Reynoldsburg, Ohio → Ohio → USA

I haveopinionsabout this

A child’s path runs through school, sometimes through foster care, often through a diagnosis nobody explained well, and always through the adults and systems around them. This site follows that path, names what is broken, shows what works elsewhere, and builds the tools to fix it.

Start with schools →Who is this
01 — The through-line

One child. Every system.

These are not separate causes. They are the same child seen from different desks. Click any node.

THE CHILD SCHOOL FOSTER CARE ADHD + OCD FAMILY VOTE KRS2 TOOLS EMOTIONAL CREATURES FOREVER FAMILY FUND

Education

Why American schooling stalled, what Sir Ken Robinson saw, and what Norway, Japan and Alpha School do differently.

Read →

Foster care

Ohio’s numbers, Franklin County’s numbers, and why a stable school matters as much as a stable bed.

Read →

ADHD + OCD

Dr. Russell Barkley’s science, in his own words and videos — and what it demands of schools and tools.

Read →

krs2 ecosystem

Knowledge Repository Synthesis System — the external scaffolding a busy family actually needs.

Read →

Emotional Creatures

Children build creatures to put feelings outside themselves, where they can be named and handled.

Read →

Forever Family Fund

A family initiative for the home, the needs and the long-term security behind every child above.

Read →

Voting rights

What it takes to run a polling place in Franklin County — and why every reform here ends at the ballot.

Read →

Our family

Who is writing this, and why our home is the reason for all of it.

Read →
02 — Education

Less bureaucracy.
More learning.

The plan: prove a better model in Reynoldsburg, carry it to Ohio, then to the country. Not by blaming teachers — by putting time, trust and money back into classrooms.

ReynoldsburgProve it locally
OhioChange state policy
USAMake it the model
The evidence

The report card is in

The National Assessment of Educational Progress — “the Nation’s Report Card” — tested more than 450,000 fourth and eighth graders in early 2024.

−2 pts
Average reading score drop for both 4th and 8th grade from 2022 to 2024, on top of a 3-point drop from 2019 to 2022[1]
Record
Share of 8th graders reading below NAEP Basic was the largest in the assessment’s history[2]
1992
Lower-performing readers (10th and 25th percentile) scored below the very first NAEP reading assessment in 1992[2]
2 states
Only two states had surpassed any pre-pandemic level in reading or math[1]

EdTrust points out that the slide began before COVID: 8th grade math scores started falling after 2013, and 4th grade reading and 8th grade math are now back where they were 30 and 25 years ago[3].

Bloat, measured

Economist Ben Scafidi’s Back to the Staffing Surge (published by EdChoice, an organization that advocates for school choice) uses data states report to the U.S. Department of Education[4]:

2.5×
Teachers were hired at about 2.5 times the rate of student growth, 1950–2015[4]
7×
Administrators and other non-teaching staff grew more than 7 times as fast as students[4]
+19% / +45%
1992–2014: enrollment up 19%, full-time non-teaching staff up 45%[5]

Scafidi’s finding is that this hiring did not produce measurable gains in student outcomes, while teacher salaries stagnated[4]. That is the bureaucracy problem in one sentence: more adults outside the classroom, no more learning inside it.

Education is a personal process.Sir Ken Robinson, on his 2010 TED talk[6]

Robinson’s diagnosis was structural: today’s systems run on the manufacturing principles of linearity, conformity and standardization, while human development is organic and diverse[6]. The system has not evolved because it was never designed to.

The voice

Sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson (1950–2020) was a British educator and author, a longtime professor of education at the University of Warwick, and was knighted in 2003 for services to the arts[8]. His 2006 TED talk was, at the time of his death, the most-viewed TED talk ever[8]. His books include The Element, Creative Schools and Out of Our Minds[8].

How these videos are shared

TED talks are shared under TED’s Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: shown whole, unedited, credited, and never for profit[7]. This site carries no ads and charges nothing. Each video plays from its official channel.

Do schools kill creativity?

TED2006 · Sir Ken Robinson

His case that creativity matters in education as much as literacy, and that schools teach children to fear being wrong.

© TED Conferences, available at TED.com. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Watch on TED.com

Changing Education Paradigms

RSA Animate · 11:41

The RSA’s animation of his Benjamin Franklin Medal talk: why mass schooling still runs like a factory.

