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Board president doesn’t plan to replace ADC members
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
Despite interviewing potential Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission members, the president of the city school board said there are no plans to replace the two sitting members who represent the school district.
Richard Atkinson said he has no intention “at this point in time” to replace the representatives with new members.
Last August, school-board members interviewed three potential commission appointees: Lori Shells, a Mahoning County assistant prosecutor; William Blake, director of student diversity programs at Youngstown State University; and Barbara Brothers, retired dean of YSU’s College of Arts and Sciences.
At the time, board members said there was a need for better communication. Although the board president selects appointments to the commission, all board members participated in the August interviews which were done at a board meeting.
Atkinson said all three are capable candidates, and he didn’t have a preference.
“At that point in time, we were thinking about it,” he said. “We decided other things were more important at that point in time, day-to-day things.”
Susan Moorer, coordinator of P-16 outreach and assessment at YSU, and Betty Greene, a retired city school principal who now teaches at the university, are the district’s two representatives on the board. The other three members, including the chairman, are appointed by the state superintendent of public instruction.
Greene is the only commission members who’s been on it since its 2010 establishment.
The panel was created under state law when the school district failed to make adequate yearly progress for four or more years and was designated in “academic emergency.”
The commission is charged with developing and overseeing a plan for the district’s academic recovery. That academic-recovery plan is updated annually.
The other original members either were replaced or resigned in 2011. A new state superintendent was appointed at that time, removing the original members and appointing three new ones.
Lock P. Beachum Sr., who was school-board president at that time but no longer serves on the board, selected Moorer to replace one of the board president’s original appointees but retained Greene.
Members all serve without pay.
Atkinson’s term as president expires at year’s end. The school board elects a president each January to serve for the year. Atkinson, in his second year at the helm, said he hasn’t decided whether he’ll seek the presidency for a third time.