YOUNGSTOWN — Teachers were on the picket lines Wednesday morning, when students in the Youngstown City School District originally were scheduled to begin the school year.

The Youngstown Education Association union voted to strike Monday.

The district has rolled out a remote education plan, distributing Chromebooks to students at all buildings, and providing log-on information on the district’s website. The online courses will be taught by some administrators and those substitutes willing to cross the picket line digitally.

The start of school has been pushed back to Friday with remote learning.

The district also is making meals available for students at East and Chaney middle schools and Harding and Wilson elementary schools from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. daily.

In front of Chaney Middle School on Wednesday, YEA spokesman Jim Courim said the union had no intention of interfering with delivery of those services.

“We are picketing, but we do not want to prevent the students from eating or learning,” he said. “But our students learn best in person, and that’s why we’re out here to get a fair contract.”

TEACHER STRUCK

A striking teacher was taken by ambulance to St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital on Wednesday afternoon after being struck by a vehicle.

Courim said Shane Snyder, an art teacher at Volney Rogers Elementary School, was struck on South Schenley Avenue in front of the school. Courim did not say what Snyder’s condition was.

Snyder is among roughly 400 members of the YEA.

Following the strike vote, the school board filed a complaint with the State Employment Relations Board, alleging the strike is unauthorized. The district contends the union did not proceed to state-mandated fact finding before voting to strike.

Courim, however, argued the YEA contract only requires the parties to execute a third-party mediator as a dispute resolution process during negotiations, which he says the union did. The contract also states that a portion of the contract supersedes any portion of state law that discusses fact finding.

SERB has not yet responded to a request for clarification. That board has 72 hours to issue a ruling on YCSD’s complaint.

“We have a right to strike, and we believe that SERB will find that it is a legal strike,” Courim said.

STATE CODE

The strike was born of a dispute over language in the YEA contract. While neither side has specified the contested language, The Vindicator has learned it focuses on the board of education’s degree of authority.

Ohio House Bill 70 was introduced in February 2015. Written under the conditions of HB 70 and Ohio’s control of the city school district, a section of the YEA contract states:

As mandated by Ohio Revised Code, “the board by law has resumed holding management rights or responsibilities as if it had not relinquished them in the collective bargaining agreement until such time as both the academic distress commission ceases to exist, and the board agrees to relinquish those rights or responsibilities in a new collective bargaining agreement.

“The board is without authority to negotiate any relinquishment of those rights or responsibilities until after the commission ceases to exist.”

YEA’s concern is that while the abolition of HB 70 gave local control back to the school district, the board of education seems to interpret the text to mean that Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor has the same authority as the district’s former CEO had under the academic distress commission.

They say Ohio’s 2021 biennial budget included text that effectively disbanded the academic distress commission, restoring only the authority the board would have under normal conditions, which includes the authority to strike that language through collective bargaining.

The same section of state law that gave the CEO that authority also seems to rescind it even under the terms in HB 70.

The state code calls for the maintenance of CEO authority until the district receives an overall grade of C or higher or an overall performance rating of three stars or higher. At that point, the district enters a transition period with new, lower standards — a grade higher than F or a two-star performance rating.

Once those conditions are met, the code states: “the chief executive officer shall relinquish all operational, managerial, and instructional control of the district to the district board and district superintendent, and the academic distress commission shall cease to exist.”

Additionally, under House Bill 110, which effectively overrode HB 70, the state code states: “If the district meets at least a majority of the academic improvement benchmarks established in its improvement plan at the end of the initial evaluation … the academic distress commission shall be dissolved, and the district board shall continue exercising all powers granted to it under the revised code.”

SUPERINTENDENT RESPONDS

Batchelor stated in an email the academic distress commission “is advisory by law but does exist. Final decisions are from the local BOE, but the academic improvement plan is now the barometer to determine the outcome of the district within a three-year period.”

To the YEA, the law is clear: The school board has the authority to strike language from the contract in collective bargaining.

Both sides seem to interpret the law differently, and both see their position as precarious.

Batchelor said the board is concerned Youngstown could be back under state control if 51 percent of benchmarks are not met by 2027. But he has not said how leaving the language in the union contract will allow the district to meet those benchmarks.

Courim said the union is fighting for more than just Youngstown teachers.

“If we lose this fight, this contract language could creep into other districts,” he said.

dpompili@vindy.com