Bloated staffing levels of city schools troubling

Coming on the heels of the inexplicable hiring of an independent contractor to perform some vague assignment, last Sunday’s front-page story spotlighting the comparatively high staffing levels in the Youngstown City School District is one more argument for the re-engineering of the urban system.

As we have argued ad nauseam, the status quo is no longer realistic, and the time has come for bold action to give Youngstown’s students a fighting chance to succeed academically.

The Youngstown Plan, developed by a group of business and community leaders in the Mahoning Valley and legislatively adopted by the Ohio General Assembly, is the prescription for necessary change. However, special interests that have held sway in the Youngstown district for so long aren’t giving up without a fight.

They have gone to court challenging the constitutionality of the law that created the plan.

However, the initial steps toward implementation are being taken in the absence of a restraining order from the court.

Last week’s story about staffing levels makes clear that the systemic problems are deeply rooted and must be solved sooner rather than later.

The opening paragraph to the story by Education Writer Denise Dick says it all: “The Youngstown City School District has more supervisors, education specialists, non-bus driver vehicle operators and custodians per student than comparable school districts, a staffing audit shows.”

Given that the district was placed in academic emergency by the state in 2010 – it is now in academic watch – and continues to receive an F grade in the statewide testing, this question looms large: What are all those people on the payroll doing to further the education of Youngstown’s children?

The district’s interim superintendent, Stephen Stohla, who recently refused to tell The Vindicator what specifically R. Douglas King was hired to do as an independent contractor, had this observation about the staffing audit:

“We’ve got a lot of people here in our buildings. They don’t appear to be out of line considering all of the different programs we have.”

Stohla questioned some of the conclusions of the audit conducted by John Thomas, an Ohio Department of Education consultant who was contracted through the Cuyahoga County Educational Service Center. The now disbanded Youngstown City School District Academic Distress Commission sought the staffing study, which shows the district employs 21 central office staff, 30 education specialists, five vehicle operators who aren’t bus drivers and 77 custodians. The comparable districts are East Cleveland, Lorain, Springfield, Canton and Dayton.

New commission

A new academic distress commission established under the Youngstown Plan is now in place.

Stohla has asked Milton Walters, assistant superintendent for human resources, to complete a staffing analysis of central-office workers and other employees who don’t work in school buildings.

Rather than just present a counterpoint to what Thomas, the ODE consultant, has produced, we believe the internal analysis should include the names of the individuals, their qualifications and the method by which they were hired. Of special interest to taxpayers is the role played by members of the school board in the hiring of staff.

We would remind the public that Stohla refused to identify the members of the school board who suggested the hiring of King as an independent contractor. He is being paid $6,500 a month for work through the end of the school year and is supposed to provide services as a parent and community-training development coordinator.

The lack of transparency merely confirms what we have long believed: The Youngstown school district is a dumping ground for relatives, friends and acquaintances of members of the school board and others in positions of power.

Its bloated payroll – as reflected in the staffing audit – would be justified if the system were an academic powerhouse. It isn’t.

The reality can be seen in data from the Ohio Department of Education. Of the 10,289 students living in the district in 2014, only 5,037 attended Youngstown public schools; the rest were enrolled in schools outside the district.

The centerpiece of the Youngstown Plan is the position of chief executive officer with clearly defined powers to restructure the system. Hence, our support for what we believe is the best chance for the survival of the Youngstown City School District.