The State Superintendent of Public Instruction made a trip to Muskingum County Wednesday morning to visit a local community school that serves many districts in the area.

Three local superintendents, along with State Superintendent of Public Instruction Paolo DeMaria and other school officials gathered at Foxfire Wednesday morning to discuss what Foxfire does to help students from various districts, as well as struggles that Foxfire and other districts in Appalachian Ohio face.

“There’s something about rural Ohio where there’s a commitment to education and the importance of education and a strong work ethic and a collegiality,” DeMaria said. “I love the fact that we had in this room three superintendents from three different districts that all have a shared interest in creating an excellent educational opportunity for their students and who support the work happening here at Foxfire in a way that is mutually advantageous.”

DeMaria has been the state superintendent since 2016 and serves about 3,600 schools in the state with a combined 1.7 million students, according to his government profile.

During his visit to the local community school, which serves eight counties and 18 school districts, DeMaria received a tour of the facility, heard about the programs currently at Foxfire, as well as future plans for the school.

An observation that DeMaria quickly made was the support that Foxfire had from local districts. He said it’s rare for districts to work together with community school as opposed to acting like competitors.

“Here it seems that there’s an understanding that this school is successful in addressing the needs of certain types of students, and to the extent that those students are better served here than some other some far away place,” DeMaria said.

Superintendent of Foxfire Schools Todd Whiteman said his school works diligently with other districts to make sure everyone is “winning,” especially the children.

“We truly do work together to do what’s best for the kids,” Whiteman said.

West Muskingum Local Schools Superintendent Chad Shawger echoed Whiteman’s comment stating that Foxfire is there to help at-risk students in other districts.

“I love that so many districts are involved,” DeMaria said as he made the observation that each district could not independently serve at-risk students with as much success as Foxfire who is dedicated to at-risk youth and those who may drop out or already have dropped out of school.

Superintendent of Tri-Valley Local Schools Mark Neal said his district, like many other districts that feed into Foxfire, does not have the resources for its own drop out recovery and prevention program. Neal added that if Foxfire was not an option in the community, many students who attend the school would have to go elsewhere for education.

Foxfire originally began as a program through Maysville Local Schools. It has since blossomed into its own school and left Maysville. Despite the breakaway, Superintendent Ruth Zitnik of Maysville Local Schools expressed her frustration to DeMaria about state report cards.

Due to possible missed deadlines and poor communication between the state and local school districts, Zitnik said Foxfire missed its dropout prevention and recovery status, which led to the school’s academic report card falling onto Maysville’s report card.

While Zitnik said that Foxfire serves many at-risk youth, she was displeased with Foxfire’s report card being reflected on her school district given the struggles of the students in the school, as well as the that fact that the students at Foxfire come from 18 different school districts.

With Foxfire’s scores on Maysville’s report card, Zitnik said her last year report card is “fictitious” and does not represent the efforts of her district.

Elaborating on Zitnik’s frustrations, Whiteman said progress at Foxfire does not look the same as progress made at a traditional school. He gave the example of an 8th grade student coming in at a 1st grade reading level— if that student gets up to a 3rd grade reading level by the end of the year, that’s progress despite the student still being unable to read at the 8th grade level.

Another example he provided pertained to children with behavioral issues, which Whiteman said is a majority of the students in kindergarten through 8th grade at Foxfire. Whiteman said progress in those classrooms can be strictly based on function by taking a child who goes to extremes to act out in class and by the end of the year having that same student sit at their desk through a whole class, that’s also progress.

“There’s already statutes on the books that recognize that some students that are of that variety that may be more at-risk for dropping out and that we, that always the best strategy for students like that is to be preventative, keep them from dropping out,” DeMaria said in response to the report card concerns. “Although, sometimes once they do drop out the idea is to bring them back in, so that’s where the dropout recovery part of the dropout prevention and recovery comes from. So the statute recognizes those and has tried to create the conditions where schools like Foxfire can exist and succeed and still be attentive to the quality of the experience.”

Foxfire High School has since been categorized as a dropout prevention and recovery school through the Ohio Board of Education.