UPDATE | School board's Kimble silences local NAACP president

YOUNGSTOWN — About 100 people are gathered this morning at Choffin Career and Technical School for an education summit

Representatives from the city school board, Ohio School Boards Association and a community group are presenting the discussion which is in opposition to the Youngstown Plan.

"H.B. 70 is not a plan for a school district ," said Brenda Kimble, city school board president. "It's a takeover of a school district."

Many of the people attending the summit said that poverty is at the root of problems for students and the school district.

But George Freeman Sr., president of the Youngstown branch of the NAACP, said poverty is not the problem. Freeman pointed to the $16,000-per-student funding the district receives, much of it from the federal government. Still, many students are without the required books or teachers for a particular subject area.

That drew the ire of a teacher in the audience, who said children come to school sick, without required reading glasses, and tired. That affects their ability to learn.

Then Kimble, school board president, came into the audience and took the microphone out of Freeman’s hands. “This is not the time,” Kimble said. She later said that, while the NAACP Youngstown branch supports the Youngstown plan, the national chapter opposes it.

“Poverty is not in the school building,” she said. “It’s in the home.”