New curriculum in limbo with Marion City Schools board
A proposal to revamp Marion City Schools’ elementary language arts curriculum has an unknown future after two members questioned whether it was appropriate.
Supporters of the change, however, stressed the new curriculum went through a thorough vetting process and will benefit students.
The school board did not vote to adopt the elementary school curriculum resource, Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA), at the district’s March 28 board of education meeting citing financial and content concerns. Since then, the district’s literacy committee has revisited conversations with teachers to decide how to move forward.
The district piloted two different language arts curriculums, CKLA by Amplify and Wonders by McGraw Hill, throughout the past fall and winter in order to comply with a new requirement by the Ohio Department of Education that Ohio district’s have a formal Reading Achievement Plan.
Two pilot teams of teachers and parents gave feedback to the district’s literacy committee on the implementation of each curriculum, and on March 15, the decision to recommend the CKLA curriculum to the board was made after the committee reviewed these responses.
The resource, according to Amplify’s website, puts knowledge and foundational skills at the center of its model and builds confidence in students across diverse backgrounds.
Superintendent Dr. Ron Iarussi then delivered the recommendation to the board beside Director of Teaching and Learning Ben Porter in the March 28 meeting, needing board approval to move forward and order the needed curriculum materials by the end of March in order to have them to teachers by the end of the year.
Their goal was to provide initial professional development and a plan for ongoing support, including training, planning and coaching before summer break.
However, in a two versus two vote, the board did not vote to approve the CKLA curriculum, with Board Members Rocky Ratliff and Scott Weibling asking for more time to review the curriculum, citing concerns with its costs and its content.
While the board did not vote in favor of the curriculum resource, it did come to a consensus on the need to provide help to district teachers after elementary teachers stood and described abuse from students while at school.
The new CKLA curriculum will cost the district almost $600,000 and it is “knowledge-based” as opposed to “anthology-based,” meaning it includes excerpts from many different sources of literature in order to teach the content rather than including full works.
This raised concerns to Weibling and Ratliff because they believed several sources of literature for the resource’s excerpts were inappropriate for younger children, including Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night’s Dream and Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street. They said while the excerpts themselves might be okay, pulling from more mature resources could inspire children to continue exploring the full work.
Still, this differentiation was a key reason CKLA was recommended, according to Iarussi, who also noted the split in the board vote could be because Ratliff and Weibling are newer to the board, whereas Board President Kelly Mackay and Board Member Ted McKinniss have been on the board through more of the process.
“Part of what we looked at was the difference between the two resources, one is what’s called an anthology-base which just means there are basically different forms of literature and the other is knowledge-based which means most of the reading is built around science and social studies,” he said.
Revisiting CKLA in committee
These concerns combined with a concern that the curriculum would be approved by an incomplete board, as only four members sat on the school board March 28 following the resignation of former Board President Leslie Schneider the previous week, caused the board to ask for the curriculum to be revisited by the literacy committee before the April 19 board meeting.
As of April 8, Iarussi said the literacy committee had already met to revisit the curriculum and work through some of the board members’ concerns with the teachers who piloted the program.
After revisiting the curriculum, the recommendation for CKLA will continue into the April 19 meeting, he said.
According to Porter, the conversation was facilitated by District Literacy Trainer Krista Dendinger, and the team was able to discuss the board members’ concerns in-depth.
“We took the specific concerns and brought those directly to them that those board members had shared, we documented them and shared them, and our teachers were able to address those pretty specifically,” Porter said.
Because the order for curriculum materials was not approved by the end of March, the district will likely not be able to receive the order from the supplier by the end of the school year – a specific request from a group of teachers who wanted to use the upcoming summer break to plan for the 2022 – 2023 academic year.
Porter said that if the board approves the curriculum in April, as soon as the district receives the materials it will work to distribute them to its teachers, even if that means it will be over the summer.
“It’s a very long and thorough process: probably the most thorough process I’ve been a part of since I’ve been here in really including out teachers and letting them drive the decision making and the process, so I’m hopefully we will be able to honor their expertise and their recommendation,” Porter said.
Likewise, while in the March 28 meeting, McKinniss, who is on the literacy committee, explained that he witnessed this to be extremely careful and thorough process of selection for the curriculum resource.
“In all my years of being on the board, this is one of the most thoroughly researched and the process was just something amazing for all of you taking part of that and getting us the information. It’s been a joy to watch sitting in on the literacy committee,” he said.
Now that the CKLA curriculum has been revisited and the recommendation stands, the board, with its newest fifth member to be chosen Thursday, will vote once again in the April 19 meeting to decide if the district will move forward implementing the resource throughout its elementary schools.
Story by: Sophia Veneziano (740) 564 – 5243 | [email protected]
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