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Parents, students share what they like or don’t about city schools
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Anita Jones is mostly satisfied with the education her two granddaughters are getting in the city schools.
She marked “strongly agree” on several of the survey questions distributed Monday at Discovery at Kirkmere school. Questions asked about buildings, school climate, teachers and student conduct.
Monday was the first of several meetings Krish Mohip, school district chief executive officer, has scheduled with students and parents before the school year starts Aug. 22.
“I’m here to help these children,” Mohip told attendees.
About 30 people – teachers, students and parents – attended the meeting at Kirkmere.
Mohip is in the community-input phase of developing what will be his strategic plan for digging the district out of the academic basement. That plan must be presented to the academic distress commission, the panel that hired Mohip, by Sept. 6.
Jones’ two granddaughters, Hasia Jones, an eighth-grader at Kirkmere, and Nyiesha Moore, a junior at Chaney Campus, sat on either side of her.
“She does as well as she wants to,” Jones said, referring to Hasia. “She could do more.”
She’s concerned about her older granddaughter, though. Nyiesha is in special education at Chaney.
“I’m not happy with the curriculum at all,” Jones said.
She said the district doesn’t address the girl’s individual educational needs. It just applies a blanket solution, she said.
For example, Nyiesha was signed up for algebra, but she needs basic math.
“They’re setting them up to fail,” Jones said.
Arkaylah Clark, a fifth-grader at Discovery, said she checked “strongly agree” for most survey questions, too. There was one notable exception, though.
“I disagree with the school year getting longer,” she said.
For the most part, Arkaylah enjoys school. She said science is her favorite subject.
“I like the discoveries I make, like about fossils,” she said.
She aspires to be a nurse who delivers babies.
Mohip’s community meetings started just a few days after his June 29 arrival in the school district. Those meetings invited input from community leaders, students, employees and the general public.
The CEO and his staff are compiling that data, and he expects to release it later this week on the district’s website.
Meetings such as those Monday at Kirkmere and William Holmes McGuffey Elementary School resume at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Williamson Elementary School and at 6 p.m. at Taft Elementary.
Meetings are scheduled at each of the district’s 13 schools.