Staff photo / R. Michael Semple.... Ronald Shadd, president of the Youngstown Board of Education, stands outside the empty East High School on Friday. Of the three Ohio districts under control by an Academic Distress Commission and CEO model, only Youngstown has not returned to in-person learning. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine admonished the district in his COVID-19 update last week, saying he wants students there back at least partially in person by March 1.

YOUNGSTOWN — Two of the three Ohio school districts taken over by the state for having successive, failing grades on the state report card already have reopened their doors to students.

The Youngstown City School District is the lone holdout and is expected to announce later this week an in-person opening plan.

But East Cleveland schools opened buildings four days a week in January, and Lorain city schools also opened for in-person teaching and learning in mid-January under a hybrid model.

These three districts are under state academic distress commission supervision for having failing state report card grades for at least four years.

Gov. Mike DeWine last week criticized the Ohio school districts that had agreed with the state to open in-person schooling by March 1 so their employees can receive the coronavirus vaccine — but haven’t opened. He specifically mentioned Youngstown.

School districts in Mahoning County, including Youngstown, were among the first in the state to receive the vaccines.

Yet, Youngstown is one of nine school districts in the state still fully remote, according to the Ohio Department of Education. The majority of the state’s school districts, 411, are operating in person five days a week, and 189 are operating in some type of hybrid model in which students work in person several days a week and remotely on the other school days.

COMMUNICATION

Youngstown schools spokeswoman Denise Dick said the district is not going to release any information about its in-school reopening plan until it makes an official announcement this week.

“We want to communicate information internally first,” Dick said.

Ronald Shadd, the Youngstown Board of Education president, and its former president Brenda Kimble, each have said schools CEO Justin Jennings has not communicated with the board about the district’s reopening plans.

“The CEO said the district will reopen when it is safe for scholars,” Shadd said.

Shadd agreed that ensuring the safety of students, their families and district employees should be paramount in making the decision to open buildings.

“We had a meeting at which some parents questioned why DeWine is pushing to force schools to open,” Shadd said. “From what I gathered, some parents feel their children are thriving under a remote system.”

Shadd suggests parents should have the option to allow their children to remain at home and to continue being taught remotely.

“Some parents are questioning the benefit of bringing kids back into schools for 16 weeks,” he said.

Based on the initial vaccine rollout, Shadd said most teachers will not have received their second vaccine dose by the first week of March.

Kimble said the many parents she has spoken to are not going to send their children back to regular in-class settings.

“They do not feel safe,” Kimble said.

EAST CLEVELAND, LORAIN

Henry Pettigrew II, CEO / superintendent of East Cleveland schools since 2019, said the district returned to in-person classes four days a week on Jan. 19. Pettigrew said it was decided shortly after the schools initially closed last March not to allow students to return to in-person classes until January.

“We knew, at the time, it would take time to reopen because East Cleveland was the least-connected district in the state,” Pettigrew said. “We needed to rebuild our digital footprint and strengthen broadband capabilities.”

Pettigrew emphasized the district was able to overcome these shortcomings with the help of donations from organizations such as a Cleveland Browns player, and its receipt of the two Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund grants provided by the federal government. The school district was scheduled to be awarded a combined $10,609,115 in ESSER I and ESSER II funds.

“These funds were very important in allowing us to purchase the PPEs, electrostatic cleaning machines and other equipment needed to reopen our schools,” Pettigrew said.

The CEO / superintendent explained that reopening schools to in-person classes is important because there is a growing concern about the learning loss being experienced by some students.

The district also was battling chronic absenteeism among students taking remote courses.

A portion of the funds provided to the district by Jarvis Landry of the Cleveland Browns were used to create ZOOM rooms, which use video technology to allow teachers to work with students in classrooms and those learning remotely.

The district currently has students attending in-person classes Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, while doing remote learning on Wednesdays.

The Lorain district, meanwhile, began allowing elementary and middle school students to attend in-person classes with one cohort attending classes on Mondays and Tuesdays and a second group attending Thursdays and Fridays.

Students have the opportunity to remain all-remote. In-person and remote classes are taught at the same time.

Lorain has an estimated 5,000 students. Those who attend classes in the buildings have been assigned seats in the cafeteria and on buses. Siblings and family units will be kept in the same cohort and seated together on buses, according to the district’s website.

rsmith@tribtoday.com