This story is part of Worthington Pulse's coverage of the October 12 Board of Education meeting. Start with the October 12 meeting recap.
Worthington Schools' School Community Engagement office has replaced a paid name-pronunciation service with a tool built by its own staff, added a kindergarten-through-third-grade lesson on harmful words, and reported that attendance at this August's Back-to-School Style Drop rose to 1,102 people from 409 a year ago. Director of School Community Engagement Toya Spencer gave the board an update on the department's work at its October 12 meeting , and a permanent, year-round Style Drop store is now in planning.
Spencer said the department focuses on whether the district's culture feels safe, inclusive and supportive to its nearly 11,000 students, and on guiding its 1,400 staff members. Its work rests on a distinction between family involvement and authentic partnership. The department is developing six 20-minute professional learning sessions to be delivered to staff in the next school year. These sessions are designed to focus on cultivating authentic partnerships with families, moving beyond simple transactional involvement to build deeper trust and reliability.
Specific session topics will include "The Power of Positive Calls and Notes" and "Say My Name." Spencer noted that the "champion team" is currently putting these strategies into practice this year so they can demonstrate their effectiveness and positive impact when they are fully rolled out to the district.
Say It Right moves in-house
Say It Right is the district's tool for recording students saying their own names so staff can pronounce them correctly. The idea began in 2022 as a project proposed by three of the department's building "champions," Spencer said, because "a student's name is their identity." The district had been paying a third-party company for the service.
During the 2025-26 school year, Diana Wesley, an administrative assistant who works alongside Spencer, built a replacement platform internally. The champions piloted it for a year and gave feedback. Staff reach it through a link in the district's HelloID sign-in portal, enter a student's email and record the name with the student present, according to the department's slide deck. Each recording produces an electronic profile card with the student's photo, ID, email, school and graduation year, several of which Spencer said the paid service lacked.
More than one third of students have recorded names so far, and the department plans to have every student's name recorded by the start of winter break.
During board discussion, board member Sheena Costa Flowers said building the tool internally made more resources available to programs like it:
"There is cost optimization, there's savings, but it makes room for other things."
Neither Spencer nor the board gave a dollar figure for the savings.
Harmful-words lessons expand
The department's training on harmful words and racial slurs began in the 2024-25 school year with separate versions for staff and students. Spencer said the staff version starts from the premise that students will use slurs and bullying language, and teaches adults a "calling-in" approach built on conversation starters and practice with real scenarios. Staff leave with a sheet of about 25 ways to interrupt hurtful language.
This year the department added:
- A video-based version for kindergarten through third grade.
- A section on microaggressions for grades four and five.
- A version for English learners who are new to the country and, Spencer said, often had no context for the words they were hearing, developed with an English-learner teacher at Worthingway Middle School.
Spencer said the student lesson on the N-word itself does not begin until middle school. The lesson's original form is an open resource from the Anti-Defamation League written for high school students, which the champions adapted for younger ages.
The department's slide deck lists district leadership, teachers, new teachers, support staff and bus drivers as groups that have completed the staff training. Spencer said the content has been customized with the transportation department for bus drivers, with sessions at the district's support-staff professional development day. This year's support-staff day was Friday, October 16, a non-school day for students.
Asked whether the lessons would reach high school, Spencer said the department is "absolutely open to having this conversation" but would likely frame it around relationships and employability. She said there has been no specific request from high schools, and that much of the department's work responds to what principals report hearing.
Spencer also described a Worthingway student who, asked how he interrupts hurtful language, said he tells people "yo, chill on that." The school made a water-bottle sticker and T-shirt from the phrase.
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Style Drop and Family Resource Fair
This year's Back-to-School Style Drop, where families pick up clothing, coats and shoes for free, ran for two days, and the Family Resource Fair took place alongside it on Saturday morning for the first time. Last year they were separate events.
The department's comparison of this year's Style Drop with last year's. Source: School Community Engagement presentation to the Board of Education, Oct. 12, 2026, page 20.
According to the department's slide deck, results compared with last year were:
- Style Drop attendance: 1,102 people, up from 409.
- Resource Fair attendance: 547 people, according to the deck.
- Clothing and other items given away: more than 15,500, up from just under 5,000.
- Community partners: eight, up from five, according to the deck.
Spencer said the clothing came from donations, including the district's first district-wide clothing drive in March. The department also surveyed attendees and volunteers; she read comments describing the event as organized and a "judgment-free zone."
Spencer said a permanent, year-round Style Drop store is in the works as one of her board goals, and that the district is still working out staffing and hours. Board President Amber Epling-Skinner asked whether the August event would continue once a store exists. Spencer said she expects both, because the Style Drop is tied to the Family Resource Fair and the two serve different purposes.
Other programs
- Ms. Toya Reads, which began in 2020 with an anonymous donation of children's books, has produced 103 recorded read-aloud videos; this year's theme is "keeping it kind."
- Superintendent's Advisory Council, or VibeCheck, the district's standing student feedback sessions at both high schools, is in its second year using the same group of students over the full year. Spencer said the format has produced more honest feedback. Board member Kelli Davis asked the department to keep checking that the group includes a range of student voices.
- Building champions are 40 educators across the district who coordinate Say It Right and the harmful-words training in their buildings and write a "building plan" with their principal.
- The cultural guide, a month-by-month list of observances with links for teachers, was redesigned this summer and is currently an internal document. Spencer said the department has discussed posting it publicly.
What the board asked for
Board members were broadly complimentary and made a few specific requests. Board member Nikki Hudson asked when the 20-minute sessions would take place, and Davis asked whether board members could listen in. Davis also asked that what the department learns about family engagement be folded into the board's goal updates, which come three times a year, or presented at a work session. Epling-Skinner encouraged Spencer to seek national conference speaking slots and to work with Director of Communications Vicki Gnezda on media pitches.
This story comes from the October 12 Board of Education meeting recap.