6/19/09 Columbus Dispatch Blog Jennifer Smith Richards The average charter school in Ohio has been operating for more than five years, new data from a charter-school organization shows. More than 75 percent of Ohio’s charter schools have been open for at least four years, says just-released data from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. [...]

6/18/09 Columbus Dispatch Blog Jennifer Smith Richards A state audit of Montessori Renaissance Experience, a Columbus charter school that struggled with financial record-keeping so much that it could not be audited for fiscal 2006 and 2007, says the school has cleaned up its act. Read the audit here, which indicates a great improvement over previous ones. [...]

6/17/09 Columbus Dispatch Jennifer Smith Richards Custodians, bus drivers, secretaries and cafeteria workers could work in schools even with a past drug or theft conviction under a new rule being considered by the State Board of Education. Committing a sex crime, kidnapping and murder still would prevent someone from working in a school. But some [...]

6/17/09 Columbus Dispatch Simone Sebastian Hamilton Elementary physical-education teacher Mary Kennett, right, celebrates last night’s vote with Jimmie Beall, a counselor at Linden McKinley High and member of the teachers union’s gay caucus.  Columbus teachers are expected to receive two new benefits next school year — health insurance for their same-sex partners and more training [...]

6/15/09 Columbus Dispatch Simone Sebastian The company that will take over Columbus schools’ money-losing food operation plans to feed students not just at school, but also during weekends. Sodexo wants to start a program that on Fridays will send backpacks of food home with low-income Columbus children to tide them over until the school bell [...]