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Kasich: Local businesses could save Youngstown school system
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Ohio Gov. John Kasich talks with members of The Vindicator’s editorial board Tuesday.
YOUNGSTOWN
Gov. John Kasich said the failing Youngstown school district is “my great concern” in the Mahoning Valley, but assistance from the local business community could save it.
Kasich, a Republican, said he’s enlisted the help of state Rep. Sean O’Brien of Bazetta, D-63rd, and their mutual friend, Thomas Humphries, president and chief executive officer of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, to talk with business leaders and develop recommendations for improving the district, and the state will do whatever it can to implement a plan.
“If it’s going to reform these schools, we’ll do anything we can to help and support it and get it through” the state Legislature, Kasich said Tuesday during a 90-plus-minute meeting with The Vindicator’s editorial board.
“I am somewhat optimistic we’re going to see a [group] of business leaders, community leaders get together to begin to address this for the first time,” he said.
The Youngstown School District Academic Distress Commission was appointed four years ago after the school district failed to meet adequate yearly progress for four consecutive years on the state report card. Youngstown school board officials have complained repeatedly that the commission ignores them.
O’Brien said there has been some preliminary meetings with business leaders about the school system.
“I agreed to assist with what I can,” O’Brien said. “I would help out any school I could.”
The first meeting between Kasich and the newspaper’s editorial board in more than four years, when he was a candidate, went in numerous directions with him spending a lot of time telling stories about experiences he’s had as governor.
Kasich is facing Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald, a Democrat, in the Nov. 4 election. FitzGerald’s campaign has been plagued by numerous problems including revelations that he didn’t have a regular driver’s license for a decade, the loss of key members of his campaign staff, a struggle to raise money and trailing in every poll.
Lauren Hitt, FitzGerald’s campaign spokeswoman, said Kasich is refusing to debate FitzGerald because when he “is forced to speak on his feet he reveals his disdain for working Ohioans, and he is unable to defend his record of helping his wealthy friends at the expense of the middle class.”
Kasich said, “There were some offers made that were turned down and then we sat back and watched an implosion.”
He added: “You’ve watched this thing and I think you know the reason why it doesn’t serve” any purpose. “I see there is no gain from” debating FitzGerald.
Jo Ann Davidson, former Ohio speaker of the House who negotiated with FitzGerald’s campaign on debates on behalf of Kasich, said the two sides were “well on our way” to an agreement, but the Democrat’s team wouldn’t commit and then gave an ultimatum.
As for any potential debates, Davidson said, “It’s over and not coming back. We’ll now move on.”
Hitt said, “There was never any offers made,” and even after “we made all concessions for any date, time, location and format, they couldn’t come to a decision. It wasn’t worthy of their time.”
When asked about right to work in Ohio, Kasich said, “It’s not on my list of priorities,” and “right now, in Ohio, we have a good relationship between business and labor. I don’t see any reason to disrupt that.”
Hitt said Kasich “flatly refuses to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and until he does Ohioans should be concerned.”
Kasich said he’d be open to “some reasonable proposal” to increase the federal minimum wage “that I thought would protect kids. I wouldn’t have a problem with that.”
Hitt said Kasich’s response shows he has no idea that there are families who have to live on the minimum wage.
“To think it’s just kids working at Dairy Queen after school [who] live on the minimum wage is a gross understatement,” she said.
As for a potential 2016 presidential run, Kasich said, “Honestly, I just don’t see it,” and joked about not wanting to go to Iowa, a state with a key early presidential caucus.