Residents give input on future of Youngstown schools

By Denise Dick

denise_dick@vindy.com

youngstowN

Conversations with small groups continue to gather opinions about the community’s aspirations for city schools.

A town-hall meeting will be scheduled for late next month.

Part of the academic-recovery plan for Youngstown schools adopted by the academic distress commission and approved by Stan Heffner, state superintendent of public instruction, calls for a community-engagement process “focused on increasing community expectations and aspirations by all students.”

The Raymond John Wean Foundation is paying for that process, which is being done by the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, based in Bethesda, Md.

“I’ve been encouraged by the reports so far,” said Jeff Glebocki, president of the Wean Foundation.

One of the first steps is training facilitators to conduct the engagement sessions to gather information in a thoughtful way and ensure everyone has a voice, he said.

“All kinds of folks have stepped up to the plate to go through the training,” Glebocki said.

The process involves five steps: man-on-the-street interviews, community conversations, stakeholder interviews, deeper-choice conversations and the town-hall meeting.

Carlton Sears, outgoing director of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County and a coach with Harwood, said four-question interviews with community members are ongoing and community conversations began Tuesday.

The sessions include representatives from Brier Hill, the North, South, East and West sides, Sharon Line, Brownlee Woods and downtown/Youngstown State University. Churches, business people, teachers and students are represented.

During the man-on-the-street interviews, participants are asked four questions: What kind of community do you want to live in, what do you want education to be like here, how is that different from how you see things now, and what are some things that need to happen to create that kind of change?

Sears said having local people trained in the Harwood process ensures that community engagement may continue after the school project is complete.

After the town-hall meeting, likely to be in late June, Harwood will compile a report of the input and submit it to the academic distress commission. That will likely happen in mid-July, Sears said.