NEWPORT, Ky — Despite a five-year improvement goal set in 2020, Newport’s Education Task Force says too little has changed in the district.
“Every year that we don’t improve our academics is another year that we let our children down, another year that they’re not college ready, another year that they’re not career ready,” said former education task force member and current Newport Board of Education Member Bobbie Stubbeman.
The task force, established in 2019, has released its 2024 report highlighting ongoing academic struggles in Newport Independent Schools. The report reveals that the district ranks among the lowest-performing in the region, with low kindergarten readiness, poor test scores and declining postsecondary preparedness. This is all while spending has increased significantly, particularly on administrative costs.
While the task force originally suggested a possible district merger if improvements were not made, members now believe collaboration with neighboring districts and targeted interventions, such as expanded pre-K programs and better support for mobile students, may be more effective solutions.
The Newport Education Task Force was formed to support the Newport Independent School District in improving performance. Since then, it has created three reports (in 2020, 2022 and 2024) centered on the district’s academic achievement, finances and school working conditions.
The 2020 education task force report suggested a five-year timeframe for making significant changes within the district, which would be 2025.
“We are now four years later, and the significant improvement has not happened,” the 2024 report states.
The data on Newport Schools
According to the 2024 report, compared to the districts that are geographically adjacent to Newport (Covington Independent, Bellevue Independent and Dayton Independent), the district has either the lowest overall rating or is tied for the lowest overall rating across elementary, middle and high schools.
The Kentucky Department of Education uses a color system to rate a school’s performance. Five colors range from red (worst) to blue (best).
The Newport Independent School District currently has two schools categorized as red and one as orange. According to the 2024 task force report, this is worse than last year, when the high school was orange (now red). Within the schools, the middle school saw some improvements in reading and math, but not enough to move the overall score out of the red.
The data from the reports show that kids in Newport Schools have not learned to read and do math on par with their peers throughout the state. According to the task force, as students make their way through school, they are less able to learn at a high level in all subject areas.
Newport Education Task Force member Steve McCafferty said the kindergarten through grade 12 experience should be a continuum. He said that when you start in preschool, the childcare element is much larger than the academic achievement level. In preschool, children learn to sit in chairs and be quiet, share materials with other kids, and take directions from an adult who is not a family member.
However, McCafferty said that as students progress through school, there should be less focus on childcare and more on academic achievement.
Children should learn to read from kindergarten through third grade. He said that when you leave third grade, you’re not learning to read anymore; you’re reading to learn. As students work their way up to grade 12, the childcare element should be getting smaller and smaller.
“In Newport, the childcare element stays really strong, K through 12, but the academic achievement part is never realized,” McCafferty said. “If you leave third grade and you can’t read, and most of the kids in Newport leave third grade, and only 12-15% can read proficiently. The rest of them go on to fourth grade and guess what? They haven’t learned to read proficiently yet, so they’re still learning to read when the focus has moved on to reading to learn.”
The scores in Figure 2a indicate that students have not learned to read and do math on par with their peers throughout the state, according to the Newport Education Task Force 2024 report.
Shown in figures 2b and 2c, iReady is a formative test that allows benchmarking versus grade level.
“This data shows that a very large proportion of students are well below grade level,” according to the task force’s 2024 report. “On a positive note, this internal testing at Newport Independent School District shows some progress in math and reading at the elementary and middle school levels.”
The 2024 report states that a contributing factor to those low test scores is children’s preparedness as they enter kindergarten.
The report states, “Newport Independent School District has one of the lowest kindergarten readiness scores in the region with the biggest deficits in the two areas of academic/cognitive (basic readiness like the alphabet, numbers and shape knowledge) and physical development (fine and gross motor skills.)”
Data in the 2024 report showed that Newport’s low kindergarten readiness scores are impacting the proficiency of early learners.
President and CEO of EducateNKY, Cheye Calvo, said 90% of brain development occurs before a child is five. He said communities and society as a whole need to think about how to invest in younger children and young families with young children to help get more kids ready for kindergarten.
EducateNKY is a local non-profit “dedicated to ensuring that the Northern Kentucky education landscape is one of the best at meeting the needs of families and learners,” per the organization’s mission statement.
“Efforts that are very place-based, that are family-centered, to engage families in the learning process earlier are going to reap real rewards,” Calvo said.
