Through no fault of their own, these families may land in communities where school systems are already struggling with all kinds of issues, some that impact students before they walk through school doors, like persistent unemployment created by companies and jobs that simply went way. For students who are undocumented or whose family members may be, they go to school with a gnawing fear that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may come around while they are gone. Then there’s a raft of real educational challenges like low literacy rates, a high number of dropouts and, for those students who graduate, a scant few who are prepared to go to college without remedial support.

These are the sorts of problems that plague the school district of Lorain, Ohio, a small “Rustbelt” city on the shores of Lake Erie. Lorain is home to a growing Latino population, about one quarter of city residents, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. The city is clearly challenged by significant economic and demographic changes. But the school district has a turnaround plan that puts the needs of all students at its center.

Because of chronic poor performance, Lorain City Public Schools has been under state watch since 2013 when it was classified as “in academic distress.” In the last four years, the district has failed to improve, so,  under Ohio House Bill 70, the state appointed a CEO and created a new academic distress commission to oversee the school system last fall. The CEO, David Hardy, has the power of a superintendent and a school board.

Not surprisingly, this lack of direct community input and control with state takeovers is often negatively received by affected districts and labeled undemocratic. Historically, takeover results aren’t good, with well-documented failure on top of failure at the expense of children, largely minority students in poor urban areas.

Among education reformers though, there’s acknowledgement that what states have done in the past hasn’t worked well, particularly for students. Going forward, Andy Smarick, Morgridge fellow in education at the American Enterprise Institute, sees opportunity to learn from mistakes and rethink the notion of a traditional district. “Generally, states could right the ship when it came to bad management or procurement or finances, but I’m not familiar with any takeovers where student achievement skyrocketed then stayed at a high level,” he said. “The error we made in the past was assuming that kids must be served by a traditional district, which we constantly had taken over and tried to make better but didn’t. Now we as the state have to come up with a new way of making sure they’re well served.”

While Hardy is still getting started, he seems to be applying lessons learned. At a January Lorain NAACP forum, he said, “I came here to northeast Ohio because I put progress and kids over politics.” His strategy for improvement, called the Lorain Promise, is student-centered and inclusive of significant community input from a 90-day listening tour. “I think the level of transparency and open communication that our team has started to create has instilled confidence. …” 

The Lorain Promise is brand new but its intent and goals for all students, including the Latino population (about 40 percent of district families) and others in the minority, are clear with specific strategies aimed at advancing their success, like building culturally relevant leadership and teaching practices and forging closer ties to the community. Hardy expressed that many Latino families in the district don’t feel welcome and making them feel a part of the Lorain family is a priority. His leadership on this front, in particular, has been apparent.

In the early days of his job last September, Hardy penned an open letter to the Lorain community in response to President Trump’s action on Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program or DACA. He said, “Decisions like this one create a level of uncertainty, fear and injustice that not only makes life challenging for our families, but go against what our country is perceived to be founded upon — a promise of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

The letter raised the ire of some in Lorain who suggested Hardy stay in his lane. Hardy admitted he was shocked by some of the pushback, but he shouldn’t be. The community reaction is not entirely unexpected given national rhetoric on the issue. School communities don’t operate in a bubble.

Rep. Joaquin Castro is a Democratic congressman from Texas, the state with the second largest number of DACA recipients in the country, and an advocate of a clean Dream Act. Amid the DACA debate, Castro said, “We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that many children, especially immigrant children, are impacted by their experience in the United States, and often by the ugly rhetoric they hear about their own communities. That has a very real cost. …  ”

For his part, Hardy is undeterred in his advocacy. “My job,” he said, “ is to ensure that students have the best teachers and leaders in front of them and to create an environment for each and every scholar to thrive, regardless of their circumstance or the zip code they live in.”

Hardy believes having the tough conversations like those about undocumented students and their families is important. “The only way to create change is to initiate conversations and push people just to the brink of where they’re uncomfortable enough to have that conversation and not too far where they’ll be reluctant to talk.”

Addressing the needs of all Lorain students also has meant supporting an influx of Puerto Rican families and students who relocated to the city after Hurricane Maria. At the time of printing, Hardy estimated there were about 90 new families with multiple students attending district schools. Those additional students no doubt strain a system with real problems like the need for more English language learner teacher supports and emotional and social services for families who have experienced the trauma of losing their homes then leaving them behind.

Mohip is aggressively executing a strategy that focuses on best practices and instruction. “Our goal is to make sure every child, in every classroom, every day receives a high-quality instruction, regardless of where he or she lives,” he said. Mohip has reset expectations for student success, believing a mindset that expects the minimum yields exactly that. He established metrics for student learning because there weren’t any. He has invested in the professional growth of teachers and instituted a system of feedback to check progress.

A part of Mohip’s strategy has been reconfiguring the district for better distribution of resources, like broadening access to STEM programs, as “there are some base opportunities we want to have for every child,” he said. He is also giving consideration to the needs of specific student population groups. “We’ve outlined our expectations for all of our students but also consider what more is needed for them to be successful. Some of the target populations we look at are special education students, ESL learners, etc. We ask what more supports are needed for them. That’s how we go about the business of insuring equity in our schools.”

There has been a lot of change since Mohip began. He suggests the very structure of his position has enabled faster decision making but not without input from the community. He held more than 95 community meetings in his first year and is on pace to double that number in year two. He has four community coalitions and is also thinking about student voices with student advisory councils at the district’s high schools.

So far, Mohip has earned high marks for his communications efforts. And to date, Youngstown schools are showing some improvement with an eight percent increase in third grade reading scores and a 55 percent reduction in suspension rates. “We’re making some small progress,” Mohip said, “but there’s just a mountain of challenges that we still need to overcome.”

Mountain could be an understatement in the shadow of the complexity of issues where Mohip, Hardy and school leaders like them stand. Still, they continue the everyday work of advancing the rights and dreams of all students to a quality education, no matter from where they’ve come, knowing that opportunity will take them to places they’ve not yet been.

Tips for Supporting Immigrants and Undocumented Students

• Communicate core values and strategies for educating all students
• Support policies and procedures that make all students feel safe and welcome at school
• Work with community partners to better understand the needs of non-English speaking parents and students to facilitate better parental engagement in the school system, such as learning how to read student report cards and participating in parent-teacher conferences
• Initiate conversations about the tough issues, like how to support an influx of new English language learners with already tight resources
• Provide information and training sessions for school administrators and staff on the educational rights of all children, including student FERPA rights, and the Civil Rights Act and any other state laws that may have relevance
• Serve as a resource for information about legal rights and obligations
• Avoid assuming a student’s immigration status
• Share the approach the school system will follow with immigration authorities like referring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers to the superintendent’s office for clearance, for example
• Require school staff to contact parents if ICE questions students