The order stopping a law that strips more than a million dollars in funding for Planned Parenthood has been extended till August 5, and has set a hearing for August 2. Meanwhile, the state will pay more than $45,000 in legal bills for Planned Parenthood as part of a dispute involving the disposal of remains of abortions. Nearly a year after legislation was signed, Ohio is now the first state to offer tax-advantaged savings and investment accounts for eligible children and adults with disabilities. And Ohio University and journalists around the country are mourning the loss of Guido Stempel III, an OU professor who was instrumental in shaping the curriculum of the journalism school and the careers of hundreds of students. Just hours after state lawmakers approved a historic and tightly crafted medical marijuana bill, a group that had criticized the bill in light of its own constitutional amendment abandoned its campaign for the fall ballot.
The numbers of kids who are reported to be attending charter schools can be different than the numbers of kids actually going to those schools. State auditor Dave Yost proved that two years ago with pop-up visits one day in 2014, when he ordered staffers to show up at charter schools for surprise visits to take attendance. He repeated that experiment recently. And when he unveiled the results, he didn’t hold back when talking about the agency that oversees charter schools, the Ohio Department of Education, saying it "is among the worst if not the worst run state agency in state government.” Two key Senators - Education Committee chair Peggy Lehner (R-Kettering) and Minority Leader Joe Schiavoni (D-Boardman) - react to that.
Meanwhile, as Ohio school kids were packing up for summer break, a report out last week on charter school funding by a liberal leaning think tank and the state’s largest teachers union showed the federal government has put nearly $30 million into charter schools that have either closed or never opened in the first place. Talking about the report is its author, Stephen Dyer, a Democratic former state representative from the Akron area who's with Innovation Ohio's "Know Your Charter" project. Also on hand to discuss it is Chad Aldis, the vice president of the pro-charter group that issued that criticism I just mentioned, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.