Catching our eye 12.5.19

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Catching our eye:

Love to see it. Toledo Blade’s Jon Chavez is reporting that, “with just a month left in 2019, more female entrepreneurs/business owners have sought help from Ohio’s Small Business Development Centers than their male counterparts.”

Chavez reports that this “marks the first time since the centers were established 34 years ago by the Ohio Development Services Agency that female clients outnumber male ones. According to recent SBDC figures, 51.8 percent of the client load (4,862 clients) are women after 11 months.”

The school choices we make. Forbes’ Peter Greene is writing about the impact voucher students leaving Ohio public school districts has on those districts.Greene writes, “An exodus of voucher students leaves stranded costs in the public school; buildings still have to be heated, and textbooks can’t be handed in for refunds. If voucher students don’t leave in neat increments from specific grades, the public district may not easily be able to downsize. If you have already bought food and presents assuming all ten grandchildren will be there for Christmas, and it turns out that three are going to Disneyland instead, your costs don’t instantly decrease.”

He points to what he calls a staggering impact: “Toledo’s voucher costs increased by $5.7 million. In smaller districts, the dollar amount might not seem impressive, but Scioto Valley’s increase amounts to a 965% jump in voucher costs.”