YOUNGSTOWN — Hours before talks resumed Friday between the Youngstown City School District and the striking Youngstown Education Association, state Rep. Lauren McNally announced a bill aimed at eliminating a state law that has contributed to the labor dispute.

McNally, D-Youngstown, stood with lawmaker and bill co-sponsor Juanita Brent, D-Cleveland, on West Wood Street near downtown to discuss their initiative.

Brent represents East Cleveland, the only other Ohio district still under the watch of a state academic distress commission — like the one monitoring Youngstown.

Joining McNally and Brent were Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association union, of which YEA is a part, and a large contingent of YEA protesters.

McNally said the bill would strike all language pertaining to academic distress commissions from the Ohio Revised Code.

“Today we’re going to announce our plan to eliminate every relic of academic distress commissions in Ohio state law,” she said. “We’re getting rid of the slightest utterance of this stupid mistake that has cost our kids greatly.”

“In 2015, Youngstown schools fell victim to a politicians’ game,” McNally said, referring to House Bill 70. “This bill, originally meant to provide wrap-around services for students, was dramatically changed to remove local control from the district and force a state takeover of the schools.”

McNally said the state takeover ran Youngstown schools “further into the ground.”

EXPERIMENT

She said the academic distress commission led to lower enrollments and a lower average experience level among teachers, a lack of fiscal transparency and a lack of accountability among decision-makers and cutting of academic programs and resources.

She also called out the state for releasing Lorain City Schools from the oversight of a commission in the most recent state budget, leaving only Youngstown and East Cleveland under some form of state authority.

While new laws that overrode HB 70 effectively restored all control of the district to the local board of education, Youngstown and East Cleveland still must show a commission that they’re meeting the benchmarks of an academic improvement plan.

McNally said the new bill would eliminate that requirement and return complete autonomy to the school districts.

Brent said every district that was subject to state takeover was highly impoverished and comprised a largely black and Hispanic population.

“No one expected in 2015 that eight years later we would be in the same position, but worse,” Brent said.

McNally said the house bill was to be filed Friday afternoon, but the Legislature is not back in session until Sept. 11 and will not have a floor session until mid-October.

“But that gives us a lot of time to work on it, and we hope to be able to fast track it,” she said.

McNally also thanked state Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, who will be introducing companion legislation in the Ohio Senate, providing both bipartisan and bilateral support that she hopes will make it easy to pass and send to Gov. Mike DeWine.

DiMauro, of the OEA union, said the academic distress commissions have not only had a negative impact on teaching and learning, but have done so, in part, because they “stripped educators of their voice.”

“This strike has been all about giving a voice to teachers about the conditions that affect the learning of their students,” he said. “We want to get this resolved so we can get students back in the classroom with their teachers, where they belong.”

ONGOING TALKS

The YEA has been on strike since Aug. 23, when students were scheduled to begin the school year. The district rolled out a remote learning plan Aug. 25.

The board of education filed a complaint with the State Employment Relations Board, alleging that the strike was illegal because the union had not participated in fact finding, per state law. But on Aug. 25, SERB ruled that a section of the union’s contract supersedes the fact-finding obligation, and allowed the strike to continue.

The school board said at a special meeting that evening that it would return to the negotiating table. Talks resumed Wednesday and went well into the evening. The parties continued talks on Thursday into the evening again, and negotiations picked up again Friday afternoon.

SOME PROGRESS

YEA spokesman Jim Courim said the union membership believes some progress has been made. He said the YEA made an offer regarding promotions and transfers, and the board was expected to make a counteroffer on Friday.

The union’s primary sticking point is language in the contract that originated under HB 70, which gave the chief executive officer of the district absolute power over negotiations and personnel decisions. The union argues that the district has twisted that language to extend the same power to Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor. They say they will not end the strike until that language is removed from the contract and insist that the board does have legal authority to remove it through collective bargaining.

School board member Kenneth Donaldson said the district has consulted with attorneys in Columbus to see if the board can strike the language. He said the current understanding is that if it can be removed, the board and union would have to agree on what language replaces it.

Donaldson said he disapproves of how YEA leadership has behaved and said teachers are being misled.

“It’s getting tiring. There’s too much propaganda, and not enough truth,” he said. “And they’re doing it at the expense of these teachers. They don’t really know the details of the language that is beneficial not only to our scholars but to administration also.”

By way of example, Donaldson said the union has emphasized seniority in determining promotion.

“We cannot afford that,” he said. “We need the best, and most qualified, educators in front of our students — not necessarily those that have been there the longest but have not excelled.”