MANSFIELD — Stephanie Massey said she wants the community to know great things are happening at Mansfield Middle School.
One of her goals as the school’s incoming principal is to share those success stories.
“I want to focus on making student success more visible,” Massey said. “All we hear in the community are all the negative things. So I want to put the positive things in the forefront and start celebrating that.
“We have an outstanding athletic team. We have a lot of new teachers coming in who seem to be enthusiastic about teaching. We have a great staff that we’re putting together administratively, so I’m excited about the changes,” she said.
The Mansfield City Schools board of education voted during a special board meeting Tuesday to hire Massey as the next middle school principal. She will succeed Whitney Glorioso, who resigned last month to take a job in another district.
Massey is a third generation graduate of Mansfield City Schools. Her mother, Jean Massey, is a retired teacher.
Massey graduated from Mansfield City Schools in 1996 and went on to earn master’s degrees in special education and educational administration.
She worked at Dayton Public Schools for seven years, then spent a decade at Nashville Public Schools in Tennessee, where she served as a preschool special education coordinator.
“I’ve taught from Pre-K all the way to GED,” Massey said. “I’ve had students as young as four, and I’ve had a student as old as 88.”
Massey moved back home to Mansfield in 2019 to be closer to family. She’s worked for Mansfield City Schools since then, most recently as a middle school English language arts teacher.
District Supt. Stan Jefferson said he was confident Massey would be a tremendous asset to students, staff and the school community as the middle school’s next principal.
“Miss Massey brings to the district a tremendous amount of instructional leadership and a commitment to student success, and she has a vision for fostering a very positive school culture,” Jefferson said during Tuesday’s board meeting.
Massey said fostering a positive school culture is important to her.
“I want to make it a place where children want to learn, teachers want to teach and everybody is walking in a spirit of excellence,” she said. “It’s important to me that our school does well, that our scores increase.”
Mansfield Middle was the only school in the district that did not meet state standards last year, earning two stars (out of five) on its Ohio School Report Card.
Massey said she wants the community to know that the school staff cares — and that the school needs their support.
“We’re going to do our best, but we do need time,” she said. “Give us grace, as we will give your children grace when they enter into the building.”
School board approves iReady, Edgenuity contracts totaling more than $163k
The board also approved several contracts for software services and support personnel.
The first contract was a $33,607.60 contract with Edgenuity. Chief Academic Officer Stephen Rizzo said the contract was a renewal and the cost did not increase from the previous contract.
Another $129,412.50 contract was for i-Ready, an online assessment tool Rizzo said helps the district meet testing requirements from the Ohio Department of Education.
Those include dyslexia screening, alternative standardized assessment for the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, High-Quality Student Data (HQSD), pre-screening and identification for gifted students, a K-3 Third Grade Reading Guarantee Diagnostic and a K-3 Math Diagnostic.
iReady is also one of several tools the district uses for intervention in math and reading for students who need extra support.
“Students are provided adaptive personalized lessons based on the assessments,” Rizzo said. “Our iReady subscription also includes Teacher Toolbox, which offers a searchable library of lessons to support whole group or small group instruction.”
Rizzo said the tools are used by both students and staff, who can access the tools from district-issued Chromebooks for students and Windows laptops for teachers.
“For staff, these tools offer instructional resources and data about student strengths and areas that need improvement,” Rizzo said in an email to Richland Source.
“For students, the tools provide extra practice and personalized/adaptive learning.”
Edgenuity’s parent company, Imagine Learning, provides online courses aligned with state standards, Rizzo said. The courses are offered to students in special situations including home instruction, those who need credit recovery, students at Hedges or those who want to take advantage of credit flexibility.
“We try to provide as much in-person learning as possible, but some situations warrant an individualized plan,” Rizzo said.
Rizzo said both contracts are for the 2026-2027 school year and will include support and professional development from the vendor.
Board approved contractors include safety specialists, administrative support
The board approved two agreements with the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center. They include the employment of Kevin Uhde for student support services and Tawny Rodriguez as an administrative support specialist. Both are 260 day positions.
The district will pay NCOESC for both contracts. Uhde’s contract is not to exceed $85,704.44 and Rodriguez’s contract is not to exceed $101,449.28. Both contracts include all salary and benefits costs and will be invoiced monthly.
Lastly, the board approved a service agreement with Renhill Group for safety specialists. The agreement did not include a price.
“Safety Specialists are contracted employees who monitor building safety issues and building access,” treasurer Tammy Hamilla said.
“They monitor the metal detectors at building entrances and at Arlin Field during games. They assist building staff with the intervention and resolution of student conflicts should they occur. They work every day that students are in the building and at athletic events on a rotational basis as needed.”
Hamilla said the agreement with Renhill did not include a listed cost because the district sets the rates it pays safety specialists.
“This isn’t really contracts per se. This is just services that they’ll provide to us,” she said. “What (Renhill) used to do was kind of strictly just payroll services. Now they’ve agreed to do a little bit of training and recruitment and providing substitutes if we want.”
Hamilla said the money the district spends varies year to year, depending on the number of specialists employed and how many athletic events they work. The district paid $204,935.00 for safety specialists during the 2025-2026 school year.
