YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown City School District Board of Education on Tuesday approved a new two-year contract with the district’s teachers union.

In a unanimous vote during its regular meeting at Choffin Career and Technical Center, the board ratified the deal with the Youngstown Education Association, eliminating any risk for a repeat of last summer’s monthlong strike.

“I know some of the members of the bargaining team are here tonight, and I just want to thank them for a very collaborative and collegial negotiating process,” Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor said. “This is a great day for Youngstown City Schools.”

The agreement gives teachers a 2.5% raise in both years of the contract, while teachers will pay an additional 1% toward the cost of their insurance, increasing their contribution from 10% to 11%, by 0.5% each year.

The district also reduced the number of consecutive days teachers can be off sick without a doctor’s excuse from five to three.

The contract also stipulates that all disciplinary actions are to be conducted in private, per Ohio law, but those records would have to be released if any public records request is made.

The contract states that the district will not place anonymous tips in personnel files and the district will notify an employee if files are requested or inspected by anyone outside the district. Employees are not required to be present for public records to be read.

“It was easy and quick,” said YEA Spokesperson Jim Courim. “Not every teacher was thrilled with it, but we still voted with a very strong majority to ratify it.”

That vote occurred Friday at Mill Creek Community Center.

Courim said the contract was not substantially different from the one agreed to in September, after four weeks of hard feelings between the union and district.

The primary sticking point then was not wages or benefits, but language placed in the contract by the Academic Distress Commission that managed the district, under Ohio House Bill 70, from 2012 until July 2022.

The union argued that after HB 110 overrode HB 70, and Youngstown was effectively under its own authority, with minimal state oversight, the district wanted to keep the language to give Batchelor more authority over transfers between classes and buildings and other decisions that affected teachers’ careers and how they taught their students.

In the end, the one-year deal saw all of the contested language removed, and teachers received a 3% wage increase.

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