In her first State of the Schools address since taking over as Superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools earlier this year, Iranetta Wright focused much of her attention on creating a better learning environment for every student in the district.
As the CPS emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, Wright says the district needs to go back to the basics to build an environment that can keep students in the classroom and eventually take them to the next academic level or into a career.
"Let's take it back to the basics and that's what we've done. The basics and nothing is more basic than the ABCs. Academics, behavior, and culture," Wright said.
Part of the superintendent's ABCs strategy is encouraging educators to connect with students on a personal level and engage them in the classroom. Wright says the district will need to prioritize the mental health of students by having learning environments equipped to deal with problems children may be facing.
"Our path forward is to start by emphasizing a culture of respect at all levels," Wright said. "Ensuring that all of our learning environments focus on both physical and psychological safety so that students know that there is someone in the building, regardless of what their issue is that they can go and have a conversation with."
Wright says the district currently has 82 psychiatrists and psychologists, 77 social workers, and 68 counselors working directly with students.
On top of dealing with the mental health of students, Wright also says CPS has been working to help students suffering from "learning loss" while they were out of the classroom during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although trying to make up for lost time has been a challenge, Wright points to recent test scores as a sign that things are improving.
"27 of our 47 schools showed improvement in third-grade reading performance this fall over where they were last fall," Wright says. "There were five of our schools that demonstrated double-digit improvement."
The superintendent says these scores are just a glimmer of hope but wants to use this improvement as an opportunity to continue what the district started and build towards bigger goals, like the district's graduation rate.
According to the Ohio Schools Report Card, CPS has a one-star rating for its graduation rate. That's something Wright says will need to improve under her watch.
To do this, Wright wants every student to have an outlined plan to reach graduation at an early age.
"We have to make sure that students know and their parents know as they're entering high school what is going to be necessary for them to graduate," Wright said. "Conversations about graduation don't start as a tenth-grader, they don't start as an eleventh-grader, they have to start early on."
To finish off her speech, Wright thanked the district's teachers for their dedication and said celebrating each other's accomplishments and providing support for each other will be among the most important things for the school district as they work to improve over the next few years.
