During its Sept. 26 meeting, the Galion City Schools Board of Education addressed the district’s ratings on the annual Ohio School Report Cards released recently by the Ohio Department of Education.

Galion City Schools received three stars out of five overall, meaning the district “meets state standards.”

The report cards evaluate and rate districts in five categories: Achievement, Progress, Gap Closing, Graduation and Early Literacy. The district earned between two and four stars in the various categories with two stars indicating “needs support to meet state standards;” three stars indicating the district “meets state standards;” and four stars noting the district “exceeds state standards.”

Galion was rated three stars for Achievement, which measures student performance on state tests; two stars in Progress, which measures the growth all students are making based on their prior performances; four stars in Gap Closing, which measures the reduction in educational gaps for students in subgroups; four stars in Graduation, which measures the four- and five-year adjusted cohort graduation rate; and three stars in Early Literacy, which measures reading proficiency for students from kindergarten to third grade.

Superintendent Dr. Jeffrey Hartmann presented the information to board members with a reminder that this was just the beginning of how the district would be processing and proceeding with the results it had been given by the state.

“We are giving you things to be aware of, and what all data causes us to do is to ask questions,” Hartmann said. “Since I’ve been here, I’ve been looking at all kinds of data in terms of our enrollment and most recently our report card data that just came out, and I just wanted to take a few minutes to go over that. There are some conversations that are going to be coming your way based upon things that we are going to need to start addressing collectively.”

Hartmann then went on to point out where scores either dropped, remained the same, or improved across the district as a whole. He also noted where Galion stood in comparison to other comparable districts across the state in regards to achievement, literacy, graduation rates and poverty.

“When I am doing my Listen & Learn Sessions with staff, with parents, or with kids, I don’t know that urgency is apparent at all grade levels with all of our teachers ,” said Hartmann. “I had a student tell me that he/she just wanted their teacher to interact with them, and it completely blew my mind.”

“We have some grades, some buildings that are checking a lot of those boxes and moving the ball forward in different grade levels, but it needs to be a systemic approach K-12,” said Hartmann. “So those report card numbers and the recognition of us working in a community of poverty needs to be made apparent. We need to make sure that we are addressing the needs of the kids that are coming to us. That we are meeting them where they are at and we are growing them.”

With that said, Hartmann went on to cover the issue of enrollment that has loomed over Galion City Schools for a few years. He showed the board statistics on how many students had left the district just since the beginning of the 2023-24 school year.

“This has shocked me,” Hartmann began. “Since the beginning of the school year we have lost 69 kids, for a grand total of $249,000 deficit. Each student has about a $7,300 per pupil allocation each year and when they leave, the money goes with them.”

Hartmann then went on to note that he has spoken to each building principal and instructed them to reach out to the families of students who withdraw or have recently done so to track their reason(s) for leaving.

“We need to be having conversations about where our kids are going and why,” said Hartmann.

At that point, Hartmann then turned the meeting over to Director of Curriculum and Instruction Melisa Watters who presented board members with test scores that have been tracked in recent years from as early as third grade up until the point of graduation from the district. In short, the data showed declining scores from students upon reaching the Galion High School level across multiple subjects in recent years.

Hartmann explained that he has brought teachers and administrators at the high school on board to a program that identifies students who are considered “at risk” for low scores based upon their previous test scores. Teachers will now begin working with these students during their academic assist period to ensure that this need is being met and they are no longer falling behind.

“There is no excuse anymore. We know who those kids are who are not going to be proficient,” Hartmann said. “It’s our job. We have a moral imperative to get those kids across the finish line. I will do whatever we have to do.”

Contact Erin Miller at 419-512-2662