Youngstown schools need more staff to address attendance

May 29, 2015 at 12:02a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

Members of the Youngstown School District Academic Distress Commission want additional staffing in place next year to address student attendance.

“We don’t want to be at this same place next year as this year with attendance,” the Rev. Kenneth Simon, commission member, said at a meeting Thursday. “We have to sort of address that as if the house is on fire.”

It’s a big enough problem to make budgetary adjustments to address, he said.

Of the district’s 16 schools, including Mahoning County High School, only five have met student attendance goals from the Academic Recovery Plan so far this year.

Those five are Discovery at Kirkmere, Rayen Early College Middle School, Chaney Campus, Youngstown Early College and Wilson Programs of Promise.

The Academic Recovery Plan is the improvement plan devised by the commission and approved by the state superintendent to guide the district out of academic difficulty.

Its attendance goals are 95 percent for elementary schools, 94 percent for middle schools, 92 percent for high schools and 85 percent for alternative schools.

Karen Green, assistant superintendent for human resources, said that when a student has an unexcused absence, the school’s educational assistant is to call the student’s home.

There’s only one educational assistant per building, though, and that individual is assigned other duties, too.

If no contact is made by telephone, it falls to the district’s two truancy officers to visit homes.

“If they’re not in school, they’re not learning,” said Paul Williams, commission member. “At some point, you’ve got to increase the number of people making those phone calls or making that contact.”

If a home visit determines the student doesn’t live there, the district must use the student identification number to try to determine if he or she is attending another school district, Green said.

Joffrey Jones, commission chairman, said it’s not a problem unique to Youngstown.

“This is a challenge in every urban school district, maybe in other districts as well,” he said.

In other business, Jones announced that Michael Garvey, commission member since 2012, is stepping down. Garvey, president of M7 Technologies, cited other time commitments including his business as the reason. “It’s been an honor to serve on the commission,” he said.

Garvey said the district is on the right path to improvement.