NAACP president says Hathorn will be alright

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The president of the NAACP’s Youngstown chapter isn’t sorry that city schools Superintendent Connie Hathorn is leaving the district.

When announcing his resignation last week, Hathorn called out George Freeman Jr., president of the Youngstown Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and Jimma McWilson, a leader of the Community High Commission, saying they tried to undermine his work in working to improve the schools.

Freeman, at a January NAACP news conference, said that Hathorn and Doug Hiscox, deputy superintendent of academic affairs, should be replaced because of the district’s lack of academic progress.

He said Tuesday that people asked him how he could not support a superintendent who was good for the school system.

“I said, ‘How can you say he’s a great person in charge of the school system when they’re rated at the bottom of the barrel?’” Freeman said.

Student test scores haven’t improved significantly during Hathorn’s tenure, he said.

Hathorn has accepted a position as superintendent of Watson Chapel Schools in Pine Bluff, Ark. His resignation in Youngstown is effective June 30. He’ll earn about $142,000 annually in the roughly 3,000-student Arkansas district.

After he retired and was rehired in 2013, Hathorn’s salary was reduced to about $119,000 and he was allowed to begin to draw on his retirement.

“I’m glad for him,” Freeman said. “He’s going to be all right. He’s making an additional $22,000 a year, and he’s going home.”

Freeman’s comments Tuesday came at a news conference between the NAACP and the Youngstown Education Association, the city schools teachers’ union.

The two groups say they want to work together to achieve family-school-community partnership and restorative justice. Restorative justice is a practice to reduce suspensions, expulsions and other discipline issues.