that school districts will hold onto those schools just to spite charters that they view as competitors. So a new law proposed to require school districts to sell unused schools to charters if the school has been empty for a year and there is no plan for re-use during the next three years.
My first thought on that provision was that it could affect districts like Dayton that are in the midst of major school construction projects. Take the former Julienne High School building on Homewood Avenue that now houses Stivers School for the Arts. It is a nice quality building that Dayton Public Schools plans to use as “swing space” to temporarily house schools in transition.
But now DPS must take care to have a plan for that building after Stivers moves into its new building late next year or face the danger of being forced to sell it. And that’s just one example. Dayton has a couple dozen schools in transition. It seems like this change in state law creates one more headache for the managers of the building program.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, Dayton Public Schools
Comments
By Keith
December 25, 2006 10:52 AM | Link to this
The original goal of vouchers was to use them to decimate the public schools and than expand them to private and parochial schools which already existed. That would reduce the cost of operating schools in Ohio to the government (who can think of many other ways they’d rather spend the money) and would weaken the unions and would reduce the power of the large city schools which were primarily democrat strongholds. Other smaller groups had individual goals. But now the reality of the “other” schools is that they only did better because they had a select clientel, didn’t have to educate the problem childen and the special needs child, and had a stronger parent support group. So now how does the Columbus crowd expand the money—private schools. … … Indeed we need to reduce the number of charters to those which are successful based on same criteria as used for public schools in the same population, and we need to reduce aids to private and parochial schools in the under-the-table supports such as libraries and transportation and special teachers. . . . . Time for change back to supporting public schools which have the real job to do in Ohio.By Troy Robertson
December 23, 2006 5:20 PM | Link to this
The new govenor needs to close down all charter schools.