Committee begins effort to improve northeast OKC schools

A committee assigned to find ways to improve education outcomes for children on Oklahoma City’s northeast side — where most students are black — will explore the possibility of shuttering some schools in order to fund change.

Northeast Task Force members meeting for the first time Thursday night were told they will spend the next six weeks studying low-performing schools and coming up with recommendations for needed academic supports and wraparound services like counseling.

Oklahoma City Superintendent Aurora Lora told members they also will consider changes to school structure and grade configuration to help offset the costs to help turn around schools beset by failing grades.

“With so many schools open with such small numbers, we are actually putting a lot of extra money into it just to kind of pay the bills and keep that many schools open,” Lora said. “I want to be able to commit any savings that we can come up with, to reinvesting it back in to fund any extra supports that are needed.”

The predominantly black task force is composed of teachers, principals, students, lawmakers, religious leaders and community members who grew up in the area or have children who attend the schools being studied.

Lauryn Williams, a student at Douglass MidHigh School, grew emotional when it was her turn to introduce herself.

“I want to see a change in my community and my school,” she said.

While each of the 20 members who attended Thursday’s meeting expressed a desire to improve the schools in their neighborhoods, several said prior dealings with the school district have made them skeptical that change will take place.

“I’ve interacted with practically all of you over my nine years on some type of strategy to improve schools in northeast Oklahoma City, to no avail,” Gary Jones said. “I’d like to finally see us to come to a conclusion that changes the trajectory of children in northeast Oklahoma City. If anybody believes that what we’re doing now is really benefiting those kids, then you’re looking down the wrong path.”

School board member Ruth Veales, who represents 15 schools in the district’s northeast quadrant, criticized the district for not equitably funding many of those schools.

Veales said little has changed since she joined the school board in 2010.

“It is very sad to say that here, in 2017, we are not doing too much better, if at all,” she said of student performance. “So, I’m saying to everyone that is here ... take on this assignment as the crisis that it is. We are in a crisis situation.”

Rebecca Kaye, Lora’s new chief of staff, is running the meetings along with William Stubbs, one of the district’s instructional leadership directors.

Kaye challenged members to share openly and honestly and face the “elephants in the room.” They were identified as race, the community’s history with the district as it relates to “a lack of follow-through,” charter expansion proposed by KIPP, Northeast Academy’s desire to become a charter school, and the district’s budget situation, to name a few.

Lora announced the task force in July as part of a modified expansion plan for KIPP Reach Academy, a successful charter serving about 300 middle school students whose leader sought to convert struggling Martin Luther King Elementary into a charter.

Under the plan approved by the school board, KIPP was allowed to relocate students to Martin Luther King Elementary School for the 2016-17 school year (which hasn’t happened) while the task force determined where the charter should open an elementary school in 2017 and a high school in 2018.

“My expectation is you guys are going to come up with some really great recommendations,” Lora said Thursday. “I want to take this to the board. I want to champion it. I want to figure out how to implement it and really support it. I’m hoping that we can do something great for our schools.”

The task force will meet again Thursday.