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After 1st month, Mohip upbeat about Youngstown schools
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Despite the challenges, Krish Mohip remains optimistic about the district’s future one month into his tenure as city schools chief executive officer.
Mohip began the job June 29 after several years in the Chicago public schools, where he worked as a teacher, principal and administrator.
“The community is truly committed and wants to see the school system succeed,” he said.
By Sept. 6, Mohip must submit a strategic improvement plan for the district to the Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission, the panel that appointed him.
The Youngs-town Plan, state legislation that established the new commission and charged it with appointing a CEO, allots 90 days from the day Mohip signed his employment contract rather than from the date he started on the job.
He’s been talking to superintendents and CEOs of urban districts and larger districts, as well as reviewing the previously recommended academic recovery plans for the city schools.
Within his first week, Mohip began community stakeholder meetings to gather input from the public about district strengths, weaknesses and suggestions for improvement.
He plans to release information about trends and common themes found through those meetings. From those larger community meetings, Mohip will cull a smaller group for his stakeholder committee.
“It will still be broad-based,” he said. “It’s not going to be just educators.”
School begins Aug. 22, and Mohip has set 98 percent as the attendance target for the first day.
“We’re going to go to talk to parents and make sure they know when school starts,” Mohip said.
Though he hasn’t developed the plan yet, parents and students will see some changes for the start of the school year.
“We’re going to relax the dress code for the first and second weeks” to determine if changes are needed to ensure it’s being applied uniformly, he said.
He urges parents to send their children to school even if they don’t have all of the items on the required supplies list.
The district also is helping with school supplies, the CEO said.
He also sees a need for more activities for students such as sports and other clubs.
Although he knew of the district’s low academic scores, some other problems within the district surprised him.
After he signed his contract but before he started the job, the Ohio Department of Education released reports about both the district’s special education and transportation. They weren’t good.
The special-education report found that the district isn’t following the law in its practices to address special-education students’ needs.
For transportation, the state found problems with operational and safety issues, routing and efficiency concerns, driver records and training compliance, and fleet maintenance.
Mohip said a corrective action plan to address special-education deficiencies is being developed by district staff with help from ODE.
ODE and the Ohio State Highway Patrol helped the district to address issues in transportation, assisting bus drivers with required training, he said.
“At the highest levels, the state is helping us,” he said.