CPS made strides by focusing on student wellbeing not politics | Opinion

For the past two years, I had the privilege of serving as the president of the Cincinnati Public School Board of Education. This has been the opportunity of a lifetime. I graduated from CPS, I have spent the past 20 years working in public education, and I am now a CPS dad. Since leaving the president’s role in January, I have been reflecting on what we were able to accomplish these past two years, and I wanted to share those reflections here, along with my hopes for the future.

It has been an intensely challenging two years. When I became president of the board, the Omicron variant of the coronavirus was shutting down our schools. Three of our seven board members were new, and we were selecting a new superintendent. We were reeling from the early COVID-19 data, where we saw for the first time how far behind students were.

For example, whereas suburban district Sycamore’s passage rate on Ohio’s standardized assessments fell from 88% to 76% between 2019 and 2021, CPS's passage rate fell from 47% to 26%.  In addition, families experienced major disruptions to bus services, and there was the explosion of divisive "culture war" politics across school boards both locally and nationally. There were many times it was easy ? at least for me ? to feel discouraged and overwhelmed.

But our story, like the stories of so many these past few years, has been one of resilience and determination. Because of the hard work of our teachers and families, because of our extraordinary district leadership (which starts at the top with our new superintendent, Iranetta Wright), and because of the commitment of our board, I am able to write today about a series of three critical wins CPS has seen these past two years.

First, among major urban school districts, Cincinnati Public Schools has had the second-highest math gains in the country since the pandemic. Researchers from Stanford and Harvard recently published a study (which was covered earlier this year in The New York Times and this past Sunday in the Enquirer) that tracked the student learning loss that occurred over the course of the pandemic, as well as the learning recovery that has taken place since then. Of the 44 major urban school districts that make up the Council of the Great City Schools, CPS has the second-highest math recovery in the country. This analysis is based on the 2022-23 school year, which was Superintendent Wright’s first full year on the job. Alongside the heroic work of our teachers and administrators, her leadership is a critical part of this story.

Second, we have almost completely reversed the yellow bus challenges that disrupted so much of last school year. Due in large part to a national driver shortage, last fall less than 80% of our yellow buses were arriving on time. This is not a minor problem; it disrupts the lives of families and makes it incredibly hard to get students what they need at school. Superintendent Wright realized that if we changed the start times of some of our schools, we could increase the efficiency of our bus routes without the need for additional drivers. We made these changes (which, to be clear, were not easy for all families), and today 96% of our buses are arriving on time.

Third, we worked hard to keep our focus as a board on children and not politics. One does not have to look far to find stories of dysfunctional school boards and bitter, hateful politics on "culture war" issues. My board member colleagues and I certainly have our disagreements, but we all believe that CPS is a place that needs to welcome every student in our community and provide an excellent education. We will pass resolutions to reaffirm our values of equity and inclusion when we see those values threatened, but for the past two years, most of our time has been focused on student wellbeing and results.

How did these wins happen? I continue to come back to three things. There have to be adults who believe in children ? from teachers to administrators to the superintendent to the board. There has to be leadership that is willing to make hard choices; impact means change, and change is hard. And there has to be a culture of focus and accountability. It is my hope that our board helped on all of these fronts by reaffirming our commitment to all children, hiring and supporting Superintendent Wright (who has a laser-like focus on students), and keeping our board focused on big-picture goals and results (as opposed to the day-to-day management of the district). I hope we can continue these commitments in the months and years ahead.

Even as we celebrate these wins, I have to note in the same breath the enormous amount of work that still needs to be done. We desperately need to continue improving our academic results until every child in every neighborhood graduates with the skills they need to pursue the career of their choice. We have a growing mental health crisis in our schools and important concerns about student safety. We need to make the teaching profession one that finally honors appropriately the commitment and impact of our educators and makes this work more sustainable.  And there is so much more.

Looking back, the challenges we faced were real, but so were the wins. I believe deeply that they would not have happened without Superintendent Wright’s leadership, without my colleagues on the board, and without the hard work of our teachers, administrators and families. With these wins on the board ? and the learning we can draw from how we got here ? I look forward to seeing where we can go next.

Ben Lindy is a member and past president of the Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: CPS made strides by focusing on student wellbeing not politics