Youngstown BOE members rack up $15K in meeting pay so far in 2014

YOUNGSTOWN

City school board members have met 20 times this year including regular and special sessions, racking up more than $15,000 in payments to members less than halfway through the year.

Under board policy, each of the seven board member earns $125 per meeting he or she attends.

Richard Atkinson, board president, said board members have discussed the idea of not getting paid for some meetings in light of the district’s financial problems.

“We’d just call it and say it’s a nonpaying meeting,” he said.

In 2011, the state auditor’s office released the district from fiscal emergency status, a label it carried for more than four years. That followed an earlier fiscal emergency designation, which lasted from 1996 to 1999.

That recent bad financial history makes some board members particularly cautious.

Regular meetings are scheduled twice monthly and special meetings — those for which a specific purpose must be identified — have been called for reasons including the superintendent’s evaluation and discussion about high school principals’ salary, school discipline and other topics.

Atkinson said the board calls a lot of special meetings because the regular meetings don’t provide ample time to address everything members want to talk about.

Warren, the only other relatively large urban school district in the Mahoning Valley, pays its school board members $80 per month, regardless of the number of times members meet.

Read more about the matter in Thursday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.