Next year, DPS will open Freshman Academies at all the high schools, where ninth graders will get extra support and opportunities to figure out their career paths. Graduation requirements won’t change for any other grades.
“It’s a direct investment in the freshman experience,” Lawrence said at a recent school board meeting. “If we don’t get freshmen right, we can’t get graduation right.”
Lawrence said DPS is currently eighth among the nine Ohio urban school districts in the state for graduation. Fixing the problem begins at the freshman level, not the junior or senior level, he said.
Teachers have been picked to run each academy at each school.
The Ford NGL process will expose younger kids to different career paths, get middle school kids to begin picking what jobs they want, and focus on getting credentials and graduating students in high school.
Several students showed up at a recent board meeting to voice their support for Ford NGL, as well as several teachers and a parent from E.J. Brown Middle School.
“This plan that Ford NGL has is going to ensure that students can land a job and keep that job,” said Faith Riggs, a Cleveland Elementary student. “It ensures to include students in the planning because they know that it is our future to uphold.”
DPS has already paid for the first two phases of the process, with Phase I costing $54,000 and Phase II costing $98,000. Minor said each of the remaining three steps should cost between $40,000 and $50,000.
The funds are coming from the Montgomery County Educational Service Center’s allocations for individual schools, Minor said. It is not coming from the district’s general fund.
Board members asked why this is not something that is piloted at just one of the schools, rather than at all of them. But district leadership and Ford NGL coaches said it is a question of equity.
“We can do multiple things at the same time,” Lawrence said. “It’s a derivative of what high-performing school districts do to focus on freshmen.”
Lisa Oleski, a community coach for Ford NGL and a former curriculum director at a Michigan school that implemented the same programming, said the program would bring the district and the community together.
Three initial community partners — the Dayton Unit of the NAACP, the Dayton Foundation and Montgomery County Workforce Development — have been named.
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