diff --git a/src/NativeBridge/DataViewInterop.h b/src/NativeBridge/DataViewInterop.h
index 9d9f19f1..f9e87763 100644
--- a/src/NativeBridge/DataViewInterop.h
+++ b/src/NativeBridge/DataViewInterop.h
@@ -240,6 +240,7 @@ class DataSourceBlock
 
         if (bp::extract<const char*>(str(s).encode("utf_8")).check())
         {
+            size = -1;
             missing = -1;
             pch = bp::extract<const char*>(str(s).encode("utf_8"));
 #if _MSC_VER
diff --git a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/ensemble/test_lightgbmclassifier.py b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/ensemble/test_lightgbmclassifier.py
index 0c31c9ff..addc22fd 100644
--- a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/ensemble/test_lightgbmclassifier.py
+++ b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/ensemble/test_lightgbmclassifier.py
@@ -19,8 +19,6 @@
 
 class TestLightGbmClassifier(unittest.TestCase):
 
-    @unittest.skipIf(platform.system() in ("Linux", "Darwin") and six.PY2,
-                     "encoding/decoding issues with linux py2.7, bug 286536")
     def test_lightgbmclassifier(self):
         np.random.seed(0)
         train_file = get_dataset('wiki_detox_train').as_filepath()
diff --git a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/feature_extraction/text/test_ngramfeaturizer.py b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/feature_extraction/text/test_ngramfeaturizer.py
index 6b183b91..2f3ddd9a 100644
--- a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/feature_extraction/text/test_ngramfeaturizer.py
+++ b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/feature_extraction/text/test_ngramfeaturizer.py
@@ -18,8 +18,6 @@
 
 class TestNGramFeaturizer(unittest.TestCase):
 
-    @unittest.skipIf(os.name != "nt" and six.PY2,
-                     "encoding/decoding issues with linux py2.7, bug 286536")
     def test_ngramfeaturizer(self):
         np.random.seed(0)
         train_file = get_dataset('wiki_detox_train').as_filepath()
diff --git a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/naive_bayes/test_naivebayesclassifier.py b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/naive_bayes/test_naivebayesclassifier.py
index 4b414c38..36d44b85 100644
--- a/src/python/nimbusml/tests/naive_bayes/test_naivebayesclassifier.py
+++ b/src/python/nimbusml/tests/naive_bayes/test_naivebayesclassifier.py
@@ -19,8 +19,6 @@
 
 class TestNaiveBayesClassifier(unittest.TestCase):
 
-    @unittest.skipIf(os.name != "nt" and six.PY2,
-                     "encoding/decoding issues with linux py2.7, bug 286536")
     def test_naivebayesclassifier(self):
         np.random.seed(0)
         train_file = get_dataset("wiki_detox_train").as_filepath()