Kirtland superintendent highlights school safety, budget management in State of the

Kirtland Schools Superintendent Chad VanArnhem recently took note of the progress his district has been able to make in focusing on personalized learning and school safety despite the coronavirus pandemic.

VanArnhem made those comments in a recent State of The Schools address hosted by the Willoughby Western Lake County Chamber of Commerce.

He said that the four main pillars of the district’s strategic plan that was developed a couple years ago are personalized learning for students, a safe environment, well-managed finances and community engagement.

VanArnhem  said that the pandemic emphasized not only how important the personalized learning aspect is, but how the district can adapt to reach out and meet students where they are at. He said that district staff have found that teaching soft skills and critical thinking from a young age is of great importance to families.

“When we talk to staff and students and parents [and ask] when they graduate from the Kirtland schools, what do you want them to know? And no one ever says, I want them to know all the elements on a periodic table. It’s not rote memorization,” he said.

“What we’re moving towards is making sure that when students walk out in 12th grade from the Kirtland Schools, that they’re able to collaborate well, they can solve problems, and are critical thinkers,” he added. “So we’re shifting a lot of our process. And this goes all the way down to kindergarten.” 

When it comes to enrollment numbers, VanArnhem said Kirtland has remained stable, despite a slight downward trend overall in Northeast Ohio. Next year the district is looking at 481 students in the elementary school, 263 in middle school and 399 in high school. 

“We usually fluctuate between 1,100 to 1,200 students [total],” he said, “So we’re pretty stable as far as that goes.”

VanArnhem noted that last year Kirtland Schools kicked off the “Excite, Explore, Engage” program, which exposes students in sixth through 12th grades to a variety of different career choices for them to explore. He said they brought in various speakers from the community to teach the students about different fields.

The program also utilized a website called Thrively, which is designed to help students identify what their passions are in order to be more successful. 

Unfortunately, VanArnhem said, the program was brought to a halt last spring due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, he said, they intend to start back up in the 2021-22 school year. 

“I think when you let kids see these different career fields, and they say, ‘Hey, if you want to do what I’m doing, here’s the classes that are important and what you need to start doing.’ Then there’s an understanding of the connection between school and furthering your education, and the career they want to go in,” he said, “So this is something we’re really going to pick up steam with next year.”

The superintendent added that while Kirtland has a high rate of students that attend college after graduation, not as many stay for the whole duration as he would like to see. And, that is one of the key reasons why they are trying to personalize students’ exposure to other career opportunities.

“We have 95 percent of our kids going to college right now. But at the same time, I believe we’re closer to 65 percent that finish like even year one,” he said. “So there’s some work to be done there.” 

Campus and student safety has also been a recent priority, he added, and over the past year and a half they have been able to reconstruct the entrances of both the middle and high school to have a “bullpen area” that prevents anyone who walks in from having immediate access to the entire campus. 

They also installed a new PA system, which allows administrators to have access to make announcements throughout campus buildings if there is an emergency, and lock the buildings down from each other if necessary.

“The other thing that we think is very important safety-wise is that we have quarterly meetings with our safety forces, our fire police chief, and our building nurses, to make sure we’re not missing anything and continue to get better in these areas,” VanArnhem said.

Improving safety in the buildings, staff payroll, and the addition of all the extra measures the district took to ensure students could safely come back to school amid the pandemic takes a lot of funding, he said. 

Kirtland Schools’ total expenses are just over $14 million, VanArnhem said, and much of that is wrapped up in paying personnel. He said they try to be as conservative with their finances as possible, since the district does not receive much state or federal funding, and the majority of their yearly budget is funded by taxpayers. 

He explained that since they are a small district, they have been able to make cuts and share services with a lot of other districts to curb expenses, but he anticipates that they will be facing a deficit in roughly the next year. 

“Our goal in our district is to not have an increase in more than 2.5 percent from the previous year in our spending,” he said, “We do everything we can to stick to that and still maintain those other areas of education.”