Youngstown schools now have blueprint for academic revival

The fact that the Youngstown City School District has been given five years to climb out of the academic cellar suggests two things: one, there are no easy answers for what ails the system; two, the state superintendent of public instruction recognizes that this could well be the district’s last chance and, therefore, failure is not an option.

Late last year, Superintendent Deborah Delisle placed Youngstown in academic emergency based on students’ performance on the state proficiency tests. A statutorily mandated academic distress commission has spent months conducting an in-depth analysis of the academic strengths and weaknesses and developing a recovery plan.

The plan was approved last week by Delisle, which means it is now the blueprint that the Youngstown Board of Education and the district’s superintendent, Dr. Wendy Webb, must follow. Webb will be retiring at the end of the year and her successor will take over in January 2011.

Implementing the initiatives aimed at providing high quality services to all students and providing educators with the necessary tools to effectively serve the students will be costly — $3.2 million.

Given that the district has been in fiscal emergency since 2006, the state commission that has controlled the purse strings will have to work with the board to come up with money.

There are no shortcuts and the academic turnaround cannot be pursued on the cheap. The recovery being sought by the distress commission is designed to bring about systemic changes. Everyone involved in the academic life of the students, from the superintendent to the administrators to the teachers and, yes, the parents, will have to adopt new ways of thinking and working.

The urban school district with its large number of at-risk students — economically and socially — has failed. Continuing to do the same things would guarantee even greater failure.

Problems, solutions

The commission has done a commendable job of identifying the problems and developing solutions. Now, it’s up to the publicly elected members of the board and the superintendent to set the tone for the implementation of the academic recovery plan.

And, with all of the support programs that will be created to help students deal with the things in their lives that impede learning, parents and guardians will have to make a commitment to be involved.

State Superintendent Delisle wants the district to show continuous improvement in the next five years, and while that goal may seem overly optimistic, given the history of the district, there is no alternative. The future of the Youngstown system hangs in a balance.

It is reassuring that both the academic distress commission and the fiscal oversight commission will be involved in the rebirth of the district. Members of both panels are free to act, uninfluenced by any special interest groups.

Only the interests of the students should matter.