CINCINNATI — "This is not work we can do alone."
That was the message from Cincinnati Public Schools Superintendent Iranetta Wright at her second annual State Of The Schools Address.
Wright started off the night by recognizing some of the positive things that have happened at CPS over the last year — from launching the CPS Moves campaign to College Week and hiring more employees.
Students, teachers and parents were also honored for their academic accomplishments and commitment to CPS.
Wright also discussed the importance of academics, behavior and culture as she went over the district’s new strategic plan. The five key points of that plan are supporting students, equipping educators, connecting the community, igniting innovation and optimizing operations.
However, Wright acknowledged there is room for improvement.
“Right now we don’t have any F-rated schools. We have six schools that are 1.5 stars, so we have a little bit of work to do in that space,” Wright said.
The state gave CPS 2 out of 5 stars for the 2022-2023 academic school year. Overall, the district isn’t meeting state standards.
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The graduation rate is also below the state standard. The state report shows Cincinnati Public School’s graduation rate is 80.8%. WCPO 9 asked the superintendent about that, and she says it’s higher.
“Our graduation rate right now is around 84% across the board and we are doing several things in terms of that,” she said. “I think we had 11 of our high schools we added additional attendance, additional social workers to support attendance and we added an additional school counselor to support graduation.”
Wright said students leaving and not reporting that to the school is another reason why their graduation rate is lower.
“It starts with students going into the ninth grade. That's when the clock starts, sort of speak,” she said. “Our students who continue to attend school every year, every day, they continue to come, (and) most of those students graduate. The challenge becomes students that start with us in the ninth grade, they leave and we don’t know where they are, and so they still count against us even though they’re not in school with us every day."
Wright said there are some bright spots that show the district is improving.
According to the state report, 63%, or 27 of 43, elementary schools earned three, four and five starts while 33%, or 6 of 18, high schools earned three, four and five stars.
“All schools in our school district experience some form of improvement across the report card categories or some subject area,” Wright said.
She said transportation has also improved. Wright said she knows that was a big problem last school year because they were already short drivers at the start of the year, meaning every time a driver would call out sick, they had even fewer drivers.
It’s been a different story this year. She said only 10 to 12 buses are consistently struggling to get students to school on time.
Wright said she is proud of the progress CPS has made and is excited to continue the work to make CPS the No.1 school in the region.
