YEC is open to other districts

By Harold Gwin | July 7, 2009 at 12:05a.m.

Youngstown City Schools superintendent Dr. Wendy Webb

Efforts are now focused on launching a YEC middle school feeder system.

YOUNGSTOWN — The superintendent of the Youngstown city schools knew she wouldn’t have any problem attracting out-of-district students to Youngstown Early College when she approved 20 “open enrollment” slots at the high school.

Wendy Webb said she’s been getting “a lot of calls” for years from parents whose children are not enrolled in the city schools, asking when YEC would offer open enrollment as do the district’s other schools.

Test data show that the school should receive an “excellent” rating on its 2009 state local report card due out in August, Webb said. That’s the highest of five academic ratings established by Ohio in the report card program.

“It is truly a best-practice school,” she said.

Webb said she wanted the school to get established and functioning well before enrollment was offered outside the district.

YEC opened five years ago in conjunction with Youngstown State University where all of its classes meet. It provides a transition to college for selected bright but underachieving urban students who might not get that access in a traditional high school setting.

The students have the opportunity to earn college credit by taking YSU courses while completing their high school curriculum.

The state asked Youngstown to be part of this program and it has worked, Webb said.

Its first graduating class in 2008 had four students earning associate degrees as well as their high school diploma. One student in the class of 2009 earned an associate degree. Many in both classes earned significant amounts of college credit.

Webb said between 13 and 17 students who will be seniors this fall are in line to earn associate degrees by next spring.

YEC has been designated as a “School of Promise” by the Ohio Superintendent of Education, and the time was right to open the door to others outside the city schools, she said.

She announced in April that 20 open-enrollment slots would be available among the 80 new freshmen entering YEC this fall.

The spots were snapped up in short order, she said, primarily by students who are enrolled in charter schools that don’t offer high school. There are also a couple of students coming from Austintown, she said.

Total enrollment at YEC will be about 250, she said.

The focus now is on getting The Rayen Early College Middle School program off the ground this fall. It will be a feeder program for YEC.

A total of 100 seventh-graders will be admitted to the middle school program’s first class, with 20 of those spots reserved for open-enrollment students, Webb said.

It will be designed to prepare students for the rigor and pace of a combined high school and college curriculum.

Plans are to house it temporarily at the Choffin Career and Technical Center on East Wood Street this fall but to eventually move it into its own building at a renovated Judge William Rayen Building at Wood Street and Wick Avenue.

That building now houses district central offices.

Enrollment at both YEC and the middle school will be by application only. Students will be interviewed and selected by an admissions committee.

Meanwhile, state funding assistance to cover approximately $600,000 in annual college tuition costs for YEC students appears to be in jeopardy.

The money, normally channeled through the Ohio Board of Regents and the Ohio Department of Education, may not be forthcoming in the biennial budget now being debated in Columbus.

YSU and the city school district would then have to split that tuition cost almost equally under the agreement that set up YEC. Both have tentatively identified sources of revenue to cover that cost.

gwin@vindy.com