Commission, board meeting reveals positive schools strides

By AMANDA TONOLI

atonoli@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

A joint Youngstown Academic Distress Commission and Youngstown Board of Education meeting Thursday showed the school district is headed in the right direction.

A draft report of an Ohio Department of Education review, conducted in March, was presented by ODE officials to both the board and the commission at East High School. A final report will be available to the public sometime after July 22.

“We’re going to take this, digest it and use it to guide our work,” said Christine Sawicki, school district chief academic officer.

Marva Jones, the ODE’s Center for Continuous Improvement senior executive director, said: “Based on the review, Youngstown City Schools are on the right track to continue making progress.”

John Richard, ADC chairman and the ODE’s deputy state superintendent of public instruction, agreed.

“There’s definitely improvement from the last review to this review,” he said. “We still have some gaps, but we’ve taken good first steps toward fiscal accountability and transparency. We still have more steps, too.”

Justin Jennings, incoming school district CEO who officially starts Aug. 1, said on transparency: “We’re going to be transparent with information. As long as we keep arguing and bickering we are not going to help our scholars.”

Inside the report were both recommendations and status updates for items including: developing a communication plan and tools to inform and gather feedback from both external and internal stakeholders on progress; providing oversight and support to elementary building leadership teams; developing and utilizing educational evaluation models; creating a systematic plan for developing all curriculum, instruction, resources and materials; prioritizing the implementation of the strategic plan; developing a professional development plan for teachers that focuses on designing complex instructional practices; and meeting and collaborating with district stakeholders to develop a budgetary process that includes involvement from all areas.

All of the above recommendations were given the “in progress” status.

A recommendation to establish committees for a capital plan was given a “not in progress” status.

Jennings said the next step is to spend time to see what’s important for the district. “We will see what we need to do to move this district forward,” he said.

Jackie Adair, board of education member and a frequent critic of the way the city schools are being run, said she is finally OK with what’s going on in the district.

“We were heard,” she said. “And Richard’s reinforcement is going to make it happen.”

But amid the good news lingers a threat to the three academic distress commissions in Ohio.

House Bill 154, should it pass both state houses and be signed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, aims to get rid of academic distress commissions and restore local control of school districts taken over under the authority of House Bill 70. HB 70, also referred to as the Youngstown Plan, was signed into law by former Gov. John Kasich in July 2015 as an effort to improve the academic performance of failing or struggling public school districts.

In Youngstown, the legislation enabled a state-appointed academic distress commission to hire a CEO who has complete operational, managerial and instructional control.