Program reconsidered in city schools

By Denise Dick

denise_dick@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

City schools CEO Krish Mohip is considering hiring a company that emphasizes building relationships between students and school personnel.

Capturing Kids’ Hearts, a program from the Texas-based Flippen Group, stresses creating healthy relationships as a step to increasing attendance, bolstering achievement and improving the graduation rate in schools.

“I was introduced to them when I was in Chicago,” Mohip said. “It’s about school personnel knowing what’s happening in students’ lives.”

Mohip said he wants to hear from principals “to see if this is a direction we should take.”

The district contracted about 10 years ago with Flippen to bring in the program, training teachers and administrators to be effective leaders.

But the district didn’t retain the program.

Mohip wonders if the problem was a lack of implementation.

He hasn’t decided to hire the company.

In a survey conducted by Mohip, most city school principals indicated they preferred Capturing Kids’ Hearts over Quaglia. Quaglia, which emphasizes giving students a voice in school, has worked in the district the last three years.

Debbie DiFrancesco, principal at Rayen Early College Middle School, believes it’s a good program and it has potential.

“I think what was good about it was it brought the staff together,” she said. “There was sharing and crying and learning stuff about each other that we didn’t know. But we never followed through. The administration had really good intentions. It just didn’t stick.”

After the initial meeting, teachers and administrators returned to their respective schools and got no direction on how to implement what they learned, DiFrancesco said.

Last week, a group of teachers and administrators listened to a motivational speaker from the Capturing Kids’ Hearts program.

The man’s story brought many listeners to tears. The speaker grew up in an urban school district near Houston and endured terrible things in his childhood.

“It was a teacher – I think when he was in 12th grade – who helped him turn his life around,” DiFrancesco said.

The speaker’s story reminded DiFrancesco of a student in her class when she was a teacher.

The program emphasizes the importance of building relationships with students.

DiFrancesco acknowledges the school district has adopted many programs over the last several years, and she doesn’t fault or blame anyone for that.

“How can you not want to try something that might help kids?” she asked.