Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Academic achievement gaps have persisted for too long, and not enough kids are graduating from high school.
Those are among the concerns being raised by several education and community leaders who say the next superintendent of the Omaha Public Schools must take a new approach to raising achievement.
"There's an opportunity here with the new superintendent to kind of take a fresh look at everything," David Brown, president and CEO of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview. "Whoever they bring in has got to be a change agent."
Pages of advice from various organizations and individuals recently arrived at district headquarters after the Omaha school board sought input on its superintendent search. Numerous community leaders also are weighing in on what direction the board should go in finding the next OPS leader.
The school board has said it will conduct a national search to replace Superintendent John Mackiel, who will retire in August 2012. The board plans to hire a consultant early next month and has budgeted spending up to $200,000 on the search.
Once a firm is picked, the board and the consultant will decide how to continue involving the community in the OPS search.
The board plans to hire a superintendent by April, although a definitive timeline has not been set.
In written feedback to the board, Nebraska Education Commissioner Roger Breed suggested the board hire a superintendent in February.
Current school employees, the likely candidates for the OPS job, may sign contracts with their current districts in January or February, possibly limiting the pool of candidates, he said.
"Any entity, the longer you go without definitive leadership, then decisions get put off and problems tend to stack up," Breed said in an interview.
Other leaders have focused more on what direction the board should go with its big hire. They use words such as "sea change," "revolution," "new ideas" and "innovation" in discussing OPS's next leader.
Some acknowledge positives in the district, while pointing out other aspects that must improve.
Brown, of the chamber, said in an interview the district does a good job of educating its higher-performing students but struggles to bring up its lowest-scoring students. That gap must be narrowed and the district's graduation rate must be improved if Omaha businesses are going to continue to grow, he said.
Those interviewed didn't express a preference for internal or external candidates. Rather, most said they want someone who will take OPS in a new direction.
"It's time to be proud of the whole district, not just the overachieving part," Brown said.
Central to community leaders' concerns is the education of children living in poverty. The number of OPS students receiving free or reduced priced meals was 50 percent when Mackiel took over as superintendent in 1997. This school year, 72 percent of OPS students come from impoverished families.
"Children born into poverty are not getting the education they need to succeed," said John Cavanaugh, executive director of Building Bright Futures, a local education philanthropy.
On the 2010 state reading test, 54 percent of all OPS third-grade students scored as proficient. To compare, 44 percent of the district's third-grade students living in poverty scored proficient.
The district should hire someone who has had success expanding quality early-childhood opportunities for kids, Cavanaugh said.
Most children who enter kindergarten behind their peers will not catch up, he said. Much of the brain has already formed by the time kids enter kindergarten at age 5.
"The single most important indicator is at kindergarten," Cavanaugh said.
OPS already runs numerous early-childhood programs, including all-day kindergarten and two Educare sites that serve low-income children from infancy to kindergarten who have a parent working or in school. OPS also hosts Head Start, a federal pre-K program, and a pre-K program for its special education children.
But only about one-fourth of children in poverty in Douglas and Sarpy Counties receive quality early-childhood care, said Cavanaugh, citing research done by Building Bright Futures.
"We need a sea change in terms of early childhood," he said.
OPS also should try different approaches — such as a longer school day and a longer school year — in more of its schools and be willing to go after more federal dollars, said Thomas Warren, president of the Urban League of Nebraska and former Omaha police chief.
Last year, OPS, Nebraska's largest school district, declined to join the state in its attempts to get money from a federal Race to the Top grant.
Nebraska's application included improving the state's school data system to allow for tracking individual student progress from kindergarten through college. The first state application was supported by 218 of the state's 253 school districts.
"My concern is that innovative strategies are employed to improve academic achievement," Warren said.
No matter what people want to see in the new superintendent, it's time to move forward as one community, said Dick Davis, CEO of Davis Cos. and a member of Nebraska's Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education.
"There is a lot of great things happening with the various initiatives," Davis said. To build on those, he said, "we need to basically make sure that we're talking to each other, not at each other."
The 12-member school board is responsible for hiring the superintendent. Board members plan to begin looking at bids from prospective consultants at 2 p.m. Monday at the Teacher Administrative Center, 3215 Cuming St.
Contact the writer:
402-444-1074, jonathon.braden@owh.com
Copyright ©2012 Omaha World-Herald®. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, displayed or redistributed for any purpose without permission from the Omaha World-Herald.