Kindergarten is a universal entitlement that kicks in at age 5. Schools become more involved at age 4, and some services are available at age 3.
“More brain development is happening at age 1,” Calvo said. “So, when we think about what is the best return on investment for public dollars, the earlier you can engage families and children in that process, the greater the long-term dividends.”
One of the recommendations the education task force gave in its 2024 report was for the district to work on a comprehensive kindergarten readiness program. The report states, “While it is not a school-only issue, it would be in the best interest for Newport Independent School District to lead the charge by reaching externally to collaborate on solutions to develop access to all-day Pre-K in the city.”
The chart below shows that Newport Independent School District’s kindergarten readiness is less than half the state level.
“Developing a way to get more pre-K children into strong programs would enable Newport Independent School District to get off to a stronger start as each new class enters the system,” the 2024 report states.
Newport Education Task Force Member Lynn Schaber said a big-picture goal is for the district to allocate some money to a free pre-k program.
“If there was free pre-K for every kid in Newport, it would just get us off to such a strong start, but there’s not enough money for that,” she said.
Newport Superintendent Tony Watts said the district tries to reach out to parents to provide them with literature on the importance of working with their kids before they get to school.
He said they also try to enroll as many kids as possible in preschool; however, not everyone can automatically enroll their child. Generally, only 4-year-old children from families with incomes at or below 160% of the federal poverty level are eligible for state-funded preschool, as well as any three or 4-year-old child with a diagnosed disability, regardless of income level.
Read Ready Covington is an example of a program working for a neighboring school district to help with kindergarten readiness. It is an initiative to increase child literacy rates among city families and teach the love of reading and learning at an early age.
“I do think there are models locally that you can turn to, and Covington in the last couple years has seen a meaningful rise in its kindergarten readiness rates,” Calvo said. “I think I would give Read Ready Covington credit for that.”
Calvo said there are opportunities in the river cities and in Newport for the community, the city, the school district, and nonprofit partners to come together to focus efforts on young children. He said that more collaboration across levels of government and engaging families in the learning process will not only result in more kids showing up to kindergarten ready but also in neighborhoods being stronger and more vibrant.
A parent’s perspective
Not only is Bobbie Stubbeman a school board member, but she is also a parent who sends her kids through Newport Schools. She has two kids who have graduated from the district and two who are currently enrolled.
Her two daughters, who graduated, have both gone to college; one even graduated high school early as a sophomore.
One of her daughters was involved in programs through the gifted and talented program at Newport that allowed her to go to Florida for three weeks for a transportation engineering program and take a neuroscience course during the summer.
Her two children also took advantage of DUAL credit opportunities (a program that allows students to earn college credit while still in high school) offered through Gateway University.
Still, Stubbeman said she recognizes that not all students receive the same kind of opportunities for various reasons, such as a lack of support or not being aware of the opportunities.
“My goal [as a school board member] is to make sure that plans are in place to invest in them and let them know that, hey, we have these opportunities available,” she said.
Stubbeman said that when her kids started their college credits, she had to teach them some of the fundamentals they should have learned at Newport schools.
“That’s something I think should be part of their education, preparing them for college,” she said. “Making sure they can answer college-level questions. Making sure they can relate to other students and do discussion boards. Making sure they can write an essay. These are all things that should be taught in high school, and my daughters did not get that. Luckily for them, I know those things, so I could help them.”
While Watts said he was unfamiliar with the programming that Stubbeman’s daughter was in through the gifted and talented program, he said Newport has the Young Scholars Program, which helps kids who excel in attending college.
The collaboration consideration
Newport partners with Northern Kentucky University for that program. The district is in its third year of the Young Scholars Program. Under the program, Newport High School juniors can earn an associate’s degree by graduation. The hope through the partnership is that students will then return to NKU full-time to finish out the degree.
Stubbeman’s daughter, who graduated early from Newport Schools, entered the Aerospace Engineering program at the University of Cincinnati. Stubbeman said more science classes, such as physics, offered through Newport could have better prepared her daughter.
“They just don’t have the variety of courses to help these kids when they do get to college,” she said. “Even if they are smart, like my daughter, they struggle when they get there, and they have these new courses that are totally foreign because they have no foundation.”
