Scholarships available for students of nine Valley schools

Staff report

COLUMBUS

Five Youngstown and four Warren schools are among 255 across Ohio with consistently poor performance, making those students eligible for state-funded scholarships to attend private schools.

East High School, Harding, Martin Luther King and Williamson Elementary schools and the online Youngstown Virtual Academy in Youngstown as well as Warren’s Jefferson, Lincoln, McGuffey and Willard pre-kindergarten to eighth-grade schools all made the list.

They are among schools that have for at least two of the last three school years either earned a report card designation of Academic Emergency or Academic Watch for 2011-12 and received an overall grade of “D” or “F” on the Performance Index and Value-Added progress measurement of their 2012-13 or 2013-14 building report card; or ranked in the lowest 10 percent of public school buildings by Performance Index score.

The EdChoice Scholarship Program enables students who are assigned to attend underperforming public schools with the opportunity to attend a participating private school if awarded one of up to 60,000 state-funded scholarships.