The Akron Public Schools want to make students “architects of their future, prepared to thrive in an ever-changing world.” The word “architects” in the district’s new vision struck Ellen McWilliams-Woods, a former APS assistant superintendent and chief of academics.
“That is a beautiful statement,” said McWilliams-Woods, now a consultant with the GAR Foundation and United Way of Summit and Medina counties. “That says it all. They’re not just churning out assembly-line kind of kids. They want them to take full ownership of their own learning.”
Under the leadership of new superintendent Michael Robinson, the district last week unveiled a strategic plan that focuses on a slew of topics. From improving kindergarten readiness to graduation rates, the plan — called the “Blueprint for Excellence” — lays out nearly three dozen goals for the district to meet to ensure that students are ready for work, college and everyday life when they leave the school system.
They’re organized under four categories:
- Culture of safety and belonging, which includes efforts to raise attendance rates and the number of staff, students and family members who say the district has a positive and affirming culture.
- Academic achievement, which includes improved literacy and higher graduation rates.
- Operational excellence, which includes better talent development and job satisfaction.
- Partnerships, family and community engagement, which includes increasing the number of students enrolled in the public school system and expanding communication with the community.
The plan was approved Monday by members of the Board of Education in a 6-0 vote. It was not made available to the public before it was approved, but Pat Shipe, president of the Akron Education Association, said it was circulated to some stakeholders before it was voted on.
Robinson refused repeated requests for comment on the plan, but he said in an emailed statement to Signal Akron that the blueprint was created with strong standards that will be valuable to students.
“Our commitment to accountability and transparency is reflected in the implementation of systems to measure the impact of our initiatives,” he said. “Our scholars will be the beneficiaries of this new plan now and in the future of Akron Public Schools.”
Much of what’s in the plan reflects work that’s already being done in the district, Shipe said. She said the ideas in the plan largely aren’t new, but the effort to share the district’s work with the community is.
David James, a former Akron superintendent who is now the executive director of the Summit Education Initiative, said Robinson’s plan continues to build on work that had been going on in Akron for “quite some time.” He praised the blueprint’s equity focus and its alignment of resources toward improving educational outcomes.
“Everything that I saw, I’m really positive about,” he said. “It’s well thought-out; it hits all the spots it needs to hit.”
One big new idea is a proposal that would create a full-day pre-Kindergarten program for students. While Robinson, in a presentation about the blueprint, said he didn’t know how such an idea would be funded, Shipe said the Akron Education Association is “firmly behind the effort.” Other community partners have said the same.
Research nationwide has shown the “incredible positive impact” pre-K makes, especially for marginalized students, Shipe said. She said it should be available for all community members to help students get up to speed on literacy and social skills before they even enter kindergarten.
“I think that is huge,” Shipe said. “It’s our hope that we can do it.”
Learning beyond the four walls of school
Others saw more innovation in the plan, which referenced Akron’s historic role in the mid-1800s of setting up the public school system that’s still used today. McWilliams-Woods said the district’s college and career academies only exist in a handful of other places in the country.
The district plans to expand the inquiry-based instruction into elementary schools, as appropriate, something McWilliams-Woods said no one else in the country is doing. Now, students as young as middle school are doing internships, connecting with nonprofits to see more of what their lives could look like after school or working on projects in the community.
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“What seemed to really come across is learning is not just in the four walls of the schools,” she said. “They’re taking learning beyond the four walls, into real life.”
Such efforts – as well as a focus on increasing participation in extracurricular activities and clubs – will help Akron close the achievement gap, she said. She said the plan as a whole was incredibly comprehensive and the focus of the proposal successfully captures “what has been the chorus from the community” about the district’s needs.
“What’s impressive is the level of commitment they’ve made to these,” she said. “Often, strategic plans don’t give this level of detail.”
Indeed, James said the blueprint was more thorough than those he participated in drafting in the past. He said he was glad to see a focus on improving operational support as well as outside partnerships. The cornerstones the district chose to focus on, he said, are the right areas to concentrate on.
Kirstin Toth, an education consultant and former senior vice president of the GAR Foundation, also said she was impressed with the plan. While she said she would have liked to see more information about the district’s long-term plan to address its financial shortfalls – the plan only says the district will maintain two months of accessible cash reserves – she said the school board will likely have to grapple with that in the coming months.
Still, she said, if the academic plans succeed, the district will likely have an easier time attracting taxpayer support.
“They’re focused on all the right stuff,” she said of the plan. “They’ve done a good job of laying out the blueprint. The timeline’s important and how they plan to tackle the action plans, the detail in each one.”
‘Stretch goals’ will help push the district
Many of the district’s goals are high. They include raising to 24%, from 14%, the percentage of children who participate in the district’s early learning program and are on track in reading when they enter kindergarten. The district’s reading goal for the end of second grade is 53% of students at grade level, up from 43%. Both are 2024 goals.
McWilliams-Woods said because students are still recovering from losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, the goals aren’t unreasonable. But she said they are likely “stretch goals” to help push the district.
In announcing his plans, Robinson urged members of the media “not to use this blueprint as a weapon against the school district.”
Shipe said she thinks goals should always be robust, but she said they can become overwhelming if they aren’t realistic. She pointed to the smaller expectation for improving attendance rates – the target for APS students with an attendance rate of 90% or higher is 55.2% next year, up from 52.7% – and asked how teachers are supposed to reach high academic goals if students aren’t there.
“I’m not sure why they aren’t more aggressively going after chronic absenteeism,” she said.
No current member of the school board responded to requests for comment about the new plan. Barbara Sykes, a newly elected member who will take office in January, said she was glad to already have a roadmap when she joined the board.
Robinson said he wants the blueprint to be a living document, and Sykes said she expects to revisit it frequently. She intends to use it, when considering policy, as a guide for what the district should be working toward.
As the plan evolves, Shipe said, she hopes more stakeholders will be able to help shape it. With a fast-moving process and a top-down approach, she said more innovation could have been possible if teachers and other members of the community had been able to offer their own proposals.
“You can’t give feedback on ideas that aren’t developed in the first place,” she said. “Unless we’re really innovative instead of repackaging [what we’re already doing], we’re going to get the same results and that’s frankly disheartening.”
