Reading School District continues its progress

[This story is not well reported. I talked to no students, parents or teachers. Nevertheless, I wanted to list some accomplishments since Superintendent Khalid Mumin took the job. If he fails as quickly as past district leaders have, it will be a baseline for future comparisons.]

by Steve Reinbrecht

Talk is cheap. In this report, I’ll try to stay with what the Reading School District has actually done since Superintendent Khalid Mumin took charge.

The Reading School District is the most important institution in Berks County. It is struggling back from a long history of nepotism, meddling school board members, incompetent administration and public neglect.

It draws students from a fifth of Berks’ population. It maintains 19 schools and serves about 17,300 children – nearly one out of four of Berks’ public school students. The budget tops $200 million – most of it funded by state taxpayers. The district is Berks’ sixth-largest employer, with about 2,000 employees.

After a string of quickly departing or fired district superintendents, staff members from the Berks County Intermediate Unit, an educational-services agency, arrived in January 2014 to straighten out the district’s accounting and finances. Two troublesome school board directors resigned. Mumin took the job in June 2014, for $185,000 a year.

Mumin has worked to engage students. For example, Mumin meets with a group of 40 high school students twice a month to engage them about their concerns and ideas, School Board President Reading School Board President Robin Costenbader-Jacobson said.

The meetings started in November as a way for Mumin to talk directly with students and get to know them.

“The agenda is theirs,” Mumin said. “I’ve learned so much from them. I’ve gotten a lot back on that investment.”

Recently, Mumin said, members of the squad showed administrators unsecured areas in the high school that students were entering for mischief. That led to new security gates. The students got a look at the cost of the project to give them a sense of risk-benefit decisions.

Mumin said the students report about the meetings on social media.

The district plans to start a similar squad at the Reading Intermediate High School in the spring.

To attract “lost students,” the district started the Red Knight Learning Academy evening program at the beginning of the school year. It’s designed for students who have dropped out and would need only a few more credits to earn a high school diploma. Some students finish the required work in only weeks. Then they can join graduation in June.

In a video about the program, a student says she slacked off in school and gave up lacking only one credit to graduate. Once she joined the evening program, she earned that in three weeks.

[The city’s only charter school, I-LEAD, was started to educate such students. The district is in the process of revoking I-LEAD’s charter.]

Reading School District leaders have improved the curriculum. It’s refreshing to hear educators mention curriculum before diving into finances. I’ve been at Reading School District board meetings where the agenda was many pages of personnel actions and very few about education. News stories have focused on finances.

In 2013, independent curriculum auditors called the district’s instructional curriculum “disparate, almost random and incongruent.”

Planning guides were scarce, their report said. Worksheets and other materials were frequently below the correct grade level, did not align with state or federal standards, and lacked challenging problem-solving and analytical thinking.

Now, at least, Mumin said, teachers in different schools are following the same curriculum on a schedule. That’s important in a district where children frequently switch schools.

“Teachers should be proud of that. They worked hard.”

The district has started a new reading and writing program. On the 2015 PSSAs [state standardized state tests], the district’s 13 elementary schools had an average of only 28 percent of their third graders scoring proficient or above in English test. The percentages in the schools ranged from 17 to 43 percent.

Students in grades 6-8 started the new language-arts program in the 2014-2015 school year. Students in grades 4 and 5 began this year. Younger grades will be added next year.

Part of the program rewards students for reading books at their level for at least 30 minutes a day. A handful of students have read for more than 250 hours.

Mumin has developed ties with other leaders. Before Mumin started, I’ve been told, it was hard to work with or even contact district officials. Now access seems easier.

Anna Weitz, president of Reading Area Community College, said Mumin is committed and open to seeking community input.

“We are exploring ways we can work together,” she wrote.

Penn State Berks Chancellor R. Keith Hillkirk said he has met with Mumin several times, often about aproject at Glenside Elementary School, where teachers from both schools collaborate. Mumin has been attending quarterly Penn State Berks advisory board meetings, Hillkirk said.

Kevin Murphy, president of the Berks County Community Foundation, a philanthropic organization, has had “frequent and wide-ranging” conversations with Mumin. For example, the school district accepted a foundation grant to hold the 2015 graduation in the Santander Center. On the other hand, the district rejected an offer for mediation with the I-LEAD charter school.

“We’ve discussed district finances, board governance issues, curriculum and other issues,” Murphy wrote in an e-mail.

Alvernia University has started a program for teachers to earn certificates in teaching English as a second language. About 40 Reading teachers have enrolled.

With United Way of Berks County, the district is providing books in three barbershops and plans to supply them throughout the city where children spend time with parents, such as barbershops, rec centers, hairdressers, and coin laundries.

Costenbader-Jacobson said she communicates daily with Mumin, discussing the strategic plan, curriculum, communications, finances, operations and facilities.

