Employees speak out about a CEO

Lorain residents and employees of Lorain City Schools trickled and flocked to focus group meetings June 19 at Lorain High School.

Jim Hager of Las Vegas is president of Atlantic Research Partners of Chicago, the group responsible for conducting a nationwide search for a chief executive officer to run the district.

Atlantic was hired by a new Lorain Academic Distress Commission June 5. A CEO must be appointed by the commission by July 25 by Ohio law.

The two major questions Hager asked focus groups in the afternoon were: What qualities

should a CEO possess? If the CEO were starting on the first day, what would you want to tell him or her is the most important issue the district faces?

A focus group of teachers and staff of elementary schools was attended by three people.

About an hour later, a focus group of district office staff was attended by four people.

But a group of leadership of employee associations in another room boasted a heftier crowd.

Lisa Amador, an academic coach at Palm Elementary School, 2319 E. 34th St., Lorain, who has been in the district for two years, said teachers need more support.

“There are teachers who need lifted up. They’re tired,” Amador said, “and they’re tired because of the circumstances. I think the teachers are so misunderstood because they’re tired.”

Lavalley Richey, a teacher at Stevan Dohanos Elementary School, 1625 E. 22nd St., Lorain, has taught in the district for 29 years.

“I wish it would go back to 1988 when I started,” Richey said, adding the district was thriving then. “It can,” Hager said. “All we do is test, test, test,” Richey said.

“The CEO should be someone who has been in the classroom in an urban district, someone who can relate,” said Cristina Velez, a special education teacher who next year will teach second grade at Toni Morrison Elementary at 1830 W. 40th St., in Lorain. “Someone who can relate.”

“We need someone who believes in us,” Amador said. “Teachers have been just pressed down so hard.”

The teachers described wholesale changes in the special education and gifted programs that placed all students in mainstream classrooms.

But there was not enough training and support for teachers, they said, so it’s not working well.

In a later group, Hager said a school district in Tacoma, Washington, faced a similar demographic to Lorain Schools.

“It used to be one of the lowest performing places in the country,” Hager said. “The superintendent and deputy superintendent in four our five years literally turned it around from the lowest performing to one of the highest performing districts. And they did it using the whole student model. I’ve heard quite a bit about academics. You may be correct. This social-emotional piece may need to be addressed.”

Lorain Academic Distress Commission Chair Dr. Anthony Richardson said the district has had five superintendents in the last seven years, and every time there is a new superintendent, there is a new model.

“I think there’s a problem with consistency,” Richardson said.

“What we don’t need is someone who is going to come in and do a fly over and be gone.”