© The RSA. Played from the RSA’s official YouTube channel. Watch on YouTube

Bring on the learning revolution!

TED2010 · Sir Ken Robinson

The follow-up: from a standardized, fast-food model of schooling to personalized learning.

© TED Conferences, available at TED.com. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Watch on TED.com

How to escape education’s death valley

TED · 2013 · Sir Ken Robinson

Three principles that make learning thrive — diversity, curiosity, creativity — and how American school culture works against them.

© TED Conferences, available at TED.com. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Watch on TED.com
What works elsewhere

Norway. Japan. Alpha.

Norway

Equity first, grades later

  • Children start school the year they turn six; ten years are compulsory and free[9].
  • The system is founded on equity and “adapted education” for every pupil[9].
  • In primary school (grades 1–7), pupils get assessments without grades; grades start in lower secondary[10].
Japan

Educating the whole child

  • Tokkatsu (“special activities”) is part of the national curriculum: class meetings, student council, lunch duties and school events[12].
  • Students work in groups to clean classrooms, halls and grounds as part of their education[11].
  • Honest caveat: these activities place a heavy burden on teachers, and some schools are starting to scale them back[13].
Alpha School · contested

Two hours, then life skills

  • Private school model: about two hours a day on adaptive software for academics, the rest on workshops; adults are “guides”[14].
  • Alpha reports MAP growth about 2.6× that of similar students; the Austin campus charges $40,000 a year[14].
  • WIRED (Oct. 27, 2025) and 404 Media (2026) reported surveillance, distress and faulty lessons; Alpha disputes the reporting and has not released its underlying data[15][16].
Sources: [1] [9] [10] [11] [12] [14] [15] [16]. “—” means this site does not cite a comparable figure.
United StatesNorwayJapanAlpha School
AccessSet by each stateStarts the year a child turns 6; 10 free, compulsory years—Private; $40,000 a year in Austin
Grading young childrenSet by state and districtNo grades in grades 1–7—90% mastery before moving on
Learning beyond academicsVaries by districtAdapted education for every pupilTokkatsu in the national curriculum; students clean their schoolAfternoon life-skills workshops
EvidenceNAEP reading falling since 2019——Self-reported; disputed by investigative reporting

The lesson is not to copy any one system. Norway shows trust, Japan shows community, and Alpha shows what personal pacing could do — and why it needs openness and protections for children.

On the record in Reynoldsburg

From the board table

Policy 8500: the lunch line

I cast the only “no” vote on the alternate-meal rules in Policy 8500, adopted 4–1. They hold children accountable for their parents’ meal debts. That is punitive, and it singles kids out. A collection effort aimed at parents had already cut new monthly meal debt by 88%.

Kirby’s position as a board member. Board records are public through Reynoldsburg City Schools.

What I am pushing for

  • A district-wide transparency policy: data public, de-identified where needed.
  • A public-facing website that reports district performance plainly.
  • Reform framed around more money and trust for classrooms, not blame for public schools.
A child who struggles in school may also be a child in foster care.Follow the child →
03 — Foster care

A stable school.
A stable home.

The same path as education: get it right in Reynoldsburg, then Ohio, then the country. Reynoldsburg sits across Franklin, Licking and Fairfield counties[34], so one city’s children can fall under three different county agencies. That is where coordination starts.

ReynoldsburgThree counties, one city
Ohio88 counties
USAEvery state system
Ohio by the numbers · state fiscal year 2024

The children behind the caseload

28,615
Children served by Ohio children services on July 1, 2024; 51% of them in agency custody[17]
53% / 26%
Children in custody living in licensed foster homes / kinship homes[17]
3,321
Children waiting to be adopted (1,474 adoptions completed that year)[17]
1,002
Young people who aged out of care without a permanent family[17]

Franklin County, SFY 2024

153 adoptions completed, 252 children waiting to be adopted, and 138 young people aged out of care[18].

Ohio already has a blueprint

Governor DeWine’s Children Services Transformation Advisory Council — which included former foster youth, birth parents, kinship caregivers, and foster and adoptive parents — delivered 37 recommendations in November 2020[19]. A later state update reported 16 fully implemented, 13 partially implemented and 8 in progress[19]. The work is to finish the list and measure whether children’s lives actually improve.

