Dayton stays in-house for new leader of school district
Lolli, former interim superintendent, signs 3-year contract.
Dayton Public Schools Acting Superintendent Elizabeth Lolli has agreed to take the top job permanently, asked by the board to replace Rhonda Corr, who was put on leave in November and parted ways with the district in January.
School board member Robert Walker said during a Friday news conference that Lolli signed a tentative three-year deal, foregoing a broad external search or interviewing other internal candidates.
“She’s been providing leadership for the district since the last week or so in November,” Walker said. “That was a very tumultuous time for the district, and she’s picked up and provided stability along with a vision to move the district forward with educational excellence.”
Lolli, a 40-year educator who has twice been a superintendent elsewhere, will be paid $150,000
a year for each year of the contract.
She said the job will be tough but said she’s eager to continue working with the students, staff and community members to “make sure we are serving the students’ academic needs first and foremost.”
If academic needs are met, Lolli said students will be prepared for whatever career choice they make.
“The large part of our work has to be on improvement of our academics and improvement of the scores,” she said. “That’s what we have to focus on, making sure from the day they enter our preschool program to the time they walk across the stage and receive their diploma, that we are preparing them for the choices they want to make about their lives.”
Teachers union President David Romick and Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley have previously spoken highly of Lolli’s work since stepping in. School board member Jocelyn Spencer Rhynard also reiterated the board’s faith in Lolli on Friday.
“She has a clear vision for where she wants to go forward with the district, and it’s where we think that the city needs to go as well,” Rhynard said. “So we’ve been more than impressed with the direction she has taken us, and I think we can move forward and achieve academic excellence.”
DPS had accused Corr of unprofessional behavior, creating a hostile work environment and falsifying documents. In January, the board and Corr reached a separation agreement that pays Corr’s salary, retirement contribution and health insurance benefits through July.
Hired by DPS as associate superintendent for the district in August 2016, Lolli previously was superintendent at both Monroe Local School District and Barberton City School District, located in Summit County near Akron.
Lolli will take over a district confronting a number of challenges — most pressing and possibly heading to a board vote Tuesday — whether to move forward with a controversial school closure plan.
Valerie Elementary, the Innovative Learning Center and Dayton Public Schools headquarters building would all close this fall, if the board adopts recommendations presented by Lolli earlier this week.
The proposed three-year plan also includes the possibility of future closings at both the elementary and high school levels and a consolidation of the district’s seventh and eighth graders into four buildings from a current seven.
The process and a task force created to examine the district’s school capacity generated an impassioned response from parents and community groups. The task force became the subject of a lawsuit filed by Dayton resident David Esrati, who challenged the district over open meetings.
Esrati contends he was not allowed to attend a February bus tour of Dayton schools during which the task force members went into schools until district attorneys advised them to cancel remaining stops.
The district also was in court this month where it successfully challenged the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s removal of Dunbar from the boys basketball tournament. The OHSAA said Dunbar used an ineligible player, but a Montgomery County judge reinstated Dunbar because he said he could not find proof of the state’s allegations.
Lolli will also take the helm of a district with one of the weakest report cards in the state with a districtwide five-year graduation rate graded a “D,” and an “F” for test performance achievement. But the district achieved high marks in the most recent report for year-over-year progress.
Lolli said she asked the board to bolster the curriculum office by filling vacant positions and adding a couple others.
“The board has given me the OK to do that because I believe that the academics will only improve if we show the support that we need to have through that curriculum and instruction piece,” she said.
Lolli lives in Miamisburg but said she and her husband, who works for Fairborn City Schools, are looking for a home in Dayton, hoping to move by Aug. 1.