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Reopening Volney makes room for influx of preschoolers
By Denise Dick
youngstowN
Reopening Volney Rogers as a specialty school next fall will open up space for additional preschool students expected in the city district.
This school year, the city schools received $164,000 through an early childhood education expansion grant from the Ohio Department of Education to provide preschool slots for 41 additional children. It was part of a $10 million investment ODE made across the state for 2,450 children to attend preschool.
“We will continue to fund those 2,450 places” in fiscal year 2014-2015, John Charlton, ODE spokesman, said in an email.
Preliminary discussions have indicated that the number would double next year, officials said.
“Plus, there is an additional $12 million allocated for distribution in FY14-15,” Charlton said.
After closing Volney, a West Side middle school, this school year as part of a restructuring plan, the district plans to reopen it next school year as a speciality school for third- through eighth-graders.
It will house the same programs as Kirkmere, where students take classes in engineering, Spanish, creative communications, art, dance, investigative science, band and choir as well as core-curriculum courses. That school, in its first year, is full.
Besides closing Volney and converting Kirkmere into Discovery at Kirkmere, the restructuring also closed P. Ross Berry Middle School and University Project Learning Center, moving the district’s alternative school into the former Wilson Middle School.
The plan also shifted sixth- graders to the elementary buildings to use more space in those schools.
Adrienne O’Neill, chairwoman of the Youngstown City Schools Academic Distress Commission, which oversees the academic recovery of the district, said at a recent commission meeting that reopening Volney as a Discovery school program will open seats at the other elementary buildings for preschool students.
Moving sixth-graders into the elementary buildings made space tighter, said Doug Hiscox, deputy superintendent for academic affairs.
“There are some seats at the elementary buildings, but there are no whole rooms,” he said.
The early childhood education grants awarded this year were targeted to areas of the state that didn’t perform well on either the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment Literacy or the third-grade reading test of the Ohio Achievement Assessment.