The district’s statistics are improving. Many Reading students don’t learn as much as counterparts in non-urban districts. The district’s graduation rates and achievement-test proficiency have been consistently near the bottom of the 500 or districts in the state.

With changes in standardized testing, it’s not valid to compare scores from year to year. Cheating and the response to cheatings – not in Reading but in other cities – also have skewed scores.

Nevertheless, the district’s numbers are going in the right direction.

The district’s [4-year cohort] graduation rate rose from 61 percent in 2012 to 71 percent in 2014. [A department spokeswoman said the 2014-2015 figures are not available! As usual, the state is maddeningly behind on basic data.] Mumin acknowledges that 90 percent would be better. The state average was 85 percent. 

The number of graduates rose from 716 to 742. Reading High School’s state performance profile rose from 60.2 to 65.2 from 2014 to 2015.

The high school offered 10 AP classes this year. Mumin wants to offer more. Wilson School District offers 20. Boyertown School District has 14.

In January, Reading High School [along with Brandywine Heights Elementary School, Exeter’s Jacksonwald Elementary School and Wilson’s Shiloh Hills Elementary School ] was named a Distinguished Title 1 School, based on improved test scores and other factors, by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, Division of Federal Programs.

While student engagement is a focus, Mumin acknowledged that the district needs to improve communications with parents.

In the past, educators have told me it’s difficult to attract parents to the city schools. Beside balancing jobs and dependents, parents have been reluctant to come to buildings because they lack faith in their English or have felt discriminated against.

Mumin says parents are especially active on social media and spread news about the district among themselves.

“It was like a great untapped resource for us. Our parents are active, active, active on social media.”

Costenbader-Jacobson said administrators have started a “#RSDproud” campaign “as a way for the community to rally behind our students, staff and alumni.”

The site has posts but seems a bit thin and district-driven. It will be interesting to see if more students, teachers and parents start using it or if it fizzles.

Mumin’s Youtube video after a fight in City Park in September got more than 4,400 hits.

Most, but not every, school lists a “parent outreach assistant.” I e-mailed just one at random but got no reply.

A couple of months after he started the job, Mumin told me his ability to understand and connect with an urban community such as Reading’s will help him succeed.

He grew up in Philadelphia, missing 75 days in high school. He turned himself around, began his higher education at a junior college and finished with a doctorate at the highly selective University of Pennsylvania.

In any case, Costenbader-Jacobson said, “Dr. Mumin understands and relates to our community. He visits the schools daily and constantly talks with students, staff and parents.”

Mumin said he hasn’t had to remove many people from the existing administration because it was a thin staff when he arrived.

He has two vacancies: Chief instructional services officer and the federal programs director.

He’s had to do some shifting – for example, his chief of office of instructional services, Kandace A. Williams, left for a new job at a school in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

All the schools have a “full cadre” of assistant principals, Mumin said.

The top issue right now is getting good work contracts for all the staff, he said.

Reading teachers have been working without a contract since Sept. 1, 2012. Wages and benefits have been frozen.

“That’s Numero Uno. Being able to compensate them fairly would enhance our buildings’ culture.”

Mitchell Hettinger, president of the Reading Education Association – the teachers union – did not respond to an e-mail.

Mumin also wants to find space for new programs and get rid of trailer-classrooms at elementary schools.

For examples, he’d like more space for AP classes and for English-language learners, acknowledging that newcomers from the Dominican Republic, Mexico and many other countries arrive in the city with almost no English and need a lot of help to succeed.

Improving safety is at the top of his action plan, and is at the top of the list for parents, Mumin said.

In general, the district is headed in the right direction, with more openness, efforts to engage the community, and professional staff. And Mumin is being recognized for his role.

“The school district is building momentum and morale under our new board's governance and Dr. Mumin’s leadership,” Costenbader-Jacobson wrote.

A Facebook friend who watches the city closely credits the improvement to: “The diversity of the school board and within the administration. The coaches of the major sports in the district reflect the student body who play those sports. Students are engaging with teachers who are similar to them. It's just a great culture that has been built from the top down. A lot of great energy.”

Newsworks.org called Mumin for his opinion on how the budget delay is affecting public schools.

Mumin said being invited to Harrisburg recently is further sign of the district’s progress. He went to Harrisburg on Feb. 3 to watch Gov. Tom Wolf sign a bill postponing Keystone Exam requirements.

Mumin said he was humbled that Wolf invited him to attend the bill signing postponing Keystone Exam requirements.

"This illustrates the momentum we have in the Reading School District. Pennsylvania lawmakers are recognizing our successes, as well as understanding our challenges and finding ways to address those."

The day before, the governor had visited Reading’s 10th and Green Elementary School to announce his proposed education funding plan.

The district was wretchedly managed and monitored for years, ripping off many taxpayers, children and Berks County overall. Again and again, there have been new starts. We should keep a close eye on this one.