New Youngstown BOE member seeks majority vote for legal decisions

January 27, 2016 at 12:09a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

One of the city school board’s newest members has become one of its most vocal.

Dario Hunter, elected last November as a write-in, made a motion to place a resolution on Tuesday’s meeting agenda that any board legal action – including court appeals – require a majority vote of the full board.

“I think it’s important, and we need to make collective decisions,” Hunter said.

It affects the board’s credibility with the public, he said. He referred to the ongoing case of the teachers union against Brenda Kimble, board president, regarding the appointment of Carol Staten to the academic distress commission.

Kimble appointed Staten, her distant cousin, to the commission while Staten was working as a substitute principal. The teachers union contends the appointment should be a teacher.

Under the Youngstown Plan, a new five-member academic distress commission will appoint a state-paid chief executive officer to manage and operate the city schools. Three members are appointed by the state superintendent, one by the mayor, and one, a teacher, by the school board president.

Kimble said she’s always come to the board to get members’ consensus.

The majority of the board voted against Hunter’s motion to put the resolution on the agenda. Only Hunter and Jackie Adair were in favor. Kimble, Ronald Shadd, Jerome Williams, Michael Murphy and Corrine Sanderson voted against.

Another resolution appointing several employees, including Staten to become principal at Discovery Transitions to Careers at Volney, that had been on the Jan. 12 agenda, passed – for real this time. Only Hunter was opposed.

He said that Staten’s principal appointment could be viewed by some as a way to bolster Kimble’s side in the lawsuit.

The board’s vote at the Jan. 12 meeting left the resolution in limbo. At that meeting, Hunter and Adair were opposed, Sanderson, Murphy and Williams were in favor and Kimble and Shadd abstained. Four votes were required for passage.

Kimble said Tuesday that because Staten isn’t an immediate family member, she and Shadd, her son, didn’t have to abstain.

Hunter also took issue with Kimble appointing him chairman of the board’s Sports and Extracurricular Committee, and wouldn’t accept it. He said he would have accepted appointment to head any other committee, but he doesn’t think he has the knowledge or aptitude to lead the sports and extracurricular committee.

The board president makes committee assignments at the beginning of each calendar year. Kimble said board members are elected to serve the whole school community, and sports is part of that.

Hunter’s decision didn’t sit well with some other board members, either. “If service is beneath you, then leadership is beyond you,” Shadd said.