School levies on the August 2012 ballot

Here are the school levies and issues that will appear on the August 7th, 2012 special election ballots.

There are 26 requests for new monies (including bonds) and 9 renewal requests.

There are 2 bond issues, 1 combined bond and tax levy issue, 4 income tax issues, 1 combined bond and income tax issue, 1 combined income and tax levy issue and 26 tax levy issues. That makes a total of 35 school financing issues in total

County	District	Type	N/R
Ashtabula	Ashtabula Area CSD	Tax Levy	New
Ashtabula	Geneva Area CSD	Tax Levy	New
Ashtabula	Jefferson Area LSD	Tax Levy	New
Butler	Monroe LSD	Tax Levy	New
Columbiana	Columbiana EVSD	Bond	New
Cuyahoga	Brecksville-Broadview Heights CSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Darke	Tri-Village LSD	Tax Levy	New
Delaware	Buckeye Valley LSD	Income Tax & Bond	New
Erie	Margaretta LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Franklin	Groveport-Madison LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Fulton	Swanton LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Geauga	Chardon LSD	Tax Levy	New
Greene	Xenia Community CSD	Income Tax	New
Hamilton	Lockland LSD	Tax Levy	New
Holmes	East Holmes LSD	Tax Levy	New
Lake	Madison LSD	Tax Levy	New
Licking	North Fork LSD	Income Tax	Renew
Medina	Buckeye LSD	Tax Levy	New
Miami	Bethel LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Miami	Bethel LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Miami	Tipp City EVSD	Tax Levy	New
Montgomery	Northmont CSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Montgomery	Vandalia-Butler CSD	Tax Levy	New
Richland	Clear Fork Valley LSD	Income Tax	New
Sandusky	Clyde-Green Springs EVSD	Tax Levy	New
Scioto	Green LSD	Tax Levy	New
Shelby	Jackson Center LSD	Income Tax	New
Stark	Louisville CSD	Tax Levy	New
Summit	Coventry LSD	Bond and Tax Levy	New
Summit	Barberton CSD	Tax Levy	New
Summit	Woodridge LSD	Tax Levy	New
Wayne	Dalton LSD	Tax Levy	Renew
Williams	Bryan CSD	Bond	New
Williams	Edon Northwest LSD	Income Tax and Tax Levy	New
Wood	Lake LSD	Tax Levy	New

Here are the levy results for the August 2011 special election. 8 of 25 issues were approved. All renewal and replacement requests passed, with just 4 of 21 new requests.

Ohio's teacher evaluation - Flawed from the start?

The Capacity Committee of the state Board of Education yesterday to further discuss development of teacher evlauations, which as the Dispatch reports “should be a tool to inform employment and dismissal decisions (and) opportunities for advancement” and must complete the recommendations by the end of the year.

Education First has been brought in to help develop the evaluation system, but their comments at the meeting are a little troubling

Katie Cour, another consultant from Education First, stressed that the pilot program put together by the state can’t be expected to work flawlessly from the time it is put into place.

“You’ll never have a perfect system at the beginning of implementation,” she said. Cour told the committee members to think of the plan in the same way software developers thought about their products — there would be an OTES 2.0 and 3.0, which might not look anything like the first plan.

The state plan has a basic four-part system for evaluating teachers: goal setting, teacher performance, professionalism and student growth.

In keeping with the focus on student achievement — and a new state law — student growth will be half of a teacher’s evaluation.

We are apparently in such a rush that we're having to make it up as we go along, openly admitting that we are develpoing a flawed system that will be used in part to determine dismissals and RIF's.

We have obtained the documents used and presented at this meeting, you can read them below (we combined 5 documents into one for simplicity of reading, seperated by a blank page)

Combined Teacher Evaluation Docs