YOUNGSTOWN — Mia Clark is accustomed to helping friends calmly settle their differences with one another, and she is prepared to take such conflict-resolution skills to another level.

“Not all kids are bad; we can get along,” Clark, an East High School freshman, said.

Clark will have such opportunities because she is a student ambassador who likely will play a pivotal role in the district’s reconfiguration plan, set to take effect at the start of the 2026-27 school year.

She also was one of the 20 student ambassadors who spoke during the regular Youngstown Board of Education meeting Tuesday at Youngstown Rayen Early College High School about their ideas to bring students from Chaney and East high schools together in the new Youngstown High School and do their part to make the transition as seamless as possible.

The plan’s primary goal is to ensure all students have “access to robust academic programs, high-quality instruction and a cohesive school identity while using our resources responsibly and sustainably,” the district’s website states.

Clark admitted she initially was not on board with the district’s plan to merge the two high schools into a single school on the East Side. Nevertheless, her mother saw leadership potential in Clark and encouraged her to place herself in such a position, the ninth grader said.

Too often, fights between students start with small perceived slights, and they forget that such disagreements are “childish” and won’t be remembered throughout four years of high school, Clark added.

“This is all students’ ideas; this is not adult-driven,” said Guy Burney, the Community Initiative to Reduce Violence program’s executive director who has worked closely with the student ambassadors to formulate what they hope their new school will look like and include.

Several of the 20 students who articulated their ideas before the school board and a standing-room-only crowd said they want to help their peers better resolve conflicts peacefully, aid them in finding emotional regulation and balance, create a positive school environment via setting positive examples, create a safe space for mediation efforts, guide but not control conversations with peers, keep other students more quickly informed about school-related events, form a web page to post enjoyable student and adult moments and do what they can to spread positivity while chipping away at certain persistent negative perceptions about the district.

TRANSPORTATION WOES

During the session’s public comments portion, several bus drivers spoke about what they see as a problematic transportation system and urged the board to reject outsourcing it to outside contractors such as Warren-based Community Bus Services Inc.

“If we give them all our power, they’re going to take it all,” Andrea Mahone Blackmon, who served on the board from 2010 to 2014, said.

Mahone Blackmon recalled that, despite the district being in fiscal emergency during her tenure on the board, transportation was less of a problem than it is now. Outsourcing efforts likely will result in the district losing money, and may have a negative effect on attendance and reliability, she added.

“We care about our students. We go the extra mile,” Brenda Moore, a bus driver since 2009, said in her remarks to the board. “We have to keep our children safe, and we do that. We’re doing the best we can with what we’re given.”

A challenge for her and other bus drivers is having a shortage of drivers to serve 37 schools in the district, Moore continued.

Another bus driver told the board about an acquaintance who called to inquire about a position as a driver, but was told that Community Bus Services was interviewing.

Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor confirmed that the district continues to face a driver shortage, but the problem is systemic and also adversely affects districts across Ohio and the U.S. Compounding the transportation challenges is an Ohio law requiring the district to also transport students to charter and other nonpublic schools, which, many say, creates additional financial and logistical burdens.

Consequently, district officials have explored a variety of options for a consistent, safer and more efficient and reliable system to get students to and from school, he said, adding that some efforts to consider operational changes have been met with resistance.

“Our kids deserve better than what we are providing,” Batchelor said.

In addition, the superintendent praised several East High students who recently won an essay contest, saying they also were recognized about a month ago in Columbus.

STUDENT TESTIMONIALS

Also at the meeting, several students who returned April 2 from a nine-day Sojourn to the Past traveling American history journey to key civil rights sites in the South provided testimonials regarding their experiences, as well as who and what most vividly impacted them.

Civil rights figures they cited included Elizabeth Eckford and Minnijean Brown Trickey, both of whom integrated the all-white Central High School in September 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas; Reena Evers, daughter of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, the NAACP field secretary in Mississippi who was assassinated June 12, 1963, in the driveway to his Jackson home; and Angela Lewis, daughter of James Chaney, who was one of three civil rights workers killed June 21, 1964, in Philadelphia, Mississippi.

A location that left an indelible mark on one of the students was the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which four Ku Klux Klan terrorists bombed Sept. 15, 1963, killing four girls and injuring 21 others.

As a result of their bus journey through the South, the students vowed to stand up to injustices and ensure they refrain from using racist and violent language. Some of them said they also will use the lessons of nonviolence they learned and apply them to making the school reconfiguration more peaceful and unifying.

“You need to be very, very proud of them,” Diane Gonda, a Chaney High teacher, told the parents at the meeting.

ENROLLMENT NUMBERS

After the session, Stacy Quinones, district spokeswoman, confirmed that 4,540 students attend Youngstown City Schools. Earlier this month, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce’s attendance dashboard erroneously stated the enrollment figure as 5,567.

As of Tuesday, the incorrect figure had not been corrected on the dashboard, though Quinones was unable to say why.

“The dashboard is designed to provide a weekly ‘live’ view of student data, so numbers may fluctuate from time to time. Second, the data presented on the dashboard comes directly from each school district’s Student Information System. Each district determines how to use its SIS for keeping track of student attendance and enrollment,” the department said in a statement Monday. “The dashboard displays that very same data.

“As a result, enrollment and attendance numbers on the dashboard for Youngstown City Schools are a direct reflection of Youngstown City Schools’ own enrollment and attendance data as reported by the district each week.”