Superintendent briefs board: enrollment ticking up, staffing gaps persist; transportation plans and security staffing outlined for school opening

Superintendent Tammy Murphy and senior staff briefed the board on Aug. 4 about school-opening readiness across enrollment, staffing, transportation and building security. Enrollment: Murphy said fall enrollment is slightly ahead of projections for grades 1–12 but that preschool and kindergarten lag typical patterns at this point in the calendar. Jeremy Gallo (district enrollment data) told the board the district had recorded “an increase of about 350 just since last Wednesday,” and staff said centralized enrollment centers have been busy with families. Staffing: Human-resources staff reported that most teachers affected by summer reductions-in-force (RIF) have been offered positions in their licensure areas. The district emphasized pipeline hires; the board heard that 13 recent graduates from the University of Cincinnati SHINE program entered with special-education credentials and were hired. The district continues to face chronic shortages in traditionally hard-to-staff subjects such as high school math, high school science and certain intervention specialist roles. Paraprofessional vacancies remain “quite a few” and are being prioritized for compliance-level assignments (one-on-one aides and IEP-required roles) before other overload duties. Clerical hiring follows civil-service rules and a clerical resource team will be available for rapid deployment to schools that report vacancies. Transportation: Chief Burkhart said House Bill 110 added eight nonpublic/charter schools to the district’s routing list late in June; the district said it had completed routing for all students by Aug. 1. The policy requires districts to make “every effort” to transport those students on the first day and limits drop-off/pick-up windows to 30 minutes before/after the school day. The board heard that the district will provide Metro cards for scheduled seventh- and eighth-grade riders; cards will be printed for all assigned students and distributed at orientations or on the first day so actual ridership can be tracked early in the year. Board members raised a sibling-policy question: the district reported it had identified over 600 students who are siblings in the same household where one sibling’s assignment used Metro routing and another used a yellow bus. District staff warned that adding all those siblings back onto district buses would erase anticipated savings and could require deploying dozens of additional buses; “each bus costs us roughly a $100,000,” a staff speaker said as a planning estimate. Security: A deputy gave a staffing and training report and said the district has improved security training and placements; the board saw a school-by-school position list and the deputy said about 15 vacancies remain across high schools and other sites but that interviews and background checks were in progress. Next steps: Administration said it will continue weekly and near-real-time routing updates during the start-of-school period; Metro partnership staff will attend school open houses and district pop-up events to answer parent questions; and the board asked staff to provide school-level enrollment and sibling-routing data and a middle-school engagement plan ahead of the opening.