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District moves on with academic plan
By Denise Dick
BOARDMAN
A revised academic-recovery plan for Youngstown city schools hasn’t been approved by the state yet, but the school district isn’t waiting.
Douglas Hiscox, the district’s deputy superintendent for academic affairs, told the Youngstown Academic Distress Commission Monday that the district is implementing parts of the plan.
“We’re moving forward,” he said, adding that the district expects at least the bulk of the plan to be approved.
The updated plan to improve the district’s student achievement is divided into eight components: leadership to support student success, school climate, high school, collaborative structures, literacy, math, special education and early- childhood programming and fiscal monitoring of state and federal funds.
Stan Heffner, state superintendent of public instruction, is expected to review the plan with commission members at a meeting at 2 p.m. next Tuesday at the Mahoning County Educational Service Center.
Hiscox said the cost of the plan is about $1.5 million over two years although some services included in the plan will be contracted and the cost isn’t yet known. About $1 million of that will come from state and federal grant dollars allotted to the district.
The school district is rated in academic watch on the latest state report card.
This marks the second year that an academic recovery plan has been in place in the city schools. One of the key components the first year was a 15-student-to-1-teacher ratio in kindergarten and first grade.
Hope Golubich, a first-grade teacher at Taft Elementary School, told commission members that the 15-to-1 ratio was the best investment the district could make. Golubich was among a building leadership team from Taft that gave a report at Monday’s meeting.
The report shows that between September and this month, 62 percent of Taft first-graders moved up in performance level. They credit the student-teacher ratio with a portion of that success.
When Heffner was in town last September, he told commission members they would have to decide whether the ratio was worth the cost.