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Several meetings preceded Youngstown Plan after governor's urging
Humphries' Notes and Minutes on Youngstown School Plan
Document
Tom Humphries' notes revealing who was apprised of the Youngstown Plan and minutes from Youngstown City Schools Business Cabinet Meetings (Oct. 31, 2014 to June 30, 2015)
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Some of those who are complaining loudest about the Youngstown Plan knew something of its development in late 2014, according to a log of conversations kept by one of the plan’s architects.
Thomas Humphries, Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber president and chief executive officer, who led the effort to develop the plan to fix the schools, kept a log of his in-person and telephone conversations about the schools.
The list totals 242 conversations from Aug. 4, 2014, to Sept. 1.
“They all came out and said they knew nothing about this committee and this was done in secret,” Humphries said. “How is it a secret when I’m telling them?”
He said he doesn’t understand the memory loss.
The plan, approved in late June by the state Legislature and signed by the governor, allows appointment of a state-paid CEO to operate the school district. The school board, teachers and classified employees’ union and others have filed a lawsuit to stop the plan and have it declared unconstitutional.
Among participants in some of the conversations are Mayor John McNally and state Sen. Joe Schiavoni of Boardman, D-33rd.
Both were invited to an Aug. 25, 2014, meeting although Schiavoni didn’t attend. The log, however, shows an Oct. 2, 2014, call with Schiavoni referencing the earlier meeting.
Schiavoni said he told Humphries that the city schools were important to him and that he wanted to be involved.
“He said they didn’t want politicians to be involved,” Schiavoni said.
Humphries said he met frequently with McNally, telling him about the committee and that he believed McNally was keeping Schiavoni posted.
The log shows the Aug. 25 meeting was the first of 10 meetings or conversations Humphries had with McNally, eight of which were before the legislation was presented and passed.
Minutes of the Youngstown City Schools Business Cabinet, as the group was known, show it met eight times. Oct. 31, 2014, was the first. Four of the meetings or conversations between McNally and Humphries occurred before the first cabinet meeting.
“I meet once a month with Tom,” McNally said. “We started that probably in 2014. We discuss city issues, economic development issues, education issues” and other things.
He said he knew Humphries’ thoughts about a school district CEO and they talked about the Cleveland Plan. Under that plan, the mayor appoints the school board.
“I said, in the end, Tom, if you’re working on something, I reserve the right to withhold judgment until something is prepared,” the mayor said.
He said one of his biggest problems with the legislation is that no one saw it until the night before it was introduced in a Senate committee.
Humphries said he talked to several people about the Youngstown Plan on his way to Columbus to testify in support of it. He doesn’t recall if he detailed the plan to McNally before then.
An October 2014 conversation between Humphries and state Rep. Michele Lepore-Hagan of Youngstown, D-58th, also is listed on Humphries’ log.
He said the lawmaker wanted to be on the committee and when he told her that politicians weren’t a part of it, she suggested a school employee.
Lepore-Hagan agreed with that account.
She said she asked to be kept posted on the committee but didn’t hear anything about it again until the legislation was prepared. She said she asked several people about it, including Richard Ross, state superintendent of public instruction, and all either denied knowledge of the committee or claimed not to know what the committee was doing or when it met.
LEADERSHIP
At the cabinet meetings, members selected Herb Washington, president of H.L.W. Fast Track, as cabinet chairman and Judge Robert Douglas, retired from Youngstown Municipal Court, vice chairman.
Members also talked about who else should be involved with cabinet meetings, mentioning the school board president, churches and members of the NAACP and the Alliance for Congregational Transformation Influencing Our Neighborhoods.
“Mr. Washington confirmed that he, Bishop [George V.] Murry and [Youngstown State University President Jim] Tressel will meet with NAACP,” according to the Feb. 23 meeting minutes. “Mr. Washington stated that he will meet with [city school board President] Brenda Kimble once again for lunch.”
Washington said he met with Kimble three times, beginning in early 2015 and while they talked about different topics, including an attendance incentive for teachers and students, they discussed the schools committee at each meeting.
“I told her there was a group of business folks — business and education leaders — who were meeting who wanted to be engaged to raise the level of performance of both teachers and students,” Washington said.
At the second meeting, state Rep. Sean O’Brien of Bazetta, D-63rd, was there too, he said.
O’Brien called the cabinet Washington’s committee and Washington corrected him, saying he was only elected chairman. He said he listed the names of the cabinet members and said any of them could be chairman or chairwoman.
