Window dressing in Y’town

Two black leaders in the city of Youngstown have been appointed to the Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission in a power play by Brenda Kimble, president of the marginalized Youngstown Board of Education. This is not to question the sincerity and commitment of Ron Miller, a community activist and one-time director of the former Youngstown Area Urban League, and the Rev. Kenneth Simon of New Bethel Baptist Church, in wanting to help the city’s young people succeed in school.

It is, however, an issue of misplaced priorities on the part of Kimble and some other members of the school board. They are so preoccupied with trying to assert themselves in the academic recovery of the district, which is statutorily the role of the distress commission, that they’re simply spinning their wheels.

Best hope

Indeed, the chairman of the state panel, Joffrey Jones, and the state superintendent of public instruction, Richard Ross, have made it clear that the academic recovery plan now in place offers the best hope for the district to climb out of the academic cellar.

Ross had previously served on the Youngstown commission.

They also have said that schools Superintendent Dr. Connie Hathorn is well qualified and ideally suited to carry out the plan.

Here’s the irony: There are members of the black community who have been vocal in calling for Hathorn’s head, while there was barely a peep out of them when his predecessor, Dr. Wendy Webb was leading the system down the path of destruction.

Why the double standard? Because Hathorn, who came to Youngstown from Akron, has been brutally honest about the underlying causes of black students failing to make the grade.

Unlike Webb, whose background was in library science, Hathorn is a highly credentialled educator with experience in the public school system.

Thus, when he points out that many students from Youngstown’s inner core lack the level of parental involvement essential for academic success, he isn’t being insulting — as some in the black community seem to believe.

If you doubt Hathorn, pay attention to what Phillip Wherry, chief operating officer of the Parent Institute, a Fairfax Station, Va., private, independent corporation that encourages parental involvement, has to say about education:

Of a child’s waking hours, less than 15 percent is spent in school and school-related activities.

“What happens in the other 85 percent of the time really matters in terms of academic performance.”

And then Wherry offers this gem that isn’t new but seems to be the chief failing in the city of Youngstown:

“Reading with your children, even showing them reading or modeling reading, asking them open-ended questions about school. It’s the simple stuff that really matters.”

But what if there’s no one at home to read to the child or to discuss what’s happening in school?

What Wherry considers “simple stuff” is non-existent in many homes in the city.

Thus, the question that needs to be asked about the black community in Youngstown, but rarely is because of the fear of being labeled a racist: What are you doing about the dysfunctional homes where parenting is almost an afterthought?

More to the point, what are you doing about the homes in which children live in fear of drug-addled adults?

Reality

The point is that for too many youngsters in the city, home isn’t the loving, nurturing, caring, safe place that it should be.

So, what’s to be done?

Black leaders who want to help the school system would be well advised to focus on the home lives, such as they are, of the children. They should leave the academic recovery to Dr. Hathorn and the state distress commission.

What is needed is an “Adopt A Family” program featuring volunteers who agree to visit the dysfunctional homes every morning to get the children ready for school and every afternoon to help the children with their homework.

It’s all about taking responsibility for those less fortunate in your community.

Black leaders’ service on the school board or academic distress commission is window-dressing because that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem plaguing the urban school district: Children at risk.