ZANESVILLE — The West Muskingum Local School District is facing budget deficits in each of the next five years because of rising costs and shrinking state funding and enrollments.

With levies not an option after six consecutive failures at the ballot box, officials are considering several proposed strategies — from redistricting students to make better use of staff and classroom space to rolling out a virtual school to keep more students in the district.

Parents of students and other district residents are being asked to weigh in on the proposals during the next month, before the school board potentially takes a vote on the changes.

For the rest of the article, go to Changes needed to stave off deficits, West Muskingum superintendent says

WOOSTER DISTRICT — David Estrop was startled to receive an ultimatum from the Ohio Department of Education.

In his third year as superintendent of Springfield City Schools, Estrop is a former Wooster City Schools’ superintendent.

The news he made in Springfield about just what academic improvement means took him all the way to the White House, where he personally heard about modifications being made to federal No Child Left Behind requirements — not to relax them, but to make them more responsive to schools showing progress.

Estrop and the Springfield district had celebrated “all 15 of our schools improving on one state metric or another,” he said, and moving as a district from continuous improvement to a ranking of Effective.

The district’s value-added measurement put it in the top three percent of all of the districts in the state.

“We were feeling pretty good about our progress,” Estrop said.

But under federal law, because the district was missing the mark for adequate yearly progress for all but one of its elementary schools, the district’s 4,400 elementary school students gained the right to attend Snowhill Elementary, the only district making AYP, or to attend neighboring districts or virtual schools, according to Estrop.

Just four or five weeks into the 2011-12 school year, the Springfield district had two weeks to comply with the provisions of NCLB, Estrop said, which also included the option of building new schools or sending children to Snowhill in shifts.

Along with the letter required to be sent out to elementary school parents, Estrop attached one asking them to forego alternative education options.

“We have made good progress,” Estrop said he told them, adding, “We have fought the good fight; we are fighting it.”

“I’m pleased to tell you only 12 students moved into Snowhill; no one selected the digital academy; all the rest stayed where they were.”

Estrop’s story came to the attention of the U.

For the rest of the article, go to Officials respond to changes in No Child Left Behind.