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Youngstown schools chief gives “state of the district”
YOUNGSTOWN
Youngstown schools Superintendent Connie Hathorn thought hard about what he had to do as a leader to move the school district forward.
He put all those thoughts into a box, he told the large crowd gathered to hear him at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Banquet Center Thursday evening for the State of the District address.
“Then I threw everything in it away,” he said. “And I think outside of it.”
The address lasted about an hour and outlined accomplishments, innovations and challenges for the district, from stimulating learning in the lower grades to a literacy collaboration with Youngstown State University to what he calls progress on state report cards.
A big accomplishment, he said to start, was Discovery 1 — a program at Kirkmere Elementary that includes Spanish, choir, communications, engineering, dance and instrumental music.
Because it was successful, it expanded to Volney Rogers Middle School with Discovery 2, which includes after-school enrichment with academics, broadcasting, dance, disc jockey and fitness.
Discovery 3 at East High for seventh and eighth grades includes architecture, business, service-related and information technology, graphics, manufacturing, health sciences and transportation.
The district also is using Quaglia, a student initiative to instill a sense of accomplishment and responsibility, he said.
Quaglia also is used to assess their relationships between their teachers and themselves, he said.
Hathorn said a big initiative in reading is help from Youngstown State University in the form of a grant to begin a mentorship program for second-graders.
Second-graders will have mentors from YSU in preparation for third-grade state reading tests, he said.
“Kudos to President [Jim] Tressel. With his help getting money from the government, 378 second-graders will have a mentor from YSU,” he said.
Hathorn talked about the student report card.
“You saw A,B,C,D,F,” he said. “That did not discourage me, because we made progress.”
He pointed to improvements in the individual Performance Index categories of the report card, which gauge how well the district is doing by grade and subject.
Hathorn said the district discovered there was no seamless curriculum between Rayen Early College and Youngstown Early College.
“Now we have it,” he said.
After moving college preparatory classes to East High School last year and technical career classes to Choffin Career and Technical Center, the district did not have any seniors go to East, he said.
“It’s OK not to go to college,” he said, adding that plumbers make $75,000 a year.
This year, he said, there are about 78 seniors at East.
A big challenge, he said, is attendance for students and teachers.
Hathorn said parents’ and community involvement in the schools is strong, with a weekend backpack program for kids in need, parent advocates and even hallway monitors who check the bathrooms for smokers.
Financially, he said, the district is “good until 2017.”
Voters approved a levy that will end in summer 2016, he said. The last chance to put another levy on the ballot will be November 2016.