Ohio State Senator Al Cutrona and State Representative Lauren McNally laid out their plans in front of residents and the Youngstown City School Board to dissolve the academic distress commission, at their Tuesday night meeting.

McNally introduced House Bill 610, while Cutrona introduced Senate Bill 332, expressing that the commission was never a good idea to begin with.

"We admitted it didn't work so, we stopped other communities from falling victim to it, but we refused to let Youngstown, East Cleveland and Lorain out. We left them behind. we left them forced to endure a system that we have already acknowledged was broken," McNally said.

"We wanna do what's best for our kids. We wanna do what's best for our districts, we wanna do what's best for Youngstown," Cutrona said.

Youngstown City School District is the only one in the state still under academic distress, which is an issue Superintendent Jeremy Batchelor calls unfair.

"I'm hurt, to be honest and you know, it kind of bothers me because it feels like we're being treated unfairly a little bit but at the same time I don't have a victim mentality," Batchelor said. "So my job is to continue to educate kids while I'm pointing out inequities, it's time to move forward and do great things for kids. We've continued to do those things and so I'm going to keep working," he said.

Batchelor said thrilled to have the backing of our local legislators.

"That's huge! It's what we've been asking for. Our legislators working with us, for us and you know, my big thing has been one vision, one Youngstown and tonight you saw it," he said.

Both legislators believe the power to make decisions should be back in the hands of the locals and not the state.

"What began as a bill meant to provide wraparound services for our students was fundamentally transformed into a vehicle for state takeover," McNally said. "Instead of addressing the real challenges that are facing our district, including population loss and declining tax bases, the state chose the heavy hand of big government telling the local community that we cannot be trusted to govern our own school," she said.


Cutrona explained he and McNally are working to dissolve the commission in a strategic way.

"We have two bills in tangent, working at both chambers, the house and the senate and the reason that that's important is as they're getting the hearings in one chamber, the other chamber is equally having additional hearings and so that helps speed up the process," Cutrona said.

At the meeting, the board unanimously passed a resolution to support each bill.

Batchelor said they're going to continue doing the work and in the meantime if they have to testify in Columbus or meet with the Ohio Department of Education again, they are willing.