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For 16 years now, the Youngstown City School District has stood as a distant relative of Hester Prynne, the adulteress protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic 1850 novel, "The Scarlet Letter."
Like Prynne, who was forever branded with a scarlet single-letter A for her transgressions, the urban school system has been forced by state decree to suffer the stigma and endure the public humiliation of its previous shortcomings, namely through branding it with a big, bad, bold AD for the entire state to see.
That AD, signifying its status as the sole Academically Distressed school system among Ohio's 611 districts, clearly no longer applies. As such, the state Department of Education and Workforce should move with all due speed to remove that stain and restore all local control to the district.
Many, however, can rightfully argue that Youngstown schools throughout the 2010s and into the early 2020s definitely needed outside intervention to rescue it from a path of consistent academic failure. Through most of those years, the district ranked rock-bottom in most measurements included on the state's annual report cards of academic performance.
In recent years, however, the district has rebounded, making some slow but noticeable gains in many of those measurements.
In fact, in the most recent batch released last month, YCS for the first time in more than two decades achieved a three-star overall performance rating on its report card, a rating that signifies the district has at last met state standards.
What's more, its performance rating now beats that of 38 other school districts in the state that scored 2.5 stars or fewer, including such other large urban districts as Cleveland, Dayton, Toledo and Columbus.
None of those 38 underperforming districts find themselves wearing the same badge of dishonor as Youngstown. That inequity in public perception is grossly unfair and presents a false impression on the status of the district's achievement levels today.
One need take only a passing glance of some of the results from this year's report card to recognize the district has clearly extricated itself from the throes of dire distress.
Take graduation rates, for example, that have catapulted from levels below 70% years ago to 91% today. Or take, career and workforce readiness, which made a two-level jump to four stars this year. Or take a look at individual schools such as Youngstown Rayen Early College High School or Choffin Career and Technical Center, both of which scored perfect five-star ratings.
Despite such laudable improvements, the city school district is still not completely out of the woods. For example, Youngstown continues to struggle in the all-important early literacy component of the report card, achieving only one star this year, meaning the district needs to make significant improvements before meeting state standards.
CIty Schools Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor appears to understand. In commenting on the recent report card upgrades, he said, "The work is not done. We're not celebrating and saying 'we've arrived.' We're just showing that we can do this work.
"We're not saying that we're done, but we should not have that veil over us anymore."
We agree and hope state Education and Workforce leaders act expeditiously to remove the clearly outdated symbol of shame from the district.
Short of that, state legislators have the opportunity to do that job themselves. State Sen. Al Cutrona, R-Canfield, a longtime fierce supporter of independence for YCS, has introduced Senate Bill 322. It proposes total dissolution of academic distress commissions statewide and replacement with localized student support teams for districts that score below 3.0 in its overall performance ranking. (Youngstown today would not even qualify for that lower level of remedial assistance.)
In 2023, the state weakened its governance over ADCs with approval of House Bill 33, co-sponsored by then state Sen. Michael Rulli. It dissolved the Academic Distress Commission for Lorain City Schools and barred the state from establishing any new commissions for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.
State legislators should now finish that job by acting swiftly to annihilate those commissions altogether and the unnecessary and often counterproductive shame they bring to school systems such as Youngstown's.