Youngstown superintendent proposes new pre-school plan

YOUNGSTOWN

After a previous realignment plan fell flat, the city schools interim superintendent has another idea to accommodate all-day preschool.

“I think I can move some of the sixth-graders out [of elementary schools] and move them in Chaney and Volney,” Stephen Stohla said.

The district’s six elementary schools were constructed for kindergarten through fourth grade but house kindergarten through sixth.

Stohla wants to move the district from half-day to all-day preschool. To do that though, sixth-grade will have to move out.

A half-day session in the morning and a second in the afternoon use the same classroom. Expanding it to all-day requires two classrooms.

Three elementary schools – William Holmes McGuffey, Taft and Paul C. Bunn – may have enough room to expand preschool without moving older students out. Harding, which only has one sixth-grade class, is another possibility.

That leaves Williamson and Martin Luther King where some shift might be needed.

Stohla came up with this alternative after school board members didn’t respond to his March recommendation for moving sixth-graders out of all of the elementary buildings to accommodate all-day preschool. The school board has never publicly discussed the recommendation.

Read more about the proposal in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.