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School board asks appeals court for injunction
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The city school board and its employee unions again are asking a court to prevent the Youngstown Plan from taking effect.
And legal bills for the battle to retain local control of the schools are starting to mount.
A day after a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge rejected a motion for a preliminary injunction, attorneys for the school board, the teachers’ and classified employees’ unions and the state teachers’ union asked the Franklin County Appeals Court to grant it while the case is appealed.
A bill dating from Aug. 3 to Sept. 30 to the school district from Roth, Blair, Roberts, Strasfeld and Lodge, the school district’s law firm, totals $62,255, according to James Reinhard, district treasurer. But that includes work on arbitration and grievances.
The district’s bill from the firm typically totals about $10,000 per month, so Reinhard estimates that about $42,000 of the total is from attorneys’ work on the lawsuit. The unions, meanwhile, are paying their own attorneys, and the city’s law director, Martin Hume, is working on the case without charging the district.
In the original filing, which seeks to have the Youngstown Plan declared unconstitutional, the attorneys contended that the legislation didn’t go through the required three readings in the Legislature. The bill initially addressed only the establishment of community learning centers but was amended to become the Youngstown Plan.
Judge Jenifer French determined that the amendment didn’t substantially alter the legislation and that it went through the required three readings.
In their motion for an injunction before the appeals court, the attorneys argue that the legislation was vitally altered. They say it grew from a 10-page bill dealing with community learning centers to a 77-page document that addressed community learning centers and the overhaul of academic distress commissions – including “provisions for the appointment of a CEO who was authorized to eliminate the school board, appoint new members, close schools and/or turn any public school into a community charter school among other things.”
Amended House Bill 70, also called the Youngstown Plan, would dismantle the academic distress commission in place in Youngstown since 2010. In its place, a new five-member panel would be appointed. The state superintendent of public instruction would appoint three members, a district schoolteacher would be appointed by the school board and the mayor would appoint the fifth.
That new commission would appoint a chief executive officer who would manage and operate district schools. The CEO would have broad power including the ability to hire and fire administrators, reopen contracts and close failing schools or turn them over to charter or other outside operators.
The commission appointees are expected to be made by mid-November and the CEO named by year’s end.
The CEO would be paid by the state but need not have education experience.
State Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd, and state Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, announced last week an alternative to the legislation that changes many of those provisions. The new academic distress commission, for example, would include seven members and the CEO would be required to have educational experience.
The school board and unions “have overwhelming concerns about the rushed process and passage of HB 70, where the amendments that were introduced on the day of passage were the antithesis of the original version and intent of the bill, and in turn, move this court to reconsider the trial court’s decision denying” the motion for an injunction.
It violates the Ohio Constitution because it eliminates all power of an elected school board, and it violates the U.S. and state constitutions’ equal-protection clauses because it eliminates all powers conferred by the electors in a school district on an elected school board.
Judge French rejected all of those arguments.
The motion requests that the appeals court consider those arguments, believing that the trial court judge got it wrong.
An affidavit from Stephen Stohla, interim superintendent, says the district needs stability in curriculum, programs and student and staff assignments. The district also is showing slow and steady growth in math and reading, especially in the lower grades, his affidavit said.
“Based upon my experience in education – and specifically education administration in Ohio – if an injunction is not grated in this case, the district and its students will suffer harm that will not be able to be rectified at a later date,” Stohla said in the affidavit.