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Cincinnati Public Schools unveils monthly instructional dashboard; board asks for school‑level and attendance detail
Summary
Cincinnati Public Schools presented a new monthly instructional dashboard showing enrollment, referrals and early benchmark data; board members pressed for school‑level drilldowns, attendance (not just enrollment), clear summaries for parents and website improvements before public rollout.
Cincinnati Public Schools on Nov. 10 unveiled a new instructional dashboard the district will publish monthly to provide at‑a‑glance data on enrollment, discipline referrals and benchmark progress.
Superintendent April Murphy introduced the tool at the board meeting at Evanston Academy and said the dashboard is intended to let board members and the public quickly access current figures. Assistant Superintendent Sierra Badgett walked the board through October figures, reporting district enrollment at 33,887 and 5,751 discipline referrals for October, and showed fall benchmark snapshots for reading, math and science.
Board members welcomed the transparency but asked for changes before broad public release. Board member Craig urged a school‑by‑school drilldown and links from school pages so parents choosing schools can compare programming and usage. President Moffatt and others said enrollment alone can be misleading and asked the dashboard to prioritize attendance and chronic‑absenteeism measures. “Enrollment doesn’t mean that they’re coming — attendance means that they are,” Moffatt said during discussion.
Other requests included a short, plain‑language synopsis to interpret the numbers for the public, regular standardized reporting dates (so month‑to‑month comparisons are consistent), inclusion of staffing and finance highlights, and metrics showing whether the community and staff are using the tool. Vice President Bolton recommended redesigning the homepage to make the dashboard easier to find and suggested limiting the dashboard to a manageable list of high‑priority indicators for general users.
Administrators said the first public version is slated for December, with monthly updates thereafter; some data (third‑grade reading, winter benchmarks) will arrive on different schedules. The board asked staff to return with school‑level attendance measures, a plan for parental access, and proposals for integrating the dashboard with the district’s resource‑mapping and report‑card themes. The district said it will solicit and incorporate board feedback before making the dashboard broadly available.
