Saturday, March 31, 2001
A former board member said he is considering another run.
By RON COLE
VINDICATOR EDUCATION WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- With fiscal emergency over and the state oversight commission gone, all eyes now turn to the city school board, which will control the school system's finances for the first time in 41/2 years.
Four of the seven board members face re-election in November. John Maluso, Lock Beachum and Marilyn Gonzalez say they will run.
"All signs are up," Maluso said. "We've come out of the trough, and now isn't the time to give up."
Not running: Board member Alan Stephan, however, says he won't seek election.
Stephan, who has won high praise from fellow board members since being appointed to succeed Don L. Hanni III in September, said he may be moving out of the Youngstown area.
"I don't want to be elected to a four-year term and then have to leave," he said Friday. "I just think the board needs more stability than that."
Former board member Ron Skowron said he will consider another run.
"It's an option," he said. "That's for sure."
Skowron resigned from the board in January 2000 in exchange for dismissal of felony theft and tampering charges involving reimbursement for a bulletproof vest. He was replaced by Gonzalez.
Aug. 23 is the deadline for filing for the November election.
Stephan was a member of the state oversight commission before being appointed to the school board.
Fiscal emergency: The seven-member commission, led by the Ohio Department of Education, controlled the school system's finances since State Auditor Jim Petro declared a fiscal emergency in September 1996.
Petro lifted the emergency on Friday, returning control to the elected school board.
Petro praised the commission, as well as the school board and community, for its efforts to reduce the district's debt and get out of the emergency status.
But he cautioned that it would take just as much of a commitment to stay out of fiscal emergency.
"It's easy to slip back into old habits," he said.