Stubbeman said neighboring districts could collaborate to offer these opportunities. For example, if Newport doesn’t have a class size big enough for a subject like physics, then maybe Newport could partner with a school district that does.
Calvo said that not only are there tremendous opportunities for school districts to collaborate to elevate rigor, but in a teacher shortage, two of the most needed teaching areas are math and science. He said it’s difficult to hire general math and science teachers, let alone ones for more advanced-level classes.
“It seems to me that there would be an opportunity for school districts to work together to identify teachers that could serve more than one district, especially in things like science or chemistry or biology or calculus,” Calvo said.
Watts said Newport participates in some district collaboration, but schools’ schedules must align for it to work.
He said they send kids to Covington for programs like Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps, also known as JROTC. It is a free program for high school students that teaches leadership and citizenship skills.
He said some kids from various districts also come to Newport for carpentry, business or math classes.
“We do partner with other districts when we see a need, and we can fit it in,” Watts said. “We’ve been doing that for a while.”
One measure of high-level rigor for any school district, Calvo said, is advanced placement class participation, also known as AP classes. He said there are very few AP classes in any of the river cities, though they do use dual credit. While Calvo said dual credit is a valid approach, schools should offer both types of courses.
“You’re not going to get to AP calculus unless you are in eighth-grade algebra,” Calvo said. “The question is, do school districts have the teachers and the science and text fields that they need? If they do, should they be competing for single teachers in one district? Or is there a way to actually hire teachers collectively in a way that can make sure that every kid in every district has access to that rigorous material?”
Watts said the district stopped offering AP classes because they weren’t getting enough kids in them, and when they did get them in, they weren’t passing the AP exams.
“We felt it’s better for the kids to go to the Young Scholars Program,” he said. “With the young scholar’s program, you go there for two years; you can leave with an associate’s degree. You already got 30 hours of college, and then that’ll cut down on your cost.”
College readiness
“The thing that’s accepted in Newport that is unacceptable is they’re going to take care of the kids. They’re going to feed them and make them comfortable. They’re going to go and graduate from high school. They’re going to give them a piece of paper and hope that they’re ok, but they want employment that they can turn to purpose.” Steve McCaffertyThe task force reports also highlight the 16-year history of Newport Schools’ ACT scores.
The ACT is a standardized test used for college admissions. The composite score and each test score (English, mathematics, reading, science) range from 1 (lowest) to 36 (highest). Newport’s 16-year average is 16.8, which is 2.1 points lower than that state’s average and 0.9 points lower than the NKY average.
According to the task force’s 2024 report, looking specifically at the ACT scores, Newport increased in 2022/23 to 15.6 versus the previous year’s 15.0. However, both scores are below the previous four years, when the district scored above 16 each year. The national average is north of 19, which is consistent with a score necessary to apply to college.
“At the end of the day, the academic performance is very poor,” said Schaber. “The ACT scores for the high schools are very bad. So, they’re, on average, around 16. You’re not going to get in [college] anywhere with the 16. Of course, that’s an average. They have some kids that are higher.”
Newport Schools also ranked in the orange for its graduation rate and in the red for its postsecondary readiness for the 2022-2023 school year, down from yellow in both categories the previous year.
“The thing that’s accepted in Newport that is unacceptable is they’re going to take care of the kids,” McCafferty said. “They’re going to feed them and make them comfortable. They’re going to go and graduate from high school. They’re going to give them a piece of paper and hope that they’re ok, but they want employment that they can turn to purpose.”
Transient student population
Aside from kindergarten readiness affecting students throughout their educational careers, the task force report points to another aspect of Newport’s low academics: mobile students (students who transfer in and out) within the district.
The report shows that the academic results of continuously enrolled students outpace those of mobile students. The task force’s recommendations to the district include developing additional programs for newly attending students to close the gap with mobile students quickly as they enter the school system.
Schaber said that, like starting a new job and going through an onboarding process, Newport Schools should have a system to get mobile students acclimated to the district when they come in.
“They should have something that augments these kids, understands where they are, what they need,” she said. “So, they should really be an augment program for those kids, but I couldn’t get any traction on that.”
Watts said the district uses iReady for its diagnostic assessments. When a new student enrolls, he said they try to give them the assessment to see where they are at the time of enrollment. Once they know where the student is at, they can put them in the proper services if they need help or interventions or are achieving at a higher level.
