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New program proposed to target suspensions
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
It will take more than a behavior intervention program to reduce the suspension rate at East High School, the director of a counseling center told city school board members.
Last year, the school board, at the direction of the Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission, approved a roughly $300,000 contract with D & E Counseling Center of Youngstown to run the in-school suspension program at East High School this school year.
At Tuesday’s regular school-board meeting, Joseph Shorokey, D&E’s executive director, gave a mid-year report on the program, saying data show that the agency’s program didn’t effectively reduce the school’s overall suspension rate.
In-school suspension rates showed some improvement, but there weren’t enough students participating to affect the overall numbers, the report said.
“There is no behavior-intervention program that, in and of itself, will significantly impact your suspension problem,” Shorokey said.
Instead, he recommends a targeted case-management program that would serve 150 students, work for a longer time period, improve the relationship between the parents and the school, increase the student’s sense of hopefulness regarding school success, increase student attendance and increase the number of referrals of students to services that will help them.
The proposed program would target parents and students.
“The D & E Center staff will work aggressively to engage parents/guardians in the academic life of their children,” the proposal says. “The overall goal is to increase parental involvement, enhance connectivity to their child’s education and to improve the relationship and attitude that parents have with/about the school.”
Center staff will visit the homes of all the families referred.
The program would work with students who have five or more suspensions in the previous or current year.
The cost of the program would be $180,500 for the 2015-16 school year, more than $71,000 less than what the school district is paying for the program in place this school year.
The board didn’t act on the proposal.
In other business, board members approved the resignation of Superintendent Connie Hathorn, without comment, as part of a list of other personnel actions.
Hathorn, superintendent since 2011, is leaving June 30 to become superintendent of the Watson Chapel School District in Pine Bluff, Ark.