RECOLLECTION
“Brenda was right there, so she knew,” Washington said.
Kimble disputes that. She said she never attended a meeting with O’Brien and Washington.
“I’m willing to take a lie detector test,” she said.
O’Brien remembers a meeting with Washington where they talked about the cabinet and O’Brien’s initial belief that it was Washington’s committee. He doesn’t recall, however, if Kimble or anyone else was there.
Washington said the cabinet at one time agreed that Kimble should be included but didn’t reach a decision on when to do it.
Kimble said Washington told her she should be a part of the group and that Connie Hathorn, former schools superintendent, was tasked with informing her.
She said she never got an invitation.
“I didn’t know anything about it or I would have been there,” Kimble said.
She didn’t inquire because she attended other meetings with Washington and Hathorn about a schools grant and believed those were the sessions to which Washington referred, she said.
HUMPHRIES’ SUBPOENA
Humphries received a subpoena last week seeking committee meeting documents — including some that he provided to The Vindicator for this story.
Those documents include correspondence he or his staff sent or received connected to the business cabinet as well as any minutes, recordings, agenda and notes from meetings; any files or records he kept about the meetings or House Bill 70 that resulted in creation of the Youngstown Plan.
The subpoena came from the Franklin County Common Pleas Court’s Clerk of Courts from the lawsuit filed by the city school district against the state over implementation of the plan.
Humphries is to appear for a deposition Sept. 17.
Also, Bishop Murry received a similar subpoena, according to 21 WFMJ-TV, The Vindicator’s broadcast partner.
The complaint for declaratory judgment and preliminary injunction was filed Aug. 22 in Franklin County Common Pleas Court.
The Ohio Education Association, Youngstown Education Association, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and Jane Haggerty, a city school teacher and district resident, joined the school board in the action.
VINDICATOR REPORTS
State officials’ repeated public statements about intentions to rectify the failing Youngstown city schools were topics of many Vindicator stories long before the Youngstown Plan was made public.
A year before the Humphries cabinet convened, Gov. John Kasich announced that he wanted to help the city schools.
“I want to make an offer,” Kasich said Oct. 28, 2013, during a dedication ceremony for the Hickory Bend gathering system and processing plant in New Middletown. “We want to help to fix the Youngstown City Schools. If you bring us a plan and a program, we will help you — just as we did in Cleveland with the mayor, the school board, union and city officials. We will help you to design a program and make things better.”
In September 2014, Ross told The Vindicator he wasn’t happy with the schools’ progress and asked for the community’s help.
“The community at large, the faith-based community, the business community has to say, ‘Enough. We have to make dramatic change, whether that’s open enrollment or community schools, we have to make dramatic improvement,’” Ross said at the time. “My call to action to the broad community is we need your help. We’re asking them to step forward.”
Joe Andrews, a Kasich spokesman, said Humphries came forward.
“At a time when only 1 percent of students graduate Youngstown schools college-ready, and 50 percent of parents choose to send their kids somewhere else, Tom Humphries was the community leader who answered the governor’s call to action, worked with other community leaders to develop ideas and brought forward a locally driven plan that gives kids a chance at reaching their full potential,” Andrews said in an email.
Also in September 2014, Kasich told The Vindicator’s editorial board he had enlisted help from Humphries and O’Brien to talk with business leaders and develop recommendations for improving the district and that the state would do whatever it can to implement a plan.
“If it’s going to reform these schools, we’ll do anything we can to help and support it and get it through” the state Legislature, Kasich told The Vindicator.
“I am somewhat optimistic we’re going to see a [group] of business leaders, community leaders get together to begin to address this for the first time,” he said in the article published on Sept. 17, 2014.
In November 2014, Lepore-Hagan reported that she had a private conversation with Kasich in which she claimed he said “that the Youngstown City Schools are in such a mess that he would like to shut them down and replace them with a great charter school.”
Rob Nichols, Kasich’s spokesman retorted: “We don’t comment on the governor’s private discussions with people, except to say that he takes the Youngstown schools situation very seriously and wants to see them get fixed.”
Lepore-Hagan also told The Vindicator, in an article published on Nov. 20, 2014, that Kasich had told her he was putting together a group of people to study the issue and that group would make recommendations.
“I am going to be involved.” Lepore-Hagan said at the time. “It’s my obligation. The people who elected me should expect me to be involved.”
Seven months later, the Youngstown Plan became public.