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UPDATE | More oppose Youngstown Plan but not Canton Chamber
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The din of opposition to the Youngstown Plan is growing louder.
Several speakers at a meeting Tuesday thanked the city school board for filing a lawsuit last week to stop the plan, which calls for a chief executive officer to operate and manage the school district.
About 50 people attended the session. The twice-monthly meetings typically draw no more than a handful of attendees.
“The Youngstown Plan has to be challenged,” said the Rev. Kenneth Simon, pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church.
He said the way the plan was done was illegal and underhanded “and the plan itself is not really a plan.”
The school system needs to be fixed, the Rev. Mr. Simon acknowledged, but he says the Youngstown Plan isn’t the way to do it.
“The plan is not about the children in the first place,” Mr. Simon said. “It’s about taking away local control. It’s about money.”
Mr. Simon also sits on the Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission. That panel would be dissolved under the Youngstown Plan and a new commission appointed in its place.
The new commission would include three members appointed by the state superintendent of public instruction, one by the mayor and the fifth, who must be a teacher, appointed by the school board.
The newly constituted commission would appoint a state-paid CEO to run the school district. That CEO would have broad authority, including the power to hire and fire administrators, reopen contracts and change failing schools into charters.
The lawsuit filed by the school board last week – and joined by the Youngstown teachers and classified employees unions, the Ohio teachers union and a city voter – seeks to have the new law declared unconstitutional and invalid.
Brenda Kimble, board president, also announced the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce had passed a resolution supporting the Youngstown board’s fighting the plan.
But this morning, the vice president for public policy at the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce said that organization has not endorsed the Youngstown School Board’s effort against the Youngstown Plan.
“I have no idea where this came from,” said David Kaminski. “We have not discussed this. There’s been no vote at the board, no vote at the education committee. It hasn’t even been a topic for us except maybe in some casual conversation.”
Brenda Kimble, Youngstown school board president, announced that the Canton Chamber had supported the board’s filing a lawsuit to stop the Youngstown Plan, the law that would allow a chief executive officer to be appointed to manage and operate the Youngstown schools.
“This is out of whole cloth,” Kaminski said.
Larry Ellis, president of the Youngstown Education Association, the teachers union, said the unions and school board joining together in the lawsuit shows those members of the community are on the same side.
“No plan can happen if you don’t have stakeholders who are in the trenches at the table,” he said.
The Rev. Robin Woodberry, whose son graduated in June from Chaney, also opposes the schools plan. “It’s not a benefit to our children,” she said. “It’s not a benefit to our community.”
The Rev. Mrs. Woodberry, assistant pastor at New Bethel, urged board members to work together to improve the school district. For too many years, some board members worked on their own agendas.
That made it easy for those who developed the Youngstown Plan to move it in, she said.
“Let our children be the focus of what needs to happen,” Mrs. Woodberry said. “Give them the education they need.”
Lois Williams, another resident, sees a problem with transparency and checks and balances with the CEO and the new commission. “How is a CEO going to be kept in check by the people he works for?” she said.
In other business, the board approved a two-year contract for Milton A. Walters who will be the assistant superintendent/human resources. Walters will earn $109,000 annually.
The new position consolidates the duties of the deputy superintendent for academic affairs and the assistant superintendent of human resources.
Those individuals left the district for other employment.
Treasurer James Reinhard estimated the consolidation would save the district about $150,000 per year including salary and benefits.
Walters of Silver Spring, Md., is an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and Montreat College in North Carolina and managing business consultant.
He was one of the applicants for the interim superintendent post.