Sunday, December 27, 2015
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown City School District has more supervisors, education specialists, nonbus-driver vehicle operators and custodians per student than comparable school districts, a staffing audit shows.
But Stephen Stohla, interim superintendent, questions some of the conclusions and has asked Milton Walters, assistant superintendent for human resources, to complete a staffing analysis of central-office workers and other employees who don’t work in school buildings.
“We’ve got a lot of people here and in our buildings. They don’t appear to be out of line considering all of the different programs we have,” he said.
Stohla said the district also must get input from the community to determine what programs are working and which need improvement.
The $3,900 audit was completed by John Thomas, an Ohio Department of Education consultant, who was contracted through the Cuyahoga County Educational Service Center.
The former Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission requested the audit before being disbanded by the Youngstown Plan legislation. That legislation created a new commission that will appoint a chief executive officer to manage and operate city schools.
According to Thomas’ analysis, the district employs 21 central office administrators and staff, 30 education specialists, five vehicle operators who aren’t bus drivers and 77 custodians. Comparison districts are East Cleveland, Lorain, Springfield, Canton and Dayton.
Thomas told school board members at a recent meeting he has nothing against custodians and formerly worked as one.
“I’m not making a recommendation of what to do, but it’s something you might want to look at,” he said.
The number of administrators also “stood out as very high,” Thomas said.
The data Thomas used in the analysis, though, are from two years ago, so the numbers may be off, the interim superintendent said.
Enrollment, which Thomas’ audit counted at 4,230 students, is higher this year, he said.
Also, examining raw data can be problematic, Stohla said, because different districts identify positions differently.
“Some districts have assistant principals while at others, they’re deans of students,” he said.
Youngstown schools also operates a warehouse, accounting for the nonbus- driver vehicle operators. If other districts don’t have those, Youngstown’s numbers would seem high, he said.
More than a year ago, school board members and administrators talked about moving offices and personnel out of the administrative building on West Wood Street and into the school buildings.
Stohla has started that endeavor.
“I already moved [information-technology] over to Choffin,” he said. “The curriculum supervisors are moving into the buildings full time. I want to go slow, because I want to make sure whatever we do is going to work no matter who is in charge.”