“That’s what we consider onboarding, see where they are now, and then, based on how they score, we provide those intervention services or challenging lessons if they are achieving,” Watts said. “The goal is meeting them where they are as they come in and then provide the necessary services for those students once they get here.”
According to the 2024 report, it has been hypothesized that the movement of students in and out of school districts in Northern Kentucky makes it difficult for schools to teach as effectively as they do with continuously enrolled students.
Calvo said for all schools, but especially those with high rates of transients, schools must develop an onboarding process or a thoughtful process for engaging families in relationships up front, taking the time to get to know the families, making sure that the student is settled, and getting a clear sense of where that student is.
He said that while it requires a lot of the school and is not easy to do, making that investment of time on the front end will pay meaningful dividends in the long term. Calvo said the constant flow of students in a classroom doesn’t just affect the kids who come in. It affects the whole classroom.
“It doesn’t take away the difficulty that this presents, but if you don’t have a strategy to manage it, the problems are going to be that much greater,” he said.
‘Part of the culture’
Like Schaber, Stubbeman also said that the district seemed to dismiss the education task force’s ideas regarding pre-k programs and programs for mobile students.
“When we recommended that they expand preschool and programs for mobile students, they were like, ‘We’re already doing that,’” she said. “They just kind of dismissed the suggestion because they said they were already working on that. We haven’t seen the outcome of that yet.”
McCafferty told LINK nky that he has learned over the years in dealing with Newport that it’s “part of the culture to blame the kids for the low achievement.”
“Newport has a plan to have jobs rather than do jobs,” McCafferty said.
Watts said the district does not dismiss ideas.
“I may not come out and say, ‘Yes, I like what you suggested, and we’re going to do it,’ but we look at every report that they’ve ever written,” he said. “Some of the things we’ve already implemented or are doing when they suggest it. Some of them, we may see that we feel that this might work, then some of it, we may say this is not going to work for us.”
"The data in Figure 5 supports the hypothesis indicating that Newport Independent School District must do a better job with these mobile students,” the 2024 report states. “Caution must be used as the base size is rather small (approximately 46 students per grade), and we do not know the starting proficiency levels for each of these different groups.”
Budget concerns
Aside from academics, the task force also discussed Newport School’s spending. The 2020 and 2022 reports detail the district’s finances, while the 2024 report offers a summary.
“If we look at their spending now, I looked it up on the most recent Kentucky State Report Card, and their spending is more than $30,000 per student, and that’s up 48% since our first report,” Schaber said. “So, I guess I don’t really feel listened to when we said at the very beginning, ‘You’re spending too much.’”
Schaber said she’s ok with the school spending money, but the issue is that a lot of Newport’s money is going to its central office for administration salaries.
“If you’re spending money on curriculum and kids and tutoring and pre-kindergarten all that stuff, that’s great, but they’re spending significantly more, at one point, it was more than $2 million on their central office,” Schaber said. “So that’s been a theme throughout. As a matter of fact, right now, they’re the second-highest spending district in the state.”
The $2 million Schaber refers to is highlighted in the 2022 report. The report states, “Newport, with 1,322 (1,327 as of the 2024 report) students, spends more on central office salaries than most schools, even the much larger Fort Thomas. Covington, with 3,550 students, is the exception.”
That is represented in the following table.
The report compares Newport’s central office staff (28) to Fort Thomas’s (24) but points out that Fort Thomas serves more than double the number of students. The report states that Newport’s student population has dropped “substantially” over the decade, but the number of central office staff has remained the same.
“We could have the most expensive school in the state, but I would expect us to have some of the best performance from an academic standpoint,” Schaber said.
Watts said the number of central office staff has not remained the same since he has been with the district. He said they have made some cuts to the district office.
In his cabinet, Watts said he has nine people. There are two in the curriculum department (which he said was four), one technology person, one in special education, one in food services, one director of pupil personnel, one finance officer, one faculties director and Watts’ secretary.
He said some directors have secretaries in their offices to help them with their jobs. Maintenance workers are also considered district office employees.
“We have made some cuts, and this year we’re looking at cutting some more,” Watts said. “People retire, and if we can move some duties around, we’re looking at that. We’re always looking at ways we can cut.”
