Leaders share education outlooks

County superintendents gather for summit

Lorain County school superintendents say they share a passion for preparing youngsters for emerging job opportunities.

The school leaders also said May 4 they appreciate the extra time allowed by Ohio Superintendent Paolo DeMaria to plan for the Every Student Succeeds Act.

School and business leaders made their comments while attending the fourth annual Superintendents Summit luncheon at the Spitzer Center at Lorain County Community College in Elyria.

The event featured a Sphero demonstration by students from Amherst Nord Middle School in a gifted program through the Educational Service Center of Lorain County; choral music by Midview Express and Midview Senior Choir from Midview High School; robotics demonstrations by students from Brookside High School; and an application video to North Ridgeville Ranger High Tech Academy.

Tony Gallo, executive director of Lorain County Chamber of Commerce, which sponsored the event, said since school systems often rank among a community’s largest employers, they are invaluable business partners.

In order to focus on the mission of the chamber to promote business growth, a critical focus must be on educating the workforce, Gallo said. As a result the chamber hosts programs all year to showcase relationships among manufacturers, schools, workers, and trending companies

For example, Thogus Products in Avon Lake

is a manufacturer who changed through the years to incorporate technology, such as 3D printing, Gallo said.

A new program is an Effective Leadership Academy which is beginning in Elyria and which Gallo hopes will spread to other communities, Gallo said.

Citizens will meet with elected officials, businesses and schools to share detailed information. The goal is to link people with vested interest in Lorain County to make Lorain County pertinent and well prepared well into the 21st Century, Gallo said.

Greg Ring, superintendent of Educational Service Center, said the Ohio Department of Education is working on Ohio’s response to the Every Student Succeeds Act, a replacement for No Child Left Behind which produced the current system of state testing.

“It has tremendous ramifications on what is going on in classrooms in Lorain County and across the United States,” Ring said.

Mike Laub, superintendent of Avon City Schools, sits on an Assessments Advisory Committee in Columbus to study state testing and provide recommendations to DeMaria.

He said the School District Report Cards posted on the ODE website should not give A-F letter grades because of emotional responses to them. Rather, the categories should be descriptive, such as a district meets standards, exceeds standards, or does not meet standards, he said.

The state mandated a new points system as a requirement for graduation, Laub said. Then someone calculated 30 percent of students in Ohio would not log enough points to graduate with their class, he said.

“Where did we come out with that arbitrary number?” Laub said. “Could you imagine the economic impact of having 30 percent of our kids not graduate from high school?”

A former programmer in the business world, Kevin Landis turned to education and was hired as a technology teacher at Brookside High School in the Sheffield/Sheffield Lake School District.

He started a robotics program in 2013 with a $1,500 donation and $1,000 from a principal fund.

“We had no idea what we were doing,” Landis said. “We had 12 students, two robots and three competitions that year. This was our fourth year. We had 80 students and 18 robots in grades four through 12, and 14 competitions. Three teams participated in the 2017 Vex World Championships.”

Students described their roles on the robotics team, from programming to keeping a detailed notebook of everything robot related.

“This year our budget was $25,000,” Landis said, drawing gasps from the crowd. “These kids get pipelined into the business world.”

They learned “stuff happens,” he said, and they learn they need to make friends with people they can count on.

North Ridgeville STEM Coordinator Melissa Durkin said the district reached for a state STEM designation while creating a Ranger High Tech Academy.

“We didn’t consider academics when we selected students,” Durkin said. “We considered their interest and the way they learn.”

She showed an application video of a boy named Ronnie, who talks about home activities of flying a drone, walking in woods, and programming.

“I feel like I spend all of my time in school preparing for a test,” Ronnie said. “When I’m not preparing for a test, I’m taking a test. A lot of times I want to get up and do something.”