Staff photo / R. Michael Semple A group of Youngstown teachers pickets at Harding Elementary School. The strike by the 400-member Youngstown Education Association enters its third day today.

YOUNGSTOWN — Representatives from the Youngstown City School District and the Youngstown Education Association are due in Columbus today for an emergency hearing before the State Employment Relations Board.

The meeting will determine whether striking teachers will be forced off the picket lines and back into classrooms.

The YEA voted Monday to strike, and did so on Wednesday, when students originally were supposed to begin the school year.

The school district filed an immediate complaint with SERB, alleging that the strike is illegal because the union failed to engage in a fact-finding process the district says state law requires.

YEA representatives say the union followed all the regulations laid out in its contract.

Union spokesman Jim Courim said the contract requires the parties to execute a third-party mediator as a dispute resolution process only during negotiations, which he says the union did. The contract also states that the clause pertaining to mediation supersedes any portion of state law that discusses fact-finding.

HEARING NOTICE

On the picket lines at Volney Rogers Elementary School on Thursday, Courim said he has been told the district will not return to the negotiating table until after SERB issues a ruling on the legality of the strike.

According to the hearing notice, the hearing will begin at 3 p.m. Union and district representatives are due at SERB’s East State Street office by 9:45 a.m. to give SERB’s attorneys time to discuss any pre-hearing motions, issues, or stipulations.

The notice says both parties should agree in advance to any stipulations about the dispute, and may provide sworn affidavits to the board.

Each side will have 30 minutes to present its case to the board, and the board may allow additional time for rebuttals.

Both sides had until 3 p.m. Thursday to file position statements and additional supporting materials with SERB’s general counsel.

RECAP

YEA says it is on strike because the school board refuses to eliminate language from the contract that could be interpreted to give Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor excessive authority. The language was put in place when an academic distress commission took over the district under Ohio House Bill 70.

That language gave the CEO of the district unilateral power over employee relations.

But House Bill 110 abolished the commission and returned control of the district to the school board.

The union says the contract states that the language can be negotiated out of the contract during collective bargaining, which it says the district has the authority to do.

Batchelor and the school board say they have offered to replace the disputed language with text found in contracts from other local districts such as Austintown and Warren, “districts that are higher performing than ours,” per Batchelor.

They say they also have offered a 60-day extension to continue talks, along with a 2% increase in wages and a one-time payment of $600 for each member of the union as compensation during the negotiation extension.

Talks last week were unproductive, the YEA said, and a Monday morning session ended after only 90 minutes. The union accused the board of walking away from the table, and union membership voted overwhelmingly to strike Monday evening during a meeting at Mill Creek Community Center, union leadership stated.

YEA members in red T-shirts filled the gallery at Choffin Career & Technical Center on Tuesday for the board’s regular meeting. The union said it was expecting a negotiating session to begin at 4 p.m., but no talks had happened when the school board meeting began at 4:30 p.m. The board’s decision to go into executive session immediately outraged union members, who turned the meeting into a rally for an hour until the board returned.

The board’s comments about negotiations were met with derision and accusations of dishonesty.

Tensions were exacerbated Wednesday when union members say school district Chief Academic Officer Aaron Bouie II intentionally hit art teacher Shane Snyder with his car on Schenley Avenue in front of Volney Rogers Elementary, where Snyder and other YEA members were picketing.

Youngstown police say they are investigating, and the matter could be referred to the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s office.