Carla Loon Leader - Education Lawyer for Children

05/31/2026

Ohio families, businesses, and communities need leaders who value, support and fund public schools for all students.

05/30/2026

Judge Leland asked the question Ohio taxpayers deserve to have answered: Why are wealthy families being subsidized with public tax dollars while public schools are underfunded?

05/25/2026

Following oral arguments at the 10th District Court of Appeals, judges openly questioned why taxpayers are subsidizing private tuition while public classrooms face severe budget shortfalls.
https://thevwindependent.com/news/2026/05/14/judges-question-private-school-vouchers/

05/23/2026

When the state's best argument for school voucher equality is “you're allowed to apply for admission," Ohio's billion-dollar private school subsidy is in trouble.

05/21/2026

FYI - he's talking about family members being paid to be caregivers for their disabled family members who may otherwise become institutionalized, and also recognizes that the caregiver is not able to work outside the home.

Apparent Medicaid fraud in Ohio has exploded under a new program that pays people to hang out with family members.

05/15/2026

Approximately 20% of families have a child who struggles to read.

Most stay quiet.

Not because they do not care.
Because stigma is powerful.
Because schools normalize delay.
Because parents are told to wait.
Because fighting a system every single day is exhausting.

And then there is the small percentage who refuse to accept it.

The parents learning phonemic awareness at midnight.
Paying for tutors they cannot afford.
Reading IEPs and evaluations like law school textbooks.
Documenting. Advocating. Showing up to meetings. Filing complaints. Refusing to let their child disappear inside lowered expectations.

People call them difficult.

What they really are is exhausted.

We see you…

05/11/2026

05/09/2026

How do you show results without funding? Any idiot knows public education needs to be fully funded in order to be effective. And when it's not fully funded, the most vulnerable students are the first to be impacted. Your vote matters.

The future of public education in Ohio looks different depending on who wins the governor's race.

While Democrat Dr. Amy Acton wants to fully fund education so districts can improve, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy said schools need to deliver results first.

05/06/2026

Teachers leave graduate programs believing they are fully prepared to teach reading, only to discover they were never given the tools to help the children who struggle the most. Districts spend enormous amounts on credentials and professional development that do not translate into reading outcomes. Parents empty savings accounts on tutors and private evaluations. And children lose years of confidence while being told they just need more practice, more exposure, or more time.

At some point, universities need to answer a hard question:

If teachers can earn a “Master’s in Reading” without deep training in how to actually remediate reading failure, what exactly did they pay for?

Teachers deserve a refund…

05/06/2026

I asked AI:

What could be purchased for an entire state education system with 1.09 billion dollars? It said:

"A lot. For perspective, $1.09 billion is roughly the size of an entire mid-sized urban school district’s annual operating budget. For a statewide education system, it could fund transformational initiatives depending on how the money was used.

Some examples:

* About 18,000 teachers for one year at an average total compensation package of ~$60,000 each.
* Roughly 7.2 million hours of private tutoring at $150/hour.
* Around 12 million structured literacy intervention sessions at $90/session.
* Approximately 180,000 students receiving intensive reading intervention costing $6,000 per student annually.
* About 36,000 full-time aides or paraprofessionals at $30,000/year.
* Roughly 220,000 laptops at $5,000 per classroom tech package (device, accessories, management, software).
* Full replacement of HVAC systems in hundreds of older school buildings.
* Universal breakfast and lunch for many states for a substantial period of time.
Massive expansion of:
* school psychologists
* speech-language pathologists
* occupational therapists
* behavioral supports
* dyslexia intervention
* early childhood special education

For special education specifically, $1.09 billion could potentially fund:

* statewide evidence-based literacy interventions,
* intensive compensatory education,
* BCBA supports,
* expanded autism programming,
* transition services,
and
* independent evaluations for tens of thousands of students.

To give another comparison:

$1.09 billion equals:
* about $2.98 million per day for a year, or
* about $124,000 every hour, continuously, for a year.