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School board president’s commission appointee is a teacher, attorney says
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The attorney representing the city school board president’s appointment to the academic distress commission maintains that the substitute administrator appointed to the seat is a teacher.
Atty. Ted Roberts filed an objection Thursday to Daniel Dascenzo’s decision that directed Brenda Kimble to appoint an active classroom teacher to the commission. Dascenzo is a magistrate in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Atty. Ira Mirkin, one of the lawyers representing the teachers’ union, which sought to have a classroom teacher appointed to the commission, said he briefly reviewed the objection Thursday afternoon.
“I didn’t see anything in there that had not been thoroughly and properly addressed by the magistrate,” he said.
The five-member commission will appoint a chief executive officer to manage and operate the city schools. The CEO, who will be paid by the state, will have broad authority.
Under the Youngstown Plan, one commission appointee, a teacher, is appointed by the school board president.
Kimble appointed Staten, who is a retired city school principal who works in the district as a substitute administrator.
The Youngstown Education Association, the teachers’ union, went to court seeking an injunction to bar Staten from serving on the commission and asking that Kimble be ordered to appoint an active teacher.
Last week, Dascenzo agreed and gave Kimble two days to appoint a teacher.
Roberts disagrees.
“‘Teacher’ means all persons licensed to teach and who are employed in the public schools of this state as instructors, principals, supervisors, superintendents, or in any other educational position for which the state board of education required licensure” according to state law, he wrote in his objection.
The magistrate also “myopically focused on job title versus job substance,” Roberts argues in the objection.
“Dr. Staten possesses a teaching license, as well as a wide breadth of knowledge and experience gained in the 36 years she spent working for the district,” the objection says.
Roberts also contends the YEA has no standing to bring the suit because the “statute makes no reference to union membership.”
Not all classroom city school teachers are dues-paying YEA members.
“The school district employs teachers, who are not YEA members, but members of the bargaining unit represented by it who, instead, pay a fair-share fee to the union,” Roberts wrote.
Staten is licensed as both an instructor and a principal and she considers herself a teacher, she said in court last week.
Judge Lou D’Apolito of common pleas court will make a ruling in the case.
Meanwhile, the commission cannot formally meet until a fifth member is appointed, according to the magistrate’s decision.
The four seated members, though – chairman Brian Benyo and members Laura Meeks, Jennifer Roller and Barbara Brothers – have gathered in pairs, collecting information, visiting schools and talking to school personnel.
Benyo, president of Brilex Industries; Meeks, retired president of Eastern Gateway Community College; and Roller, president of the Raymond John Wean Foundation; all were appointed by Richard Ross, state superintendent of public instruction. Mayor John A. McNally appointed Brothers, retired dean of the former Youngstown State University College of Arts and Sciences.