Youngstown schools' CEO to create teacher, principal advisory groups


By Denise Dick

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

The city school district’s CEO wants to hear from teachers and principals.

He plans to create advisory panels of both next month.

“I just want small groups of people to help flesh out ideas,” Krish Mohip, the school district’s chief executive officer.

He wants input from parents, too, but hasn’t decided on specifics for creating that committee.

“I’m putting together performance evaluations for the people in central office, and I want to know how those departments support them or don’t support them,” Mohip said of the teachers’ and principals’ groups.

The panels also will enable Mohip to learn about the professional development that both teachers and principals have received and what’s needed.

“I also want to know about the morale of the staff,” Mohip said.

He came to the city from the Chicago public schools in late June. His charge is to develop a strategic plan by early September to bring the district out of academic distress.

He has broad authority to do that including reopening contracts, hiring and firing administrators and closing failing schools or turning them over to charter or other outside operators.

Mohip has said a CEO can’t fire his or her way to success and that he doesn’t plan to turn the city schools into charter schools.

Last summer, the state Legislature approved the Youngstown Plan, which created a new academic distress commission that appointed the district’s first CEO. Mohip must submit his strategic plan to that same commission. It will be up to that commission to approve or change it.

Legislators presented and approved the Youngstown Plan on the same day, drawing criticism. The school board and its employee unions filed a lawsuit in Franklin County Common Pleas Court seeking to have the law declared unconstitutional.

That suit is pending.