'Save our Schools' in Youngstown? Get real

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bertram de Souza is back on the job as the editorial page editor of The Vindicator. Details of his month-long hiatus and his return will be explained in the coming weeks.

A rally and march last week in Youngstown to protest a state initiative that gives the failing Youngstown City School District the tools to ensure student success included the following chant: “Save Our Schools.” That’s exactly what the Youngstown Plan passed last month by the Republican controlled General Assembly and soon to be signed into law by Republican Gov. John Kasich is designed to do.

But the protesters weren’t advocating the kind of drastic changes contained in the plan. The long-troubled school district has needed such bitter medicine for a very long time.

The protesters, however, were more concerned about the loss of local control, which shows a disturbing lack of understanding about how Youngstown’s schools became the worst performing academically in the state of Ohio.

Incompetent school board members, a singularly inept and unqualified superintendent by the name of Wendy Webb and so-called community leaders pursuing their own agendas instead of focusing on the well-being of the city’s young people were contributing factors in the district’s academic and fiscal implosion. Add to that the absence of two-parent households, especially in the inner city, and you have a recipe for disaster.

GLIMMER OF HOPE DIMMED

There was a glimmer of hope when the school board hired Dr. Connie Hathorn to succeed Webb, but his four-year tenure was marked by upheaval and constant clashes with some board members. The reason for their discontent was simply this: Hathorn refused to kowtow to them, told the truth about the community and was publicly critical about the lack of parental involvement in the academic lives of their children.

So, when the protesters were chanting “Save Our Schools,” they were really saying, “Maintain the status quo.”

But, any objective evaluation of the school district shows that the status quo is not sustainable. The future of Youngstown’s children is at stake, and adults should not be allowed to deprive them of the very real chance of success that the Youngstown Plan offers.

As for the complaints from region’s Democratic members of the Ohio Senate and House that they were not consulted when the plan was developed, and were ignored when it was introduced in the General Assembly, that’s politics.

Elections have consequences, and the statewide elections in 2010 and 2014 have marginalized Democrats in the General Assembly.

LACK OF POLITICAL MUSCLE

As a result, the predominantly Democratic Mahoning Valley does not have political muscle in Columbus and must depend on the kindness of the GOP.

So, when business and community leaders, notably prominent Youngstown businessman Herb Washington, Bishop George Murry of the Youngstown Catholic Diocese, James P. Tressel, president of Youngstown State University, Tom Humphries, chief executive officer of the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, and Dr. Hathorn, who resigned his superintendent post in Youngstown and is now leading a school district in Arkansas, concluded that drastic action was needed to save the school district, they sought the support of Republicans.

Gov. Kasich, who has long decried the harm being done to Youngstown’s children as a result of the failure of the schools, and other administration officials were more than willing to work with local leaders in developing a plan to revive the district academically and fiscally.

The significant provision in the plan is the creation of a chief-executive-officer position that would be filled by a reconstituted state academic distress commission. The CEO would have operational and management authority over all the schools in the district.

To be sure, the appointment of the chief executive officer will be the commission’s most important task, but with the governor, the state superintendent of public instruction, Richard Ross, and other top education officials invested in the plan, there should be no doubt that the best and the brightest individual will be tapped for the job.

This is a done deal, and rather than rant and rave about being kept out of the loop, local political and community leaders should offer to work with the new CEO and academic commission.

Gov. Kasich has done what previous governors failed to do, namely, take the bull by the horns in Youngstown. For that, he deserves the community’s thanks.