Youngstown Plan is most aggressive school CEO takeover in US, state senator says

YOUNGSTOWN

While House Bill 70, known as The Youngstown Plan, moves forward, a similar plan to improve Cleveland Metro School districts is in its third year.

Both are legislative plans to raise student achievement, however, the pace of HB 70 is supersonic when compared with that of the Cleveland initiative.

To ensure that speed, legislators gave the Youngstown CEO more power over staffing, the closing of schools and the creation of and reliance on charter schools.

This alarms elected leaders, union representatives and teachers.

“Looking at [HB 70] and comparing it to the Cleveland Plan and all the other CEO-takeover plans across the country, this is the most aggressive, meaning this gives the most power to one person,” said state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, who voted against the bill.

Schaivoni, Ohio Senate Minority Whip, said under HB 70 if a school can’t raise its grade from an F to a C in one year, the CEO could fire the staff, close the school and reopen it later as a charter school.

The chances of a school meeting that challenge are extremely slim, said Victor Ruiz, a member of the Cleveland Transformation Alliance, a nonprofit group created to ensure that city’s schools adhere to the plan.

“We’re in year three of the plan, so I think that we need to give the plan enough time to start seeing results,” Ruiz said. “Results have been slow in coming – positive results. There’s so much that needed to be reformed, and we need to let it work through the cycle so that we can see the benefits of it.”

Even groups that helped create HB 525 say turnarounds can’t happen overnight – or in a year.

Read more details of the Youngstown Plan compared to the Cleveland plan and reaction from various sectors in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.