As Toledo Public Schools students and staff work to get through another semester, the looming possibility of the state taking over the district remains a concern for TPS administrators.
House Bill 70, which former Gov. John Kasich signed into law in July, 2015, allows the state to take over a school district that receives an overall grade of “F” on its state report card for three consecutive years. Under the law, state-appointed academic distress commissions take over control of local school boards and appoint a CEO to run the district.
It’s already happening in Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland, and officials from those communities painted a bleak picture of life under state control. They described a dysfunctional culture, rife with conflict, where the absolute power of an unelected CEO further crippled already-struggling districts.
“It’s very frustrating because it makes you feel like a stranger in your own school district,” said Brenda Kimble, Youngstown’s Board of Education president.
TPS received its first overall “F” last year, and now TPS officials face the task of improving their report card grade this year or next, or else cede control of the district to state government.
District officials acknowledged they are concerned about a possible takeover — they’ve held training sessions with administrators and last week the school board held a retreat on the subject with the Ohio School Board Association. But said they remain optimistic that the district and the students will perform well enough in the future to ward off a state takeover.
“I think there’s a concern based on the ideology of what the state’s looking to do, but we feel positive about where we’re headed as a district,” Superintendent Romules Durant said.
“It’s kind of like a boxing match; we can’t leave it to the judges,” he said. “We’re treating it like that.”
TPS could avoid a state takeover if it receives at least a “D” on its report card this September or next year. State report card grades are calculated based on several metrics including graduation rates, K-3 literacy, and primarily how students perform on state tests. But critics say the report card system is a better predictor of poverty rather than an accurate indicator of academic success and progress.
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Jim Gault, TPS director of curriculum and instruction, said administrators are laser-focused on two key components that make up the state report card — gap closing and K-3 literacy.
Gap closing measures how well a district’s most vulnerable students perform academically, while K-3 literacy examines how successful schools are at improving at-risk K-3 readers.
“Our focus is on kids and instruction,” Mr. Gault said. “We have a strategy, and we’re working our plan.”
The Ohio Department of Education would not provide a representative to speak with the The Blade for this story. In a statement ODE officials said the department “is coordinating various offices to give more targeted supports to the [TPS].”
“This includes regularly communicating with the assigned State Support Team and regional personnel as they work with school district and building leadership teams.”
State-appointed CEOs are paid by the state department of education and have “complete operational, managerial, and instructional control of the district,” according to state law.
The CEOs in practice strip authority away from elected school board officials and superintendents.
Some Youngstown school board members said their problems with state control of their district are both managerial and financial, with CEO Krish Mohip spending massive amounts of money without any transparency.
“It’s really difficult to get a clear sense of what the finances are because they keep shifting the financial forecast,” Board member Dario Hunter said.
“Every time we ask financial questions it’s exceedingly difficult to get answers,” Mr. Hunter said. “It’s fuzzy figures and magic numbers.”
Mr. Mohip said Youngstown board members accusations are “inaccurate or uninformed.”
“We did spend an additional $10 million last year, but that was because we needed to fill in all the gaps that had been created during their time in leadership,” he said.
Lorain school board members expressed similar frustrations with the state takeover of their district.
“It has become very apparent here in Lorain that the only mission this current academic distress commission has and the CEO have is to run our district into the ground and privatize it,” said Lorain school board member Tony Dimacchia.
Lorain’s CEO David Hardy could not be reached for comment.
Mr. Dimacchia said HB 70 had caused nothing but confusion and chaos for the school district, with the effects rippling through the entire city. The turmoil has led to the resignation of the district’s superintendent and the academic distress commission’s chairperson.
Lorain’s mayor recently requested a joint meeting with Lorain’s school board, the academic distress commission and the school district’s CEO to subdue the ongoing conflict.
“The time is now for this important face-to-face meeting,” Lorain Mayor Chase Ritenauer said to The Morning Journal. “Delaying any longer jeopardizes the Lorain City Schools District, both now, and into the future.”
“What I can say to Toledo ... is that they do not want this bill in their school district,” Mr. Dimacchia said. “It will devastate your school district, and it will put you so far behind you may never recover from it. I’m not sure we’ll recover from this.”
As the impact of this legislation reverberates throughout the state, local school officials and state legislators are pushing back against a law they say is undercutting citizen’s democratic right to vote and empower locally elected school board officials.
Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo) said having a law undermine a governing body that was elected and put the power in the hands of an “authoritarian” CEO is unimaginable.
Mr. Hunter echoed Ms. Fedor’s sentiments. “The worst part of HB 70 is the fact that the public has no real choice or voice,” he said. “The bottom line is [the academic distress commission and CEO] are not responsible to the public like the elected school board members. Taxpayers are the people that should have a voice and a choice and these are precisely the people who have been cut out.”
But Mr. Mohip, the CEO at Youngstown schools, commended HB 70 for giving someone the authority to resurrect school districts that have consistently failed.
“I think if you are truly student-centered and you’re worried about what’s best for students then you would have a hard time finding fault with HB 70,” he said. “It allows us to make decisions that are most important for children and essentially that’s what we’ve done.”
HB 70 drew criticism in 2015 when it was introduced as a last-minute amendment to an education bill, had no public dialogue and went to an immediate vote by both the House and Senate all within the same day.
Youngstown Schools is currently challenging the constitutionality of HB 70 in the Ohio Supreme Court.
The chairman of the education committee, Sen. Peggy Lehner (R., Kettering) could not be reached for comment.
“We’re not saying that school districts don’t need to be held accountable, but we need to look at a different process …something that involves the locally elected board members that represent those districts,” said Jay Smith, deputy director of legislative services for the Ohio School Board Association.
In the meantime, state lawmakers and educators are planning to introduce a bill soon that would place a moratorium on the state takeovers.
“The wheels are coming off the bus in Youngstown, Lorain, and East Cleveland,” Ms. Fedor said. “It’s time to come together and fix this unaccountable, discriminatory, and authoritarian law.”
First Published February 15, 2019, 10:33 p.m.