Where school and foster care meet

Every move costs a child school

Federal law (the Every Student Succeeds Act) requires state report cards to show how students in foster care do on tests and graduation, and Ohio is one of the states that reports it[20]. Ohio’s education and children-and-youth departments have published joint guidance for schools on supporting foster youth and keeping their schooling stable[22].

The cost of instability is visible in New York City’s 2025 data: students who spent time in foster care in high school graduated in four years at just 40.1%, but those who never changed schools graduated at 64.6%[21].

40.1%
NYC four-year graduation rate, students in foster care, 2025[21]
64.6%
The same group when they never changed schools in grades 9–12[21]

A child in care carries school records, appointments, court dates, caseworkers and a diagnosis or two from home to home. Usually nobody holds the whole picture. That gap is exactly what the next two sections are about.

Many of these children carry an ADHD or OCD diagnosis.See the science →
04 — ADHD + OCD

Not a knowledge problem.
A performance problem.

ADHD is one of the most common reasons a capable child looks like a failing one. Dr. Russell Barkley has spent decades explaining why — and his answer points straight at how schools and tools should be built.

7 million
U.S. children ages 3–17 ever diagnosed with ADHD (11.4%), 2022[23]
~78%
Children with ADHD who had at least one other co-occurring condition[23]
~2 million
Children with ADHD who received no ADHD-specific treatment in 2022[23]
The science

Dr. Russell Barkley

Russell A. Barkley, PhD, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the Virginia Treatment Center for Children and Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center[27], and has written many books and articles on ADHD[24]. His own site is russellbarkley.org.

Executive function = self-regulation

Barkley describes executive functions as the capacities for self-control that let us keep working toward a goal, and ADHD as a disorder that impairs them[24].

Help at the point of performance

His management principles: externalize information, close gaps in time, externalize motivation, make problem-solving hands-on, and intervene where and when the work happens[25].

A public-health issue

In his long-term study with Mariellen Fischer, childhood ADHD was linked to an estimated 9.6-year cut in healthy life expectancy and 8.4 years in total life expectancy by young adulthood — estimates that can improve as health habits change[26].

It’s a significant public health issue.Russell A. Barkley, PhD, with CHADD, 2019[27]

ADHD and Executive Function

Child Mind Institute · Dr. Russell Barkley

The executive abilities that ADHD impairs, explained in a few minutes.

Played from the Child Mind Institute’s official YouTube channel. Read the article

Why is ADHD so impairing?

Russell Barkley, PhD — Dedicated to ADHD Science+

From his own channel: ADHD as a disorder of executive functioning and self-regulation.

Played from Dr. Barkley’s official YouTube channel. Watch on YouTube

12 Principles for Raising a Child with ADHD

The Guilford Press · Dr. Russell Barkley

Practical guidance for parents from his 2020 book.

Played from The Guilford Press’s official YouTube channel. His books at Guilford

Dr. Barkley’s books, articles and lectures are his copyrighted work. This page summarizes them in its own words, quotes briefly, and links to the originals.

OCD

The other diagnosis

1.2%
U.S. adults with OCD in the past year; 2.3% over a lifetime[28]
Up to 3%
Children worldwide who will have OCD in their lifetime[29]
0–60%
Reported ADHD–OCD overlap varies wildly from study to study[30]

The International OCD Foundation points families to exposure and response prevention (ERP), in which children learn to face fears without giving in to compulsions, delivered by a trained clinician[29]. A major review warns that some OCD symptoms in young children can look like ADHD and be misdiagnosed as it[30] — one more reason the adults around a child need the whole history in one place.

Barkley says: put the information, the time and the motivation outside the head. So we are building that.Meet krs2 →
05 — The krs2 ecosystem

Externalscaffoldingfor families

krs2 — the Knowledge Repository Synthesis System — is a governance-first knowledge system: one place where a family’s information, decisions and history are kept, traced and usable.

krs2

Knowledge Repository Synthesis System. The foundation: every object identified, traced to its evidence, and kept honest about how much is known.

krs3

Knowledge Repository Social Synthesis System. Guided conversations that build real understanding of each family member.

krs4

Knowledge Repository Supporting Sensory-Specific Safety.

The Offices

krs2 is organized into named Offices, each a persona with clear boundaries. The goal is for each one to become standalone software on your own computer — full installer and interface, no AI required to run — sold à la carte so a family buys only what it needs.

