Akron officially names Christine Fowler-Mack as its next superintendent
Christine Fowler-Mack
Christine Fowler-Mack has officially been named the next superintendent of Akron Public Schools. The district s board of education unanimously voted to approve her contract in a meeting on Tuesday, April 27.
Fowler-Mack said she was deeply humbled and extremely excited to publicly accept the role as the district s next leader. This is a homecoming for Fowler-Mack, who both attended and started her career at the Akron schools. I accept this post with eyes wide open, recognizing that this is an opportunity that comes at a time that is clearly the most challenging point in history, post-pandemic, after a full year of disruption due to the pandemic that altered our lives, our work and our schools in countless ways, Fowler-Mack said. It has been said that where there is a crisis, there is opportunity. And that certainly applies to this moment here in the Akron public school system, wher
70 school districts preparing to sue Ohio over private school vouchers
Updated 1:38 PM;
Today 1:38 PM
The Cleveland law firm of Walter Haverfield is preparing the litigation for a coalition called Vouchers Hurt Ohio. (Alie Skowronski/mlive.com) Alie Skowronski | The Ann Arbor News
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COLUMBUS, Ohio –About 70 Ohio school districts plan to sue the state over the laws that allow vouchers for private school tuition, arguing that it results in an educational system that’s unconstitutional.
The coalition, Vouchers Hurt Ohio, includes many of the same districts and education advocates who were involved in the DeRolph v. Ohio case spanning 11 years in the 1990s and early 2000s that resulted in the Ohio Supreme Court declaring the state’s public school funding system unconstitutional.
Akron Public Schools chief academic officer dislikes words like achievement gap and at-risk students.
Ellen McWilliams-Woods, who also serves as the district s assistant superintendent, believes those terms discourage students and imply they are broken and must be saved by predominantly white teachers.
“Our students aren’t broken, she said. They’re absolutely brilliant. …Our students have the greatest perseverance, the greatest creative thinking skills, problem-solving skills. Their dedication to their own education is the strongest every single day, but we’ve got to be able to create those environments to let that absolutely flourish so that their own culture can be in the front of everything that they’re doing.”