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Change is in the air as about 70,000 students trek back to more than 200 schools in the Mahoning Valley beginning next week for the traditional start to an exciting new academic year. Changes in personnel, curriculum, technology, security and more await many students, staff and faculty in districts large and small.
The mission of all of them, of course, is to improve the educational climate for pre-schoolers through college students. As a result, optimism rightly abounds.
In Trumbull County, one of the biggest and most visible changes takes place at the state-of-the-art Trumbull County Career and Technical Center, where a 15,000-square-foot $6.4 million expansion is scheduled for completion. The new Industrial Technology, Career Exploration and Resource Center will feature advanced labs focused on robotics, maintenance and advanced manufacturing to prepare students for high-demand jobs in the Mahoning Valley.
In Warren, the Valley's largest school district, momentum continues to build on such successful programs as the Science of Reading and the district's cutting-edge STEM learning protocols, highlighted by its national award-winning Mobile STEM Lab serving all five district schools.
Elsewhere, Liberty Schools Superintendent Brian Knight has reported numerous cosmetic upgrades will greet incoming students. In Lakeview, an innovative dance arts curriculum will debut, thanks to a grant from the Ohio Arts Council.
Statewide, all school districts are in for change as well. The start of classes marks the first academic year in which the state's much more rigid crackdown on chronic absenteeism goes into full swing. Those policies mean school personnel must keep a much closer eye on absenteeism with aims to shift the state's focus from punishing truancy to early prevention by encouraging community collaboration to cut the state's distressingly high chronic absence rate in half by the end of the 2028-29 school year. We hope that promising goal can be achieved as high absenteeism and low academic performance tend to go hand in hand.
Also taking effect this fall are new state mandates requiring teachers in public schools to instill upon their students "good citizenship" through adherence to the so-called "Sequence of Success." That protocol for success calls for encouraging students to graduate high school, get a good job, get married and then have children. Our worries over this new mandate continue as it takes time away from core academics and upstages parental responsibilities.
Also beginning this fall, school districts can legally stock and apply overdose reversal drugs such as Naloxone. Given the rise of overdoses among teens often triggered by the lethal opioid fentanyl, this new policy should provide an extra layer of protection for young users.
Those new projects and mandates merely scratch the surface of the hodgepodge of new and innovative curricula for the 2026-27 school year in Valley school systems. Most of them demonstrate a sincere commitment to student success by talented educators and staff who far too often go grossly underrecognized.
Amid all of this hubbub and renewed school pride, however, responsibility, caution and safety must remain watchwords for all to achieve a safe and secure cruise through the school year. That means drivers must double down on the rules of the road when the sea of yellow buses returns to Valley roads. Too often, too many fail to do so.
The Ohio State Highway Patrol has recorded more than 7,100 traffic crashes involving school buses across Ohio since 2021, resulting in six fatalities. That's good reason for a new law pending Gov. Mike DeWine's signature that raises penalties for motorists who illegally pass a stopped school bus with fines up to $2,000, mandatory safety courses and potential driver's license suspension up to three years.
For their part, parents must instruct their offspring to stop and look both ways before crossing the street when exiting a bus and to be on guard for any sudden traffic.
Parental responsibility also goes beyond safety concerns. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, a direct relationship exists between parental involvement and student success. Patte Barth, director of the Center for Public Education initiative of the National School Boards Association, said such involvement is linked to "better attendance, grades, test scores and preparation for college."
With such engaged and active parents, dedicated and creative teachers and motivated and safety-conscious students, there is little reason why the 2026-27 academic year cannot meet and beat the high expectations all should set at its starting gate.