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YOUNGSTOWN -- The after-effects of the Youngstown Education Association teacher's strike from earlier this year remain at the Youngstown City School District, but the two sides are moving forward for the betterment of the district.
"It was always going to be an uphill battle to mend fences and build bridges, but we have to do that because it's for the betterment of the kids," YEA spokesman Jim Courim said recently.
"We're trying to make up what we've missed, to do the best we can for our kids and get them where they need to be."
The strike, which lasted four weeks, strained relations between teachers and Youngstown City School District administrators, left one teacher seriously injured, drew intervention from state agencies and action from state political leaders. It was finally settled and an agreement was announced Sept. 18.
THE STRIKE
Negotiations broke down just days before the school year was set to begin. When Aug. 23 arrived, roughly 450 members of the Youngstown Education Association teachers union were on the picket lines instead of in their classrooms.
The three-year contract between YEA and YCSD expired on June 30. Union leaders said they had tried for months to engage the district in negotiations, but talks only began in the week or two preceding the new school year.
As quickly as talks began, though, they seemed to break down. On Aug. 11, the union issued a 10-day strike notice. During the week of Aug. 14, negotiators on both sides met Aug. 14, 17 and 18, but came away with nothing to show for it.
District spokesperson Stacy Quinones said on Aug. 14 that progress had been made on health insurance but the two sides remained far apart on wages, noting that YEA's wage request was more than 2.5 times what the district had budgeted.
While a later investigation showed that Youngstown teachers' wages are lower than almost any other district in Ohio, by almost any metric, the union maintained that wages were, in fact, not their primary sticking point.
After talks failed during the week of Aug. 14, YEA members gathered at Mill Creek Community Center on Aug. 21 and voted overwhelmingly to strike.
The following night, Aug. 22, a regular Board of Education meeting turned into a union rally after tentatively scheduled negotiations failed. The board moved immediately into executive session and left the meeting hall at Choffin Career Center to loud boos from more than 200 teachers clad in red "YEA Strong" T-shirts.
The board returned from executive session after an hour and attempted to address the crowd. Board member Ken Donaldson said the district had offered the union a 60-day contract extension, an agreement to meet twice per week during that time, and $600 cash as additional compensation for each teacher. The board's appeals were met with ridicule and both sides left the building as frustrated as when they had entered.
THE STICKING POINT
At that meeting, Courim referred to language that was placed in the contract by the Academic Distress Commission that managed the district, under Ohio House Bill 70, from 2012 until July 2022 as the union's main sticking point.
The union argued that even though HB-70 had been overruled by House Bill 110, and Youngstown was effectively under its own authority, with minimal state oversight, the district was trying to keep the language in the contract to give more authority to Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor.
Courim said the text gave Batchelor too much control over transfers between classes and buildings, and other decisions that affected teachers' careers and how they taught their students.
The district said the language could not simply be removed.
TENSIONS ESCALATE
The following day, tensions escalated to a fever pitch when a picketing teacher at Volney Rogers Elementary School on Schenley Avenue was hit by a car driven by a school administrator.
Police said Chief Academic Officer Aaron Bouie III struck art teacher Shane Snyder while trying to enter the parking lot past picketing teachers. Snyder was taken to the hospital for his injuries. The next day teachers and district parents rallied in Snyder's honor and demanded Bouie resign or be fired.
Courim said Snyder remains on family medical leave and has not filed charges against Bouie. Bouie remains with the school district.
Tensions remained high as both sides anticipated a hearing before a state board that would determine the validity of the strike.
On Aug. 25, the State Employment Relations Board heard the district's complaint that the strike was illegal because YEA had not engaged in a fact-finding process mandated by state law and outlined in the contract.
However, the union argued that the contract provided for a mediation process, which they had used, and that the mediation process and the language that supported it, superseded the language about fact-finding. Ultimately, SERB sided with the union and the strike was deemed legal.
Early the following week, the union demanded that negotiations resume. The district generally declined to comment, but on Aug. 30, negotiators met again at East High School, and talks continued throughout the week.
'THIS ENDS TONIGHT'
After a fundraiser on Sept. 7 at West Side Bowl on Mahoning Avenue, organized by State Rep. Lauren McNally, a Youngstown Democrat, the Mahoning County Democratic Party and the Ohio Education Association, the YEA held a candlelight vigil outside East High School demanding that the district negotiate an end to the strike.
A press release announcing the event said "This ends tonight" and Courim said the union planned to stay outside the school for as long as it took to complete a deal. No deal happened.
On Sept. 11, however, the union presented a proposal to the district that it said would resolve all remaining points of contention.
"Going back to when these negotiations first began...YEA deliberately brought a slim and simple proposal to the table," Courim said in a press release. These negotiations have been weighed down by countless complications, and today we're making this offer so that we can bring this whole situation to a resolution."
Talks at East High School that day began at 3 p.m. and continued well into the evening, but no agreement was in place on Sept. 12 when the school board convened for its regular meeting at 5 p.m.
THE AGREEMENT
On Sept. 14, the union canceled a scheduled negotiating session, and YEA accused the district of failing to deliver a settlement proposal promised by Board President Tiffany Patterson. Courim later said that the proposal came late Sept. 13 and the union needed the next day to formulate a counter-offer.
At a Sept. 14 evening rally at East, union leaders said their negotiating team spent eight hours in the school's library working on the contract proposal, but YCSD negotiators only met with them for 21 minutes.
Quinones countered that the district was ready to speak and blamed the union for calling off talks on Sept. 14.
Talks went past 8 p.m. Sept. 15, but reports from both sides said there was no deal.
Then, very suddenly it seemed, there was one. A marathon bargaining session on Sept. 15 had indeed yielded an agreement.
Quinones sent out a press release on Sept. 16, announcing a 4:30 p.m. meeting on Sept. 18 at Choffin to discuss the tentative contract, and that students would be back in classrooms that day too.
On Monday, exactly four weeks to the day since they had voted to strike, YEA members met again at Mill Creek Community Center. This time, they voted just as overwhelmingly to ratify the new contract. The district, at Choffin, also approved the deal.
In the end, the one-year deal saw all of the contested language about HB 70 removed, and teachers received a 3% wage increase.
Bachelor and Patterson released a joint statement saying the district had found a middle ground to "delete and move past the academic distress rights enhancements in the labor contract but still maintain enough flexibility to...assign the most qualified teachers and not just the most senior teachers in key classes and programs."
The contract also afforded more time for teachers to "provide direct interaction and educational opportunities...especially in the elementary and middle school levels."
The statement also said the contract was financially responsible and did not impact the district's ability to provide future services and programs.
DELAY IN PAY INCREASES
However, on Oct. 25, five weeks after the deal was ratified, The Vindicator discovered that teachers still had not received their pay increases. Batchelor said the district was also still working to remove all of the language related to HB 70.
"It's not as simple as people are making it out to be," he said. "We're trying to get it right."
District Treasurer Bryan Schiraldi said he was working with YEA President Eric Teutsch to make the necessary corrections and that the raises would be in place by early December.
Courim said those raises have been implemented as of one or two pay periods ago.
Courim said teachers and administrators are trying to get things back to normal and work together to combat the very real challenges the district faces, including busing woes and chronic absenteeism, as well as academic shortfalls across all grades.