43
Youngstown school board president appeals rejection of commission pick
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
Brenda Kimble, city school board president, maintains she picked the right person to serve on the schools’ academic distress commission and has filed an appeal of a judge’s decision that ordered her to appoint an active classroom teacher.
“It’s disappointing to me,” Kimble said. “Frankly, I took a long time and really thought over who should be in that seat. I went to the law. I just wish that instead of the magistrate and the judge forming their own opinion of what a teacher is, they went with the law.”
A motion filed Thursday asks Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to issue a stay of his order directing Kimble to appoint a teacher to the commission by today, during the appeal to the 7th District Court of Appeals.
On Wednesday, Judge D’Apolito affirmed an earlier decision by Dan Dascenzo, a magistrate, that said Kimble’s appointment to the commission should be an active classroom teacher.
Paula Valentini, a spokeswoman for the Youngstown Education Association, the teachers union, isn’t surprised that Kimble is appealing.
“Teachers continue to hope that our board will demonstrate respect for their teachers by agreeing that teachers would have the most beneficial input to add to an academic commission,” she said.
Kimble refers to a section of Ohio law that defines a teacher as anyone licensed by the state and employed by the district as a superintendent, principal, instructor or other posts.
Kimble appointed Carol Staten, who at the time of the appointment was a substitute administrator. She has since been appointed to a principal position for the remainder of the school year.
Substitute administrators fill in where needed in the district, including teaching students in classrooms. Staten retired as a principal in 2008.
Under the Youngstown Plan, a law enacted last summer, a five-member academic distress commission will appoint a state-paid chief executive officer to manage and run the schools.
The commission includes three members appointed by the state superintendent; one by the mayor; and one, a teacher, by the school board president.
After Kimble appointed Staten, the union filed a lawsuit arguing that the appointee should be an active classroom teacher.
The teachers union wants one of its members to be appointed, Kimble believes. She contends the appointment should be someone who understands the whole district.
“This is the last chance we have to save our school district,” Kimble said.
Kimble said Staten, who also is her distant cousin, has worked in many capacities during her career in the city schools. That work includes a secretarial job many years ago. As a substitute administrator, Staten worked for most of the 2013-14 school year as a teacher in the district, filling in during an absence, Kimble said.
If those who wrote the Youngstown Plan had wanted her to appoint an active classroom teacher, that should have been written in the law, Kimble said.
Kimble said she has the support of the “majority of the board” in pursuing an appeal but acknowledges there hasn’t been a vote about the issue. But Kimble also said that because she is the defendant, she doesn’t need the board’s consent to file the notice of appeal and the request for a stay.
She said there will be a vote today at a 5 p.m. special board meeting.
Earlier this week, Dario Hunter, a new school board member, tried to get a resolution added to the Tuesday meeting agenda, requiring board approval for legal action and consultation.
The motion to get that resolution onto the agenda failed with only Hunter and Jackie Adair in support.
Adair said that vote is the only time the board has voted on anything regarding the YEA’s case against Kimble.
“There has never been a formal discussion as to whether or not to allow Brenda to go forward with any appeals,” Adair said.
The lawsuit is against Kimble in her capacity as the school board president, so the school district is footing her legal bills.
A Vindicator examination of district legal expenses showed recent lawsuits have contributed to an increase in legal bills for the district. In 2015, legal bills and expenses related to the lawsuits, such as transcripts, copy and courier costs, total about $208,958. That compares with about $108,358 in legal expenses in 2014.