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NAACP says East High has been failing for 20 years
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
The Youngstown Branch of the NAACP is issuing a call to action to parents of East High School students.
“East has been an ‘F’ school for 20-straight years,” said Jimma McWilson, chairman of the group’s Educational Justice Committee, on Monday at what the NAACP called an East High School Civil Rights Education Summit.
He was referring to the state report cards issued annually by the Ohio Department of Education.
About 30 parents, students and community members attended the meeting at the NAACP’s office on Fifth Avenue.
“These children deserve more than they’re getting,” McWilson said.
He brought up the Franklin County Common Pleas Court lawsuit filed by the city school board and teachers union against the ODE regarding the Youngstown Plan, legislation that would allow a chief executive officer to be appointed to manage and operate the schools, and a related case in Mahoning County.
That case was filed by the teachers union against Brenda Kimble, school board president, regarding Kimble’s appointment of a principal to the commission that will appoint the CEO.
The union argues the appointment should have gone to a classroom teacher.
“Nowhere in the filing of these legal papers does it mention the children,” McWilson said. “Everything that’s wrong with East is what’s wrong with the district.”
He said the NAACP is there to empower parents and families concerned about their children’s education.
Residents including some East parents, students and NAACP members crowded a school board meeting last week to air their concerns about East. They talked about a lack of East math teachers for this year’s first semester, and McWilson requested last week that the board schedule a special meeting at East to talk about problems at the school.
The school board scheduled a special meeting last week and initially announced that it would “enter executive session to consider personnel matters, assignments and funding.”
After board members were alerted by The Vindicator that neither funding nor assignments could be discussed in executive sessions, a second meeting notice said the board may enter executive session to discuss personnel, listing all of the personnel matters that the law allows to be discussed behind closed doors.
The notice doesn’t mention East High School or any other topics.
By law, special board meeting announcements must include the specific reasons why the meeting was called, and discussion is limited to what’s listed in those announcements.
The meeting last week included board discussions about East High School with school and district administrators.
Three board members – Jackie Adair, Corrine Sanderson and Dario Hunter – attended Tuesday’s NAACP summit.
Adair said she’s asked for an education summit about East before but has been rebuffed.
Sanderson agreed that East has been failing for years “because no one really stepped forward – no political leaders, no civil leaders – to do anything about it.”
Hunter was critical of school board leadership, which he called “morally bankrupt.”
“The management of the board is broken,” he said.
Elected leaders haven’t responded to concerns expressed by members of the public, Hunter said.
He said he’s the only board member who didn’t vote for Kimble for president because he knew the road it would lead down.
“Do not stand for it,” he told people at the summit. “Don’t take no for an answer.”
The board leadership has kept things shielded from the public and other board members, he continued.
Hunter urged parents to tell board members what they think about the management of the school district.
“We have to do this together,” Hunter said.
Judge Theresa Dellick of Mahoning County Juvenile Court, Jennifer Merritt, superintendent of Mahoning County High School, and Linda McNally of juvenile court attended Monday’s summit.
Judge Dellick said the court is working with district leaders through a grant to improve the school climate at East. Part of that is development of a parent project.
“We believe in building children, not prisons,” she said.
Wanda Coleman, a parent of an East child, said the room should have been filled Monday with East parents.
“Parents especially need to stop making excuses,” she said.
Parents should be involved and take steps to learn what’s happening at school with their children, Coleman said.
“You can’t expect your children to succeed if you don’t get off your butt,” she said.
But parent-teacher conferences that used to be conducted at the end of one school day and throughout the next school day are more limited now. That’s a way the district “shuts us down as parents,” Coleman said.
“We need to come together as parents,” she said.