YOUNGSTOWN - The Youngstown City School District (YCSD) remains in academic distress and is now the only school district in the entire state that is still in distress.

Other districts that were previously in academic distress like East Cleveland and Lorain were released from academic distress. Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor says East Cleveland was released in December of 2025, and Lorain was released in 2023.

YCSD Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor told 21 News while the district did not hit every benchmark of its three-year academic improvement plan, he feels like YSCD has made more progress than it is getting credit for.

"The plans were different. There was no set plan for every district. ... Really, we're not comparing apples to apples, so we just feel like our overall picture of improvement needs to be taken into consideration," Batchelor said.

Batchelor says 24 benchmarks had to be approved by the Ohio Department of Education. While the district did not hit the majority of those benchmarks in the third year, it did in the previous year.

Batchelor said the district didn't hit the majority of the benchmarks in the third year because of unrealistic expectations.

"The goals went up exponentially. And that's ok, and we like that, but it also created a system where the expectations were kind of unrealistic. So in that third year, we still made double-digit gains, but didn't hit the benchmarks," Batchelor said.

For example, Batchelor said YCSD's graduation rate is now up to 90% compared to 76% when Batchelor started as superintendent in 2023, but the goal was 93%.

Batchelor met with the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce to address the academic distress situation.

He said the meeting went well, but the department told him it doesn't feel like it has the authority to release them from academic distress, but said they would take the issue back to the state legislature.

In the meantime, the district will continue working with representatives to help them get released from academic distress.