3 vying for the post take questions from large, engaged audience
A standing-room crowd of 200 peppered Dayton’s three school superintendent finalists with questions about their qualifications, their priorities and their ability to prevent a state takeover of Dayton Public Schools in a public forum at River’s Edge Montessori School on Friday night.
Dan Schroer focused on his success improving student performance at two career tech centers and talked about the need to get staff and students excited about education.
Gregory Roberson focused heavily on student attendance as a key to improving overall school performance. DPS has all it needs to be successful, he said, but has failed to implement fixes effectively.
Rhonda Corr said her experience in other large urban districts — Cleveland, Chicago and Indianapolis — is an asset and called for increased focus on staff development training and early childhood intervention.
After each finalist spoke and answered questions, the crowd filled out surveys grading each one. School board President Adil Baguirov said the board will process that feedback in the coming days.
“We’ll probably shorten the list to just two people and we’ll start tweaking the contract offer and make the offer next week,” he said. “There are several candidates who are very close, and this is very hard. I don’t want to rush this, because I have to live with this (decision) for the rest of my life.”
Corr and Schroer, the two external candidates, worked hard to be approachable Friday. Corr walked the room and introduced herself to dozens of people before the meeting began. Schroer walked over and shook the hand of each person who asked a question.
The board has faced an interesting dilemma — some questioned why they would hire an internal candidate when the district’s academic performance has been so poor under current leadership. But since DPS has only two years to improve or face state takeover, others thought an outside candidate would need too long to learn the district and its staff before making progress.
Rhonda Corr
Corr was an award-winning principal and administrator in Cleveland, but was laid off as an area superintendent for Chicago Public Schools last year after CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett, who hired her, was ousted and convicted of wire fraud. Corr was hired as an academic improvement officer with Indianapolis Public Schools last summer. She told the crowd Friday that she had nothing to do with Byrd-Bennett’s wrongdoing.
Corr offered a three-prong plan about increasing early literacy, monitoring student progress more regularly and increasing graduation rates. The bilingual educator touted her work with new English speakers and said if hired, she would start by meeting district staff and “listening, listening and listening some more.”
“I am here because I’ve done the work in Chicago. I built my own central office team and we turned around the schools quickly,” Corr said. “My urban education experience is profound. … I can do the work, I have the experience.”
Gregory Roberson
Roberson served in the Air Force from 1981 to 2003. Then he went into education as an intervention specialist, later earning licensure to be a principal and superintendent. He worked in Mt. Healthy schools near Cincinnati for 11 years before joining DPS last summer to lead the Office for Exceptional Children, which oversees special education.
Roberson put forward a five-point plan to avoid state takeover — a comprehensive effort to improve attendance, academic intervention during and after school, highly qualified staff in every classroom every day, student success plans giving kids a road map, and monitoring all district programs to make sure they’re implemented properly.
“It is my commitment to you that I will work with the entire DPS community to make Dayton Public Schools one of top-three urban districts in the state of Ohio as measured by student achievement and employee satisfaction,” Roberson said. “I believe we have everything we need here in the district. But I think (monitoring) is what we don’t do well.”
Dan Schroer
Schroer has been superintendent of Margaretta schools, a small district near Toledo, the past two years. Before that, he spent more than a decade leading career tech schools in southwest Ohio – eight years as an administrator at Butler Tech and four years as Greene County Career Center superintendent.
Schroer was the most upbeat of the finalists, cracking jokes and exuding enthusiasm. His “winning plan” focused on improving and aligning curriculum, developing more excitement in teaching and learning, and providing better intervention and monitoring.
But Schroer is the only finalist who has not worked directly for an urban public school district. He admitted his experience working with black students is somewhat limited.
“I am who I am because a teacher made a difference in my life,” Schroer said. “I want to be that person to work with you and make that difference.”
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