Youngstown’s board of education may have a chance to flex its few remaining muscles, but we hope board members recognize that the constituents who elected them also should be given the opportunity to decide whether to renew a large operating levy that the top city schools official is calling “crucial” for operations.

After last year’s debacle when only four of seven school board members showed up for a last-minute board meeting to consider sending a then-10.7 mill, four-year school district renewal levy to the November 2019 ballot, voters never got a chance to vote on the issue. The board deadlocked at 2-2, and the board missed the ballot deadline.

Youngstown Board of Education was rendered largely impotent under passage of Ohio House Bill 70, commonly known as the “Youngstown Plan,” that created a school district chief executive officer who unilaterally controls district operations.

However, placing tax issues on the ballot is one of the few remaining responsibilities under the board’s sole control.

Now, Youngstown City Schools CEO Justin Jennings is calling on the board again to consider sending the issue to the fall ballot. The ballot deadline is in August, so there should be plenty of time for public debate.

The levy provides the district approximately $5.2 million a year for basic operations. The existing levy expires at the beginning of 2021.

So far, the board has not taken up the issue at a public meeting, and members this week admitted they have mixed emotions on whether to even ask voters for the levy renewal as they expressed frustration with looming deficits and some high-salary positions.

School board President Brenda Kimble said she had mixed reactions. “We need to place the levy on the ballot and let the community decide. My problem is we are going to be in dire straits either way.”

Board member Ronald Shadd said the district is projected to have a budget deficit of nearly $48 million in 2024 if the levy renewal is not passed. It will have a deficit of nearly $23 million if voters renew, according to the district’s five-year forecast. He blamed the academic distress commission and the CEO model for putting the district on the path of financial deficits.

Both board members want the CEO and the academic distress commission to address the deficit and how it will be overcome.

Those are logical questions and ones for which Jennings should provide answers.

At the end of the day, though, it’s voters who will cast the deciding vote on the renewal.

Since the CEO brought the board his request to return the renewal issue to the November ballot in plenty of time this year — nearly two months before the Aug. 5 deadline — the board members should move forward with the process, including raising their questions and hosting public discourse. There should be no excuse for deadlocking on the vote or missing the ballot deadline for any other reason this year.

Regardless of the board’s decision on asking voters to renew the levy, its members must take the responsibility seriously and consider it in an open discussion before the constituents who elected them. They owe the public that, and they must be able to justify the reasoning behind their decision.

And they must not wait until the last minute as they did last year when delays, indecision and a deadlocked vote denied voters the opportunity to decide.