KathleenIndigoProject ManagerKatieMiguelLucyCharlotteAlphaHazelAmiahEmilyPatronumChloeBellaIanKairo

Built with limits on purpose

Katie, for example, is non-clinical by design: no diagnosis, no therapy, no treatment changes, and she must keep testimony, observation, inference and the unknown clearly apart. A family tool should help you see clearly, not pretend to be a doctor.

Why it belongs here

Barkley’s principles — externalize information, time and motivation at the point of performance[25] — describe what a child with ADHD needs. They also describe what a foster parent, a caseworker, a teacher and a guardian ad litem need when a child’s history is scattered across five offices. krs2 is the attempt to build that external memory for a whole family.

The child-facing piece of the ecosystem helps kids put feelings outside themselves too.Emotional Creatures →
06 — Emotional Creatures

Feelings, outside
where kids can see them

Emotional Creatures is a therapeutic product system that helps children externalize emotional patterns through creature-building and structured roleplay. Its design goals come from foster and adoptive family life.

10
Needs in its need registry
7
Systems in its executive function developmental model
7
Tiers in its emotional taxonomy standard
10
Stages in its creature lifecycle pipeline

How it fits

Barkley’s management principles for ADHD start with putting information outside the head, where it can be seen and used[25]. Emotional Creatures applies the same idea to feelings: a creature a child builds can carry a fear or an anger that is too big to name directly.

Held to an evidence standard

The system includes its own evidence hierarchy standard, so every claim the product makes about emotions is ranked by how well it is supported — the same honesty rule this whole site follows.

Tools matter. So does the home a child goes back to.Forever Family Fund →
07 — Forever Family Fund

A home that
holds

The Forever Family Fund is our family initiative for the things a stable home requires: day-to-day family needs, home and renovation needs, investments, and long-term financial security.

Plain facts

  • The Fund is a family initiative, not a registered charity.
  • It is not a 501(c)(3), and contributions are not tax-deductible.
  • It stays under our family’s control.

Why it is on this site

Ohio had 3,321 children waiting to be adopted in state fiscal year 2024[17]. Every one of them needs a home that can afford to say yes and keep saying yes. Ours is one of them.

Coming soon

How to support the Fund

Details on how individuals and organizations can support the Fund will be posted here once they are final.

None of these reforms happen without votes.Voting rights →
08 — Voting rights

Every reform
ends at the ballot

I serve with the Franklin County Board of Elections as a Voting Location Manager — the poll worker in charge of a polling place on Election Day.

~5,000
Poll workers Franklin County hires to run its polling locations[31]
1,400
Maximum voters Ohio law assigns to one precinct[32]
17
Age at which high school students can serve through “Youth at the Booth”[33]

What a Voting Location Manager does

  • One poll worker per location is chosen by Board staff to oversee the election process there[32].
  • Opens and closes the polling place and manages every precinct inside it[32].
  • Delivers ballots, poll books and materials to the Board after polls close, with a “ride along” from a different political party[31].

Why it connects to schools

Franklin County lets high school students age 17 and up work the polls[33]. That is civics as a real job, not a worksheet — the kind of hands-on learning this site argues for.

Check your registration and find your polling place with the official Board of Elections.vote.franklincountyohio.gov →

Election administration is nonpartisan. Anything on this site is Kirby’s personal view, not the Franklin County Board of Elections’.

09 — Our family

Why all of this

I’m Kirby R. Samuell II. I live in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, with Tom. We are a foster and adoptive family, and young people who came to us through foster care are the reason every section of this site exists.

  • Reynoldsburg Board of Education — member; chair of the Communications Committee
  • Guardian ad Litem
  • Licensed for foster care and adoption
  • Founder — Emotional Creatures; building the krs2 ecosystem
  • Voting Location Manager — Franklin County Board of Elections

Our privacy rule

We tell our story. We do not tell our children’s stories without their permission. Foster youth have the right to decide what the world knows about their past, and this site honors it.

Family advocacy stories will appear here as each person chooses to share.

A note on roles

I serve on the Reynoldsburg Board of Education and with the Franklin County Board of Elections. Everything on this site is my personal view. It does not speak for the Board, Reynoldsburg City Schools, or the Board of Elections.

Start where it starts: in school.Education →
10 — Sources

Every number, traced

Each figure on this site links here. Accessed November 2026.

