School board takes issue with union’s proposal

By Harold Gwin

The union said it brought the cutback issue to the board, but the board didn’t act.

YOUNGSTOWN — The city school board president took a dim view of the district’s teachers union asking the state fiscal oversight commission to consider some specific job cuts to reduce district spending.

“I am disappointed in the action taken by you, on behalf of the Youngstown Education Association, to issue a letter to the state commission suggesting the elimination of four specific personnel positions without even attempting to discuss the suggestion with the local board of education,” Anthony Catale wrote in an April 10 letter to Will Bagnola, YEA president.

“The district administration and local board is where any reduction plan originates,” Catale wrote, suggesting that the YEA letter was “nothing more than an attempt to undermine any positive working relationship the board and YEA had established.”

He said the union “blatantly attempted to bypass any possibility of board consideration on the proposed suggestion.”

Bagnola said the letter sent to the oversight commission didn’t include information that the YEA hadn’t already presented to the school board.

The YEA, in an executive session with the board in May 2008, proposed that the board look at all areas for possible job reductions, not just teachers, Bagnola said. A couple of the specific jobs mentioned in the letter to the commission were part of that discussion, he said.

The board didn’t act on the suggestions, he said, adding, “We did what we did after we gave them a chance.”

Youngstown was placed under fiscal emergency by the state in November 2006 after the district announced it was running a general fund deficit. The state created a fiscal oversight commission to control district spending while Youngstown seeks to return to fiscal solvency.

Bagnola said his letter only asked the commission to look at the positions of district ombudsman, manager of community partnerships, enrollment coordinator at Choffin Career & Technical Center and accountant in the treasurer’s office as possible places to cut spending.

The salaries for those posts total about $217,000 a year and that’s the equivalent of four teachers, Bagnola said.

“It’s not just about teacher jobs, it’s about student learning. We need teachers in the classrooms, working with kids,” he said, pointing out that some of the administrative and administrative support positions recently renewed by the school board are far from the classroom.

The oversight commission pointed out that three of the four posts mentioned in the YEA letter are funded with federal Title 1 and other grant money and can’t be diverted to regular classroom teacher salaries, a position Catale also pointed out in his letter to Bagnola.

The accountant’s post is the only general fund job, and the treasurer is currently examining staffing levels in his office, both Catale and the commission said.

Bagnola said it is his understanding that federal Title 1 funds can be used to pay for some teaching positions in remedial math and reading, adding that the ombudsman and manager of community partnerships are Title 1 posts.

Youngstown has cut some 450 jobs over the last several years, with about 220 of them being teaching positions. The district is looking at another 77 more cuts next fiscal year, with 31 of them being teaching jobs.

gwin@vindy.com