YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown City School District Academic Improvement Plan, designed to help the board of education regain local control, itself needs improvement before the Ohio Department of Education will accept it.

That’s the message in an Oct. 27 letter sent to school board President Ronald Shadd written by Stephanie Siddens, interim state superintendent of public instruction.

Siddens said the academic improvement plan — AIP — should reflect high expectations for students in all measurable categories, including its benchmarks in literacy and, especially, math.

While recognizing that the pandemic continues to have a major impact on achievement, Siddens emphasized that measurable benchmarks for student achievement at the end of the 2025 school year should be higher than they were in the pre-pandemic academic year of 2018-2019.

“The department requests you clearly state the long-term success goals in the context of the improvement plan,” Siddens wrote. “This is especially important context when reviewing the benchmarks your district set related to Ohio State Tests.”

The school district must send the revised AIP to the interim state superintendent’s office no later than Nov. 11.

School board President Ronald Shadd is scheduling a meeting for 4:30 p.m. Wednesday at Choffin Career and Technical Center.

“We have a lot to be proud of as the ODE decided to accept all of our benchmarks, with the emphasis of three of the 24 needing to be resubmitted with baseline data once it is completed from school year 2021-22,” Shadd said in an email to board members. “Ten of our benchmarks needed no improvement. And the remaining benchmarks need to address some technical changes and those changes are standardized amongst those particular benchmarks.”

For example, in the literacy category, Youngstown schools should maintain its current comprehensive literacy plan. “The existing plan should be explicitly referenced in the strategies of your proposed academic improvement plan to ensure alignment between these two related plans,” Siddens recommended.

Shadd has requested that school district Chief Executive Officer Justin Jennings ask the district leadership team and the Youngstown Academic Distress Commission to attend the meeting to discuss the state’s concerns. The commission and CEO have oversight over the school district now.

“Please understand that we are in a good place,” Shadd noted. “We anticipated some level of critique and what we have been given is achievable.”

The goal of the AIP is to increase the overall performance of Youngstown students and to provide a path for the district to move from under the Youngstown Academic Distress Commission’s oversight.

Youngstown is one of three Ohio school districts under a distress commission; the others are Lorain and East Cleveland. These districts this year have been provided a way to move from under state control by establishing AIPs. The districts have three years to achieve goals that they establish in the AIPs.

Siddens responded to all three school districts’ AIPs with letters on Wednesday. She required all three districts to make revisions to their plans. East Cleveland’s and Lorain’s plans have more questions about the literacy and graduation rate components.

If approved, the school districts will be given until the end of the academic year to work through the details needed to begin the process of setting up the AIP. The distress commissions in each of the districts will work alongside the local school boards through 2025 in making sure the improvement plans are successful.

The state is requesting the school board to identify an independent monitor to provide an outside perspective and honest formative feedback about the status of AIP implementation.

In the next school year, the boards of education could resume making district policies and the district’s CEO positions will be eliminated. The districts will have the option to hire their CEOs as their next superintendents. If they do, the state will continue to pay the CEOs. If the school boards release their CEOs and hire another leader, the school district will pay that person.

If a district fails to achieve the goals established in the AIP, the district once again will be under control of a distress commission and under a CEO model of control.

MATH PROBLEMS

The district’s benchmarks in math for grades K -3 and 9-12 are below the baselines it had for students in these grades in the pre-pandemic academic year of 2018-2019, according to Siddens’ response. The district is tasked with setting higher benchmarks. For example:

∫ The proposed math benchmark for grades K-3 is 51 percent of students meeting their expected growth target at the end of the three years. The benchmark for the 2018-2019 school year was 63 percent.

“While we understand the level of scholars meeting growth expectations dropped to 17 percent in 2020-2021 due to lasting impacts of the pandemic, to demonstrate substantial progress, the district must implement strategies and articulate a revised goal target for June 2025 that exceeds the pre-pandemic baseline of 63 percent,” she wrote.

∫ The proposed benchmark for grades 9-12 is 65 percent, which is lower then the 69 percent set in the 2018-1019 school year. During the 2020-2021 school year, the growth expectations dropped to 42 percent.

∫ The final math benchmark for grades 3-5 in the district’s proposal was 16 percent scoring proficient or above, which is below the 2018-2019 baseline of 27 percent. The baseline in the 2020-2021 school year dropped to 7 percent on the state tests.

∫ The proposed math benchmark for grades 6-8 of 14 percent is below the the 2018-2019 baseline of 19 percent.

∫ The math end-of-course examinations for students taking algebra I and geometry are proposed to be 17 percent, below the 2018-2019 pre-pandemic baseline of 21 percent.

CRITICISM

Jackie Adair, the only board of education member who voted against the plan sent to the state, appreciates that the ODE agreed with her criticism the current proposal sets the academic goals too low.

“What message is being conveyed about the academic ability of our students to achieve higher standards?” she asked.

Adair recognizes that one aspect of this is to regain local control, but adds that is an adult issue.

“We got into this position because of the low academic performance of our students,” she said. “If we don’t solve the academic concerns of our students, then we will not be able to maintain local control.

“We will end up back to where we are today,” she said.

The district’s proposals must identify a long-term goal to meet the expectation of a high level of success for all students in both government and U.S. history.

Siddens said the proposed overall performance index of 42 percent at the end of 2025 school year is below the previous baseline of 46.6 percent in the 2018-2019 school year.

rsmith@tribtoday.com