  1. National Assessment Governing Board. (2025, January 29). The Nation’s Report Card shows declines in reading, some progress in 4th grade math [Press release]. nagb.gov
  2. New Jersey School Boards Association. (2025). NAEP assessment shows fourth graders’ mathematics scores improve, reading scores continue to decline. njsba.org
  3. Morgan, I. (2025, January 30). NAEP 2024 results tell us that it’s time for action. EdTrust. edtrust.org
  4. Scafidi, B. (2017). Back to the staffing surge. EdChoice. edchoice.org; key findings: press release
  5. Education Week. (2017, May). Teachers less frequently hired, more often fired than other school staffers. edweek.org
  6. Robinson, K. (2010). Sir Ken Robinson speaking at TED, February 2010. sirkenrobinson.com
  7. TED. TED Talks usage policy. ted.com
  8. Penguin Random House. (2020, August 27). Sir Ken Robinson: 1950–2020. penguinrandomhouse; Ken Robinson (educationalist). Wikipedia. wikipedia.org
  9. Eurydice. (2024). Norway: Organisation of the education system and of its structure. European Commission. eurydice.eacea.ec.europa.eu
  10. Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training. The education system in Norway: Information for newly arrived parents and guardians. udir.no
  11. Embassy of Japan in the USA. Education system in Japan. us.emb-japan.go.jp
  12. Tsuneyoshi, R. The Japanese educational model of holistic education (tokkatsu). University of Tokyo. p.u-tokyo.ac.jp
  13. Nippon.com. Japanese support for educational reform in Egypt. nippon.com
  14. Aldeman, C. What public schools and parents can learn from a $40,000-a-year private school. The 74. (Author discloses he advises NWEA, maker of MAP.) the74million.org
  15. Feathers, T. (2025, October 27). Parents fell in love with Alpha School’s promise. Then they wanted out. WIRED.
  16. Here & Now / NPR. (2026, March 23). Investigation finds faulty lesson plans and unhappy students at an AI-powered private school. wwno.org
  17. Public Children Services Association of Ohio. (2025). PCSAO Factbook: State of Ohio profile, June 2024. pcsao.org
  18. Public Children Services Association of Ohio. (2025). PCSAO Factbook: Franklin County profile. pcsao.org
  19. Ohio Children’s Alliance. (2020, November 5). Children Services Transformation Advisory Council releases final recommendations. ohiochildrensalliance.org; Dayton Daily News: 37 recommendations; status update: wktn.com
  20. The 74. ESSA says state report cards must track how many students in foster care are passing their reading, math tests and graduating high school. the74million.org
  21. Advocates for Children of New York. (2026). Foster care educational indicators 2025. advocatesforchildren.org
  22. Ohio Department of Education and Workforce & Ohio Department of Children and Youth. (2025). Every child seen: How schools support Ohio’s foster youth. education.ohio.gov
  23. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data and statistics on ADHD. (Based on Danielson et al., 2024.) cdc.gov
  24. Child Mind Institute. ADHD and executive function (clinical expert: Russell A. Barkley, PhD). childmind.org
  25. Barkley, R. A. ADHD goes to school: Providing teachers and parents with specific management strategies [Course outline]. continuingedcourses.net
  26. Barkley, R. A., & Fischer, M. (2019). Hyperactive child syndrome and estimated life expectancy at young adult follow-up. Journal of Attention Disorders, 23, 907–923. Summary: APSARD; University of Gothenburg
  27. Barkley, R. A. (2019, February). ADHD and life expectancy: Treatment matters more than you might think. Attention (CHADD). chadd.org
  28. National Institute of Mental Health. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) statistics. nimh.nih.gov
  29. International OCD Foundation. (2025). Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) in kids and teens [Brochure]. iocdf.org
  30. Abramovitch, A., Dar, R., Mittelman, A., & Wilhelm, S. (2015). Comorbidity between ADHD and OCD across the lifespan: A systematic and critical review. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, 23(4), 245–262. pubmed
  31. Franklin County Board of Elections. Poll workers. vote.franklincountyohio.gov
  32. Franklin County Board of Elections. (2025, May). Precinct election officials’ training manual. vote.franklincountyohio.gov
  33. Franklin County Board of Elections. Youth at the Booth. vote.franklincountyohio.gov
  34. Reynoldsburg, Ohio. Wikipedia (citing U.S. Census Bureau). wikipedia.org