The school’s budget deficit was not part of the education task force report but was a topic of conversation last fall and again in the winter. In October 2024, the district voted to transfer $1 million from its investment fund to balance a budget deficit of $937,930 before sending it for review to the Kentucky Department of Education.
The school board met during a work session on Oct. 16, 2024, to discuss the final budget before sending it for approval. The conversation was carried over from the board’s discussion at an Oct. 2, 2024, work session, where it discussed how to decrease a budget deficit of $1,963,993.
That left the district with a $425,000 contingency in its beginning balance for the following school year if it did not incur additional revenues or expenses.
In a Jan. 22 regular meeting, former Newport Independent Schools Finance Director Jennifer Hoover said the school district is now facing a $3.9 million budget deficit for the 2026 school year.
That deficit has led to tentative staffing allocations recommended by Watts at a Feb. 26 board meeting. His recommendation, approved by the school board in a 4-1 vote, included 21 position cuts across the three Newport schools. Newport Primary School would receive four cuts, Newport Intermediate School would receive eight, and Newport High School would receive nine.
Newport Teachers Association calls for ‘no confidence vote’
During the same meeting, the Newport Teachers Association called for a “no confidence” vote in Watts.
The vote shows dissatisfaction with the superintendent’s leadership and performance but has no official bearing on an administrator’s job. No board member discussed the vote of no confidence during the meeting.
Regarding the call for a vote of no confidence by the Newport Teachers Association Watts said, “I’m doing the best I can. I support the teachers. Everything we do, we try to show them that.”
Newport Teachers Association President Esther Fatsy, who has been with the district since 2005, said she was representing every teacher and staff member in the district at the meeting.
“I urge you to leave no stone unturned,” Fatsy said at the Feb. 26 meeting. “Investigate everything. We have a gifted coordinator without kids being serviced at all when cuts are made to the building levels, and no one is willing to answer the question of what is being cut at the central office. Keep in mind they’re not the ones working with students. This is not the way it should work in public schools; this is not the way we get test scores up. We need to keep teachers and support staff.”
The task force’s report recommended revising the superintendent evaluation measures. They recommend using a measurable scorecard to gauge performance and said the process needs to be more data-driven and objective.
Schaber said the current reviews are “softball” and need to get more specific and concrete on performance measurements.
“I think, if you were in a business organization, if you were a CEO, consistently for six, seven years at the bottom of the performance ladder, there would be some changes, and we haven’t seen that,” she said.
Stubbeman said she thinks the school board was receptive to a more objective superintendent evaluation.
“Some board members were receptive to that and wanted to take it back to the full board for discussion, and I do think that they did become more objective this time around,” she said.
Changing the culture
The third piece of the task forces’ reports was culture.
Kentucky conducts a survey called the “Impact Kentucky Working Conditions Survey.” It examines various aspects of culture and the working environment for teachers.
“Newport lags behind peers and the state average on some really key important things, like school climate, school leadership, student behavior, and the leader-teacher relationship,” Schaber said. “So those are four pretty important things.”
The 2024 report shows that nationally, Newport is in the 30th percentile in terms of school climate compared to other urban, low-income schools. That is up from the 10th percentile two years ago but still in the bottom third among national peers.
“They’ve improved to the 30th percentile, but it’s the 30th percentile,” Schaber said. “I don’t know how you sit there and say, ‘Oh, no, our culture is fine.’”
Regarding Figure 6, the report states that Newport performs unfavorably compared to other school districts in the region, with only Bellevue Independent having a similar number of low scores.
The 2024 report states that the impact of a poor working climate can be seen in the teacher turnover rate, which hit 32% in 2022/2023. According to the report, that number is “well above the state average” and the third highest in the region. On the flip side, the average number of years of teaching experience has slowly been increasing. The report states it can “act as a strong asset in the necessary turnaround of the district.”
The task force notes that Newport created a contract with a company called NWEA on school culture. NWEA works with educators across schools, systems and states to foster student growth and learning solutions. While the task force said the contract was a step in the right direction, they recommended the district utilize the NWEA more heavily to “enable faster and bigger improvements in the work environment.”
Schaber said that while the education task force wanted the district to bring in an external culture expert, they brought NWEA, a large company, on a $1 million contract. She said in their minds that the district would reach out to a school like the University of Cincinnati, which could have done it for around $35,000.
