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Youngstown schools miss targets, lose $1.8M
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
The city school district will see its school-improvement money slashed more than 50 percent for next year because the schools didn’t meet growth goals.
The federal School Improvement Grant money allotted for University Project Learning Center, Chaney and East totaled $3.3 million. For next year, the amount is reduced to about $1.5 million, said Doug Hiscox, deputy superintendent for academic affairs.
“Each year, you have to go through a process for evaluating how well things were done or whether you met targets,” he said.
The reviewers from the Ohio Department of Education were concerned that some things weren’t done in a timely manner.
John Charlton, an ODE spokesman, said a comprehensive review of all 85 SIG buildings in Ohio is ongoing. Districts won’t get final notification of their funding for next year until that is complete, which is expected in late August.
“There were outside providers that should have been in place early in the school year that would have helped with professional development and staff development,” Hiscox said. “They were not actually contracted until November, December or January. There’s also a monitoring system that needs to be used.”
Principals and assistant principals are required to complete a certain number of classroom walk throughs during the school year, and they either weren’t done frequently enough or not done for a significant amount of time, he said.
There were also concerns about the academic progress at East and UPLC, the deputy superintendent said.
“At the beginning of each year you have to submit what the targeted objectives are, and we had not met those,” he said.
The targeted growth in student achievement was 11 percent for both schools, but both saw about 2 percent growth.
“They haven’t reached the level of academic growth that is expected in the evaluator’s eyes for the amount of money that’s been spent,” Hiscox said.
The district still hopes to offer programs aimed at improving academic growth. It will jut have to find a different way to fund them, he said.
“The schools didn’t lose funds because they did something wrong,” Hiscox said. “They lost funds because they didn’t meet expectations.”
East and UPLC just finished the second of three years of SIG funding while Chaney finished its first.
When Chaney initially got the grant, it was a traditional high school. When it changed to a visual and performing arts and Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics school, the enrollment decreased. Students had to audition and be interviewed to be selected to attend.
Hiscox said that evaluators were pleased with progress made at Chaney in its first year as a STEM/VPA school, especially considering that the principal was hired well into the school year when the former principal resigned.
However, because it’s a much smaller school than when the grant was written, the evaluators didn’t believe it needed the same amount of money, he said.
“My goal has been to get the budget in line and still provide services in other ways,” Hiscox said. “The SIG money was never intended to last forever. It was always going to run out at some point in time. This just hit me a little quicker than I anticipated.”