Youngstown schools system can do without disruptions

While we have long URGED com- munity participation in the academic and financial rebuilding of the Youngstown City School District, we are strongly opposed to the threat by a community group to peel away a sizeable number of students just because of a perceived slight.

The ongoing effort by many sincere, committed individuals to stabilize the district’s finances and improve its academic performance is too important to be undermined by the Community High Commission led by Jimma McWilson.

At a news conference this week, McWilson said the group plans to target the district’s 1,500 lowest-performing students by asking their parents to withdraw them from schools. Such a tactic is not only irresponsible, it is short-sighted. Last month, the commission sought two meetings with the school board, but President Lock P. Beachum, a former school principal whose commitment to the city’s young people is beyond reproach, replied in a letter that Superintendent Connie Hathorn could arrange for McWilson and his group to meet with district personnel charged with academic success. Beachum’s suggestion was certainly reasonable and appropriate.

School board members don’t serve full time and certainly don’t have the expertise necessary to chart the system’s academic recovery.

So why the insistence to meet with the board?

The commission’s real intentions were made clear when McWilson said during the news conference that the power, control and money rest with the school board. What does any of that have to do with the recovery plan being developed by the state academic distress commission in conjunction with Superintendent Hathorn and his staff?

If the Community High Commission members were concerned about the welfare of the lowest performing students, they would welcome the opportunity to receive an in-depth briefing from the academic experts on plans already in place to address the weaknesses. They would also seek some insight into the proposals on the drawing board to move the district up from academic watch designation that reflects the most recent state proficiency tests scores.

It is no secret that Youngstown faces major challenges and that black students are most at risk. But nothing is to be gained by removing 1,500 students. The loss would deliver a crippling financial blow to the district.

Major losses

Indeed, Youngstown is already having to come to terms with the fact that it will lose $4 million in funding from the state because of the loss of more than 500 students, as determined by the official October enrollment count.

In the public education system in Ohio, the money follows the student. That’s why charter schools, vouchers and open enrollment have caused such upheaval in the mainline systems. Youngstown, with its systemic problems, has been especially hard hit.

The loss of the $4 million, in addition to the past reductions in state per-student funding, means Youngstown must again ride out stormy weather.

McWilson and the Community High Commission should disabuse themselves of the notion that they will be able to open a taxpayer-funded charter school. Charters have been an abject failure in Ohio and the state superintendent of instruction, Stan Heffner, would be hard-pressed to approve another one in Youngstown.