New Woodland Hills commission to study academics, school culture

The new commission formed to study and recommend changes in the Woodland Hills School District will meet several times throughout the summer and issue a “blueprint” for the district by September.

The school board ordered the independent study after several recent high-profile incidents involving altercations between students and administrators that superintendent Alan Johnson said have “shaken the confidence of the community.”

“This is an attempt to address some of those underlying issues and concerns and problems,” he said.

The Woodland Hills Commission on Youth Development and Learning will tentatively meet for the first time within the next two weeks, he said.

Its members will pore over school district practices in two areas: academics and “human development needs and priorities for youth in our communities,” including issues like truancy, school discipline, dropout rates, civil rights and school arrests.

Among the 20 volunteer members of the commission are state Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Forest Hills; Gerald Smith, president of the eastern region for the local NAACP; and members of law enforcement agencies, business owners, parents and Woodland Hills alumni.

The commission will be led by Gerald Zahorchak, interim chair of the education division for the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown and a former Pennsylvania secretary of education, and Karen Farmer-White, an educational advocate who has been involved with organizations including the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust and the Pennsylvania State Board of Education.

Gathering community input between commission meetings — including from students in Woodland Hills — will be a priority as the group reviews current district practices and makes recommendations for new ones, Ms. Farmer-White said.

“It’s my hope that our results will become a model for other school districts that experience some of these same situations,” she said.