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Youngstown school board continues bickering, over agenda, not academics
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
There were disagreements about the agenda, complaints from parents about busing and calls for members to behave.
It was a city school board meeting with no discussion of boosting students’ academic performance.
Tuesday’s regular meeting started with disagreement about approving the agenda.
Corrine Sanderson said board policy dictates that members get at least four days to review anything that was added to the agenda since a draft was distributed last week.
Items added were four resolutions to appoint Brenda Kimble, board president, a delegate to the National School Board Association; appoint Jackie Adair a delegate to the Ohio School Boards Association; and appoint Jerome Williams to both the Youngstown Tax Incentive Review Council and as city legislative liaison.
At the board’s meeting earlier this month, the tax-incentive appointment was disputed. Krish Mohip, district chief executive officer, appointed Sanderson. But Kimble already had appointed Williams. Sanderson argued that the appointment had to be voted on by the full board.
Hiring of many district employees also was added since the draft agenda was distributed. That included tutors, administrators and teachers.
Mohip said board members’ votes are recommendations to him. He’s in charge of personnel employment.
“This is basically me informing you of who’s on staff and when they start,” he said.
Adair said the panel still needs to follow board policy.
“The CEO has the authority to overrule any policy he wants,” Kimble said.
Williams said items being added between the draft agenda and the one presented at meetings happens regularly.
“I don’t know why today it’s a problem,” he said.
Adair said just because something was done a certain way in the past doesn’t mean it was done correctly.
Mohip said the board wasn’t ready to vote.
Michael Murphy, board vice president, moved to have items removed from the agenda that weren’t included on the draft. That motion was approved 5-2 with Kimble and Ronald Shadd opposed.
“On the bright side, we’ll have a shorter meeting,” Mohip joked.
The board set 5 p.m. Monday for a special meeting to approve the resolutions and the personnel hiring that the board removed from consideration at Tuesday’s regular meeting.
Two parents, Megan Mercado and Melvin Young, expressed aggravation about their respective children riding the bus.
Mercado, whose 5- and 13-year-old sons ride the bus, have to walk a considerable distance to the bus stop.
“His bus stop is at the spot where his cousin was killed,” she said of her younger son.
Getting to the bus stop requires him to walk through neighborhoods she doesn’t think are safe, she said.
Mercado said she’s spoken to other parents who have the same concerns.
“This is why you’re losing kids in this district,” she said.
Mohip said dry runs through the bus routes were supposed to ensure that bus stops weren’t in bad areas.
Young said he waited with his daughter, a student at Rayen Early College Middle School, at the bus stop for two hours Monday, the first day of school. No bus came.
He called the district and was assured the problem would be addressed, but no bus came Tuesday either. His daughter, who Young says loves school, cried the second day the bus didn’t pick her up.
When the bus was driving the girl home, the driver tried to make her get off at a spot different from where her bus stop is.
“I would like someone to do something,” Young said.
Mohip directed staff to review the tape from that bus to find out what the driver said. If a bus driver didn’t follow procedure, he or she will be disciplined, he said.
Lois Williams, a community member, pointed out that children and parents were watching when board members were arguing about the agenda. The board isn’t responsible for everything that’s wrong with the school district, but members have a responsibility to set an example, she said.
Ron Miller, who was a member of the former academic distress commission for the district, urged the panel to continue its opposition to the law that called for appointment of a CEO. He called that legislation, also termed the Youngstown Plan or House Bill 70, “devious and corrupt.”
“There are people in this community who are counting on the board to do what you were elected to do,” Miller said.
He questioned the timing of a report from the state that found the district’s transportation department lagging, suggesting the state was trying to make the district look bad.
Miller, a retired attorney, also believes board arguments are engineered by some members as another way to negatively portray the district.
“This board is dysfunctional,” he said. “You just took 15-20 minutes to get the agenda approved.”
Those members who want to do what’s right should do that, Miller said.
“Don’t take an hour to debate this nonsense and minutia,” he added.