“Then that went nowhere and ended up firing the company,” Schaber said. “At least they brought in someone, and, you know, had an eye to it, but it didn’t go anywhere.”
Watts said NWEA changed leadership, and things fell through the cracks.
“We tried, and it didn’t work out the way we had expected,” Watts said. “So, we had to part ways. But we tried; we kept them for a couple of years, and they provided some surveys for us, gave surveys out to see where we were, and worked with our principals and leaders to try to develop strategies to get the schools moving in the right direction.”
The NWEA contract came from ESSER funds (federal grants provided to local school districts to address the learning loss and other educational needs caused by the COVID-19 pandemic), not the general fund.
Since that contract, the district hasn’t rehired a culture expert, but Watts said they have been working with consultants to work with teachers.
“Right now, we’re focusing on reading, so helping us develop some reading strategies and working with our staff, teachers, and leaders on ways to teach those strategies and to again, hopefully, see some increases in our reading scores,” he said.
The 2024 report acknowledges that while some positive cultural improvement has been seen, it is “insufficient.” The task force said optimism, level of trust, and overall working environment must be improved. Further, the task force said this change is essential to improving overall academic results.
“Kids absorb the world the adult projects them with,” Calvo said. “When a teacher is crushing it, they’re on it. The kids are going to thrive. If the teacher is stressed out, doesn’t know what they’re doing, isn’t very organized or disciplined, and is off task, the kids are going to sense that. I think school culture is, it’s hard to overstate its value. It’s directly related to the leadership in a school. The leadership in a school flow down to the teachers, to the to the families, to the students, in so many ways.”
Watts said that since he came to the district in 2020, they have focused on upping teachers’ salaries.
He said that when he came in, Newport’s average teacher salary was $55,788, and it was ranked 14th in the state. In 2024, the average teacher salary was $63,330, and Newport ranked 13th in the state.
“Now, the problem with us is that we’ve always been ranked high as far as average, but our starting teacher pay wasn’t always as good as it is now,” Watts said.
In 2020, Newport was ranked 33rd in the state for starting teacher pay of $49,238. Today, it is ranked 16th in the state for starting teacher pay of $58,100.
“We’ve done a lot to try to balance those numbers out to do our best to take care of teachers, and we’ve spent a lot of money on that every year,” Watts said.
As part of the 2024 report’s summary, the task force said, “The education task force believes that incremental or continuous improvement cannot produce the sweeping change needed to raise the culture and performance of Newport Schools.”
In 2020, the education task force stated that if results were not realized by 2025, “we would recommend a more significant change, including the possible merger with Campbell County School System.”
Now that it is 2025, task force members say that is not necessarily the best route for Newport Independent students.
Stubbeman said she thinks Newport students would get left behind if the districts merged.
“I think the needs of our students will be lost, and I think they would suffer with more barriers to education,” she said.
While Stubbeman does not favor a merge, she is for partnering with neighboring school districts like Bellevue, Dayton and Covington to see what works and what doesn’t for their districts.
Schaber also said she was not a proponent of a district merger. She said if Newport students had to consolidate in Campbell County’s buildings, they would always be on buses. Schaber also said people like having a neighborhood school.
“I think that it would be very difficult culturally as well,” she said. “I mean, the county demographics are completely different.”
McCafferty said it would take three votes from the five-person school board to shut the school district down. While McCafferty doesn’t think a merger will happen, he said it could. He pointed to Silver Grove as an example. After 108 years, the Silver Grove School Board voted 4-1 to consolidate with the Campbell County School District in February 2019.
“We put things in place, and we’re showing some gains in some areas,” Watts said. “I’m not happy with where we are overall, but we are happy with some of the gains we’re making. So, I won’t say we’re not making any increases, but we’re making increases in certain areas, and we’ve got to do a better job.”
Schaber and Newport Commissioner Ken Rechtin are in the process of building an updated education task force team with a revised mandate of identifying new and different approaches to change the effectiveness and success of how kids are educated in Newport. Schaber said all ideas will be considered with the top approaches being shared broadly.
Those interested in joining the education task force team can reach out via email at newporteducationtaskforce@gmail.com.
This story originally appeared on our partner's website LINK nky.
