Panel: Recovery plan now on track

By DENISE DICK

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

After some adjustment, the Ohio Department of Education believes one of the consultants hired to implement a city schools academic recovery plan is now on track.

The Youngstown Academic Recovery Commission contracted with three consultants charged with implementation of the plan that aims to boost the school district out of academic emergency. The school district is footing the bill for the work, and the contracts were awarded based on the recommendations of the Ohio Department of Education.

But commission members had expressed dissatisfaction with how one of those consultants, Pearson Achievement Solutions, with offices in Ohio, was proceeding with its work.

“According to the [request for proposals] they answered, they were going to be in the schools and overseeing the actual implementation of the recovery plan,” said Debra Mettee, chairwoman of the commission.

But school-district officials reported that Pearson hadn’t been in the schools.

The roughly $100,000 contract with Pearson calls for monitoring and plan oversight.

The other two contracts were for a $100,000 systems audit by Ed Focus Initiative of East Palestine and $405,000 in work by Mosaica Turnaround Partners, an Atlanta company with offices in Columbus, to improve leadership within the district.

Commission members have indicated they are satisfied with those two companies’ work.

Pearson representatives, however, had called district personnel and only requested data which the company then reported to the commission, according to school district and commission representatives.

At a commission meeting last month, Pearson officials said that their contract hadn’t been signed by the district until December and that they planned to visit the schools soon.

“We had asked the attorney from the attorney general’s office to look in to terminating that contract,” Mettee said.

Deborah Delisle, state superintendent of public instruction, attended last month’s commission meeting and said she would review the request for proposals.

“The commission was concerned with Pearson, and they didn’t see movement on the goals that were stated in the recovery plan and where they were going,” said Patrick Gallaway, an ODE spokesman. “We’ve been meeting with them to get this thing aligned properly with the goals of the recovery plan.” Mettee said she heard from an ODE representative that Pearson has assigned a new person to work on the contract.

“She’s going to develop a plan that she says is tightly aligned with the recovery plan,” Mettee said of the company representative. “She’s working diligently to gather information for the February report” to the commission.

Gallaway said ODE is confident that Pearson is now on track and moving forward. He said it’s a good thing that the commission notified ODE there was a problem, otherwise the state wouldn’t have known.

“There’s no time to waste,” Gallaway said. “We’re glad we’ve been able to work with them. We’re very pleased in terms of what we’ve seen now.”