Grass-roots group: Hold parents responsible for problem students

By Harold Gwin

The committee was formed, in part, as a response to the commission’s concerns about how the district handles suspensions.

Creating another charter school won’t help the district, the board president said.

YOUNGSTOWN — If city schoolchildren who are repeat disciplinary offenders are a problem for the school district, perhaps their parents should start a charter school to get them out of the city system.

That’s an “alternative” to the school district considering placing those children in an alternative school setting, Jimma McWilson told the city school board Tuesday.

It would put the responsibility for correcting the behavior of those children back on the parents where it belongs, said McWilson, a member of the Community High Commission on Closing the Academic Standards Achievement Gap for Afrikan Students in the Youngstown City Schools.

McWilson said his organization will be consulting with parents of suspended students on their possible use of state vouchers to send their children to private schools, enrolling them in existing charter schools or working to start their own charter school.

He was responding to a Vindicator story last week about an ad hoc committee recently set up to review the district’s student disciplinary policies and determine if they are being fairly and evenly enforced. Creating an alternative school setting is something the committee is discussing.

The commission, a grass-roots group seeking to be an equal partner in the education of its children, has set up a hot line for parents of suspended city-school students to call, McWilson said. He added that his organization will continue to look at the fairness of those suspensions, some of which he characterized as discriminatory and racially motivated.

He told the board that the commission will file requests for an investigation of the school district’s suspension practices with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education.

Instead of just suspending children for behavior issues and then sending them back to the classroom without having that behavior corrected, the district should call in the parent and send the child home with the parent to work with counselors and others to correct the behavior before the child is allowed back in the classroom, McWilson said.

That correction should occur at home with the teacher assigning the appropriate homework so the child stays abreast of his or her school work, he said.

Louis Muhammad, another commission member, said the district’s consideration of an alternative school setting is disappointing and suggested that it would do little more than create a prison pipeline for students whose behavior isn’t corrected.

He also said the commission was disappointed that it wasn’t asked to be involved with the ad hoc committee. When will the district start a process to deal with teachers who fail their students, he asked.

Creating an alternative school “is unacceptable to us,” Muhammad said, adding that the commission will mobilize the community to oppose it.

Anthony Catale, school board president, pointed out that the ad hoc committee has only met twice and is in the beginning stages of its work. It was appointed by the superintendent and includes a wide range of stakeholders, he said. There are no recommendations yet, and the alternative school is just one issue being discussed, he said.

One of the reasons the committee was formed was in response to the commission’s concerns about how the district handles suspensions.

He took exception to the suggestion that parents might be encouraged to form a new charter school. That’s not working with the school district but is an effort to take students out of the district, he said.

gwin@vindy.com