What message did voters send to Youngstown board?

A 9.5-mill levy was convincingly rejected by voters in the Youngstown City School District last week.
We believe the school district has been making progress in the face of enormous challenges, and recommended passage of the issue so that crippling of the district could be avoided.
Obviously, the voters disagreed, by a margin of about 2,000.
Youngstown public schools are struggling to meet a combination of mandates from the federal No Child Left Behind Act, state legislation and Department of Education regulations and interpretations.
The same Legislature that demands that the district meet benchmarks for improvement -- which are reasonable -- establishes a matrix of charter schools, voucher programs and open enrollment incentives that makes it virtually impossible for a large public school district to predict its enrollment from year to year -- or even within a school year.
For a snapshot of what it is like for Youngstown schools to cope with those pressures, look what happened at West Elementary. After the administration reassigned some pupils because enrollment in a number of classrooms was too small, angry parents protested to the Board of Education.
To be sure, the board and administrators have made mistakes in the past, and they may be continuing to make mistakes. But they are in an almost untenable position.
Cost of local control
One reading of Tuesday's vote could be that city residents do not value local control of the school district. As it is, local taxes are only paying about 25 percent of the cost of operation. The other 75 percent comes from the state.
The state is providing the lion's share of the money both for operations and the construction of new school buildings-- and it is establishing the standards the district must meet and encouraging the competition that is draining enrollment and complicating the logistics of running the schools.
Perhaps it is time for the state to step in. Declare bankruptcy. Abrogate the contracts that establish manpower rules, salaries or wages and benefits. Dismiss or reassign administrators, teachers, maintenance workers. Move students -- not just from classroom to classroom, but building to building -- to achieve efficiency.
Is that what the voters of Youngstown want? It is a reasonable reading of the levy vote. It falls to the board and the administration to make its case to the contrary.