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Youngstown district will seek reduced levy
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
City school district voters will be asked in March to renew a portion of an operating levy approved four years ago.
It’s a renewal and reduction of the 9.5-mill levy approved in 2008. That four-year measure expires in 2013.
If approved, the reduced levy will collect about $3.5 million per year for four years, a reduction from the $5.3 million that’s been collected annually since 2009.
The schools during the last four years have cut $35 million and 520 jobs and are out of fiscal emergency but without the revenue that will be generated by the reduced levy, could slip back into another deficit.
The district also is working to improve academically. The city schools academic-distress commission, the group tasked with helping the district improve student achievement and get out of academic distress, will get three new board members appointed by Stan Heffner, state superintendent of public instruction.
The Ohio Department of Education announced Tuesday that Dick Ross, retired superintendent from Reynoldsburg schools near Columbus, is the new commission chairman. He replaces Debra Mettee, Springfield schools superintendent, who announced her resignation from the panel earlier this year.
The other two new members, Michael Garvey and Adrienne O’Neill, replace Sherri Lovelace-Cameron, a Youngstown State University professor, and James Hall, retired South Range Schools superintendent.
Garvey is president of M-7 Technologies in Youngstown.
“We are grateful for the tireless efforts of Ms. Mettee and the other commissioners,” Heffner said in a news release. “The next chapter of this important work will build upon their contributions.”
O’Neill is president of Stark Education Partnership and previously served as chief education officer at Canton City Schools.
“It is essential that the Youngstown school board, the district leadership team and the commission work in partnership to implement deep changes that will give the children of Youngstown the education they need for the future,” Heffner said in the release. “The urgency to really improve and not tinker around the edges is critical to Youngstown’s success as Ohio transitions from a minimum competency system to one that is based on new, rigorous academic standards. We must move beyond what exists so our students can get and keep good jobs when they graduate.”
The five-member commission, the first in the state, includes three appointees made by the state superintendent and two by the city school-board president.
Mettee, Lovelace-Cameron and Hall had been appointed by Deborah Delisle, former state superintendent.
“I am disappointed that I will not be able to continue to serve the children of Youngstown in that role,” Hall said. “I have been heartened by the progress that we’ve seen — especially this year — toward student achievement in the Youngstown city schools, and I hope that the new commission members will have as deep a concern for the children and their welfare as the commission members who have been asked to step aside.”
Lovelace-Cameron couldn’t be reached.
Last month, Lock P. Beachum Sr., school-board president, named Susan Moorer of YSU to replace Betty Garcia, a retired teacher, on the commission. Garcia had been appointed by Anthony Catale, who was board president last year.
Betty Greene, a YSU professor, is the only original commission member still on the panel. All members are volunteers and serve without compensation.
Patrick Gallaway, an ODE spokesman, said in an email that by law, the state superintendent has the ability to select three commission members at his discretion.
Members are volunteers who meet frequently, he said.
“Superintendent Heffner thought these folks have earned a well-deserved break and thought it was a good time to ask some new people to serve,” Gallaway said in the email.