Y-town BOE president takes on community activist

YOUNGSTOWN

The president of the Youngstown Board of Education lashed out at a critic Tuesday, accusing the man of uttering “false innuendos and propaganda in order to advance his politically motivated agenda.”

President Anthony Catale spoke during a regular school board meeting, taking Jimma McWilson of the Community High Commission On Closing the Academic Standards Achievement Gap for Afrikan Students in the Youngstown City Schools to task for a letter McWilson sent to Mayor Jay Williams this week notifying him that the commission would be organizing protests, demonstrations and boycotts.

McWilson’s letter said the group plans to attack what it sees as the practice of structural racism endorsed by the school board.

In particular, the group is challenging the district’s proposal to open a program for students in seventh through ninth grade who are failing two or more subjects, and the placing of that program in the new Wilson Middle School now under construction on the city’s South Side.

The group also takes exception to the school being named for President Woodrow Wilson, arguing that, although Wilson has been credited with great accomplishments, he was racist.

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