Anonymous Critics; Race; Belief vs. Conduct

Yesterday evening I removed a comment that had been posted earlier in the day by an anonymous poster. I want to share with you why I did so and to set forth a principle regarding future comments.

The comment in question was a direct attack upon Nneka Slade Jackson. We endorsed Jackson in her race for the ward 4 seat on Richmond Heights city council. (She lost but did far better than most first-time candidates usually do, but that is beside the point.)

This particular Anonymous made a series of claims about Jackson’s lack of fitness for public office, apparently in an effort to rebut our condemnation of the Sun Messenger’s endorsement practices. 

The commenter’s claims were harsh but if true they might have been fair comment. 

I didn’t want to make negative comments about a Real Deal endorsed candidate the basis for our  first occasion for censoring, even if there were elements in the comment  that were false as well as ludicrous on their face. So I did two things: I called Ms. Jackson and I did a limited search of easily available public records.   

Based upon my findings, I removed the offensively inaccurate comment.

Going forward, The Real Deal will immediately remove any similar comments published under the cloak of anonymity. We allow anonymous comments on this site because some people might have good reasons not to disclose their identity. But we will not allow unsubstantiated scurrilous attacks by squirrels. A squirrel is hereby defined as a person who makes anonymous scurrilous attacks on other people.

No offense to squirrels.

• • •

On a related note, an increased number of anonymous comments take issue with our reporting, analysis, and assessments, especially with respect to Richmond Heights. We welcome the dialogue, especially when it deals with specifics. Oftentimes the comments help us to understand where we might have been clearer, or presented us with an opportunity to restate information for some readers who may be new to the issues.

A lot of the anonymous commenters appear uncomfortable that much of what I write deals with race, again with special reference to Richmond Heights. They seem to feel that I put too much emphasis on race. They accuse me, and/or some of the black people I write about, of playing the race card. And they suggest that I am critical of such stellar public officials as Jason Popp, Josh Kaye, Bob Fox and Aaron Burko simply because they are white. 

Balderdash.

I am an equal opportunity critic. A casual perusal of my back posts will find me more critical of certain black folks than I have yet been of esteemed members of the Richmond Heights School District.

A more thoughtful analysis of my reporting will, I believe, warrant the conclusion that I criticize behavior. I criticize the actions of these public employees and officials.

I didn’t call Jason Popp a racist although he admitted using the n-word. Nor  do I think the obsessive desire of Messrs. Kaye, Burko, and Fox to fire the superintendent.

I think I pretty readily argue that life is complex, that humans are complex beings, and that motivation is most often multi-rooted. For instance, a white man can be a racist, as that term is generally misunderstood, yet pull the voting lever for President Obama nonetheless. His neighbor could be married to an African American but think that the president’s policies are horribly conceived, egregiