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CEO Justin Jennings discusses city school district strategy
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
Justin Jennings, Youngstown City Schools CEO, outlined what he called his strategic emphasis for the school district during Friday morning’s Youngstown Academic Distress Commission meeting.
It was the first commission meeting since Jennings took office. The new CEO presented date including enrollment numbers and said he wants to regularly share data on test scores and other factors. There are currently 5,214 students enrolled in the district, but that number can fluctuate.
“We need to track data for continuous improvement, whether it’s how we are spending money or how we are teaching in classrooms. Data doesn’t lie,” he said.
John Richards, distress commission chairman, agreed, and said the commission would like to see monthly audits as well.
During the meeting, Jennings discussed areas of focus: governance and community partnerships; diversity, equity and inclusion; talent and leadership; and data and accountability.
Touching on governnance, he mentioned that at the last Youngstown Board of Education meeting, the board agreed it should collaborate with the Academic Distress Commission to get what information it can to help troubled school district students.
“That’s something positive, governance is important,” he said.
When it comes to partnerships, “there are two areas in this country where people profit off failure – prison systems and education,” he said. “We have to be really strategic and make sure our partnerships are going to help our scholars.”
Diversity entails not just race, but also providing fair pay structures and making sure there is training for students and teachers to relate to each other, he said.
He discussed his theory of action, which includes having strong building administration, teachers and staff. He said district schools with consistently low scores were assigned administrators for this school year who have a record of turning scores around.