YOUNGSTOWN — Initiating major fixes to improve an urban school district requires a complex network of interactive forces, partnerships and collaboration among stakeholders.

However, the complicated, multi-layered process is made more difficult when key decisions affecting a district are made by those with no vested interest in or inside knowledge of the district’s needs, a school official said.

“Don’t sit in Columbus and make plans that impact Youngstown with people who have never been here. Until you get a voice of what Youngstown is, you won’t be able to help Youngstown,” said Youngtown Board of Education member Ronald A. Shadd during Saturday’s “Statewide Conversation on Leadership in Urban Schools: Governance, Improvement & Transformation” workshop at Choffin Career and Technical Center on East Wood Street.

The Youngstown Board of Education led the four-hour program.

Shadd was part of a panel that explored ways House Bill 70, passed in June 2015, and academic distress commissions have impacted the district. Other topics included the effects charter schools and voucher programs have had on the public schools.

Since HB 70, also known as the Youngstown Plan, took effect four years ago and the Youngstown City Schools have been under state control, real spending in the classroom has decreased, Shadd said.

The other two panelists were Mark Ballard, the Lorain City Schools’ Board of Education president, and Brigitte Green-Churchwell, president of the Sandusky City School Board and the Ohio School Board Association’s Black Caucus Committee.

The Lorain school district, which also is affected by HB 70, has encouraged parental engagement to fight the legislation. What began as four parents’ mobilization efforts morphed into busloads of parents, teachers, labor unions and others traveling to Columbus for meetings, Ballard noted.

From there, the groups built relationships with media outlets, which included contacting the New York Times and Wall Street Journal to rally against HB 70, he continued.

“You just have to keep ringing that bell,” Ballard said.

Another challenge Youngstown and other districts in the state face is the state report card, which, the panelists contend, is really a political tool that contains subjective rather than consistent standards and is prone to unpredictable changes.

“Do away with the report card. We all know one size does not fit all. Stop devaluing our families and stop devaluing our children,” said Green-Churchwell, who contended that inequities exist in how some who design the document perceive various districts.

The Sandusky public schools have been losing funding to a charter school in the area, which usurps public dollars but is not held equally to account for how the money is spent, Green-Churchwell said. She added that she’s not opposed to students having choices regarding their education, but equal accountability should be built in to how such funds are used.

A core piece of leadership for school systems is to implement research-based strategies from outside organizations and engage with all stakeholders while maintaining transparency. It’s also imperative to collaborate with other districts to ascertain what’s working for them, noted Dr. Eugene T.W. Sanders, the Sandusky City Schools’ superintendent and chief executive officer.

Sanders, who is also president of the Ohio Mid-Sized Urban Leadership Collaborative, outlined 10 priorities he sees as valuable for districts that face challenges such as balancing operating budgets, teacher salaries and other pressures.

Among the core ones he mentioned are restoring local control in Youngstown, Lorain and East Cleveland, the three districts under state control; providing resources for early-intervention services, in part because falling behind early academically often leads to discipline problems; and placing a reasonable time limit on how long a district has to show improvement to avoid a state takeover. Others were restoring collective-bargaining measures; reforming the state report card; and using a third-party group of consultants and others with ties to the district to analyze the root causes of what is wrong and needs fixed, Sanders explained.

Also during the workshop, Youngstown School Board President Brenda Kimble and other board members provided an overview of the state of the city schools.

A report should be submitted in about a week for the Ohio Department of Education to review.

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