Staff photo / Dan Pompili Austintown Elementary School first-grade teacher Carli Cramer, back left, stands with Gov. Mike DeWine and first lady Fran DeWine as Cramer’s students hold a banner honoring the school’s success with the Science of Reading program. DeWine visited Austintown and Perry schools on Thursday after honoring them with a mention in his State of the State address in Columbus last month.

AUSTINTOWN — Austintown Local School District officials are often vocal about their pride in the district’s teachers, staff, students and athletes, and on Thursday they had another reason to crow.

Gov. Mike DeWine and first lady Fran DeWine were at Austintown Elementary School to present the governor’s Science of Reading Champions Award, which he announced at last month’s State of the State address in Columbus.

The award acknowledges Austintown’s significant improvements in reading comprehension, grades and test scores as a result of using the phonics-based Science of Reading curriculum.

“Fran and I wanted to come just to express our thanks and just hold Austintown up – the students, the teachers and everybody – because they’ve done a great job. They were ahead of the state in some respects, so they’ve shown how it works.”

DeWine said that the Science of Reading model was recommended to him not only through his own studies and his educational advisers in Columbus, but his own son, Mark, who is a teacher.

“He told me, ‘Dad, the debate is over with, and this is the way to go.'”

DeWine touted the program at a roundtable at Youngstown State University just about one year ago, but Austintown has been following the model for six years.

“The data is really showing that all the efforts our wonderful teachers and administrators are making are paying off,” said Director of Curriculum Dr. William Young. “Our reduction of students reading well below grade level is shrinking, we monitor that [at least] three times a year… And we’re also seeing a trend of third-grade state test scores growing every year. That test is taken in the fall, so it’s really the pre-k to second (grade) teachers that are achieving that assessment score.”

Young said the district had meetings with principal Catherine Dorbish, and its state support team and state literacy team and opted for a program called Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.

“We spent four years and a lot of time studying what it was to learn how the brain learns how to read,” he said. “We also recognized that one of the important pieces that was missing was a core curriculum.”

Young said that in addition to working with its Region 5 State Support Team to develop a curriculum, the district also applied for and received “Each Child Reads” grants through the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce.

“That helped us further our learning, and it helped us explore interventions and fill the gap we were experiencing,” he said.

After speaking with Young, Dorbish and some teachers in the school’s library, DeWine took a brief tour of the school, visiting students in kindergarten and first-grade classes during their spelling and reading lessons.

According to the ODEW, the science of reading model is “a convergence of evidence from multiple scientific fields — cognitive, developmental and school psychology; neuroscience; education research; and linguistics — that describe reading, reading acquisition, assessment and intervention.”

The program teaches students fundamental rules for identifying patterns in words that help them understand why letters work to make the sounds they do.

Second-grade teacher Tami Franklin has been teaching for 29 years and has always been a proponent of this format.

“I’ve always incorporated it, so I’ve earned a reputation of trying to shove phonics down everyone’s throat,” she said. “However, once the district took the initiative, I was ecstatic, because I was able to express what I was seeing in my own room, and now everyone else was able to see that too.”

Franklin said it takes the guesswork out of learning to read.

“English is a tough language to learn, and there’s a ton of rules and if you don’t know those rules, it’s not just not going to magically come along, and you can only memorize so many words,” she said. “It’s so exciting and the results are speaking for themselves.”

Dorbish said the district worked with state support and the local educational service center to make sure teachers were fully trained before the curriculum was put in place formally.

First-grade teacher Megan Monaco said she is glad that college students majoring in education will be taught how to teach reading this way.

“I’m so glad the universities are incorporating it now with their preparation programs because that’s where we need to gain it,” she said. “As soon as we walk in the door we should be this prepared. So, I think everyone jumped on board because they felt the value right away.”

Dorbish and Young said Austintown also got out ahead of another state initiative with regard to reading. The state’s law requiring enhanced screening for dyslexia and reading disabilities went into effect with the 2023-34 school year, but Austintown took it on a year early, with full support from teachers.

“It’s still a big learning process for us. Here we’re finding that a lot of our boys and girls that have the characteristics of dyslexia also have some learning disabilities too,” Dorbish said. “The teachers see that faster now, and they put the intervention in place faster, and they are growing.”

Board of Education Vice President Kathy Mock said the district’s reading success goes well beyond its regular curriculum, though.

“It’s so important that we support our families and the community,” she said. “We have great community partnerships with the United Way, and we have our pre-k program, Success by Six, and we have our Success After Six program that supports literacy here for our students.”

Mock said the district also hosts literacy nights in conjunction with Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library (Dolly) and the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County. ”

Their early literacy specialists come in and talk to the families about the best way to read to and with their children to set them up for success, and at the same time, the children are read a story and do an activity related to that story. So, we are all about the children and the families

She said that next year the library’s “Story Trail” program will be set up again in the school. That program lets families walk the children along a fun path lined with placards that each contain a part of a story.

DeWine’s visit comes even as Republicans in the Ohio House of Representatives are on the verge of cutting about $100 million in library funding from the state budget. The Ohio Statehouse News Bureau reports that DeWine’s proposal was to increase library funding from 1.7% to 1.75%.

“The House had a reduction in money for the libraries but now it goes to the Senate and ultimately we’ll figure this out. I’m going to remain a strong advocate for our libraries,” DeWine said. “They do a phenomenal job, whether you live in the inner city or in the rural parts of Ohio, or whether you live in the suburbs, they are kind of the heart and soul, along with the schools, of the community. They’ve adapted over the years, but they’re very important. It’s one of the great things we have in Ohio, and we’ve always supported our libraries, and we’re going to continue to do that.”

Libraries also have taken a hit at the federal level; at the end of March, following a meeting between the new leadership at the United States Institute of Museum and Library Services and Elon Musk’s DOGE, all staff at the institute that funds the nation’s libraries and museums were placed on indefinite administrative leave.

Superintendent Tim Kelty said the risk of losing the partnership Austintown has with the local library is “very concerning.”

“Any time something goes away like the arts, museums, libraries, it’s a big concern because there’s an educational value to that that helps us,” he said.

Kelty said the partnership the schools and community have with the library is vital to the district’s – and students’ – success. “We have the same visions.”

He said the district’s recognition from the state is an opportunity to discuss important matters like funding for vital programs and resources.

“Now that we see them and they’re coming here, we’re showing them the value of it, and we tell them, we did briefly discuss that,” he said. “I understand that in this age we have to make some sacrifices, but don’t take that away, because we use it, because it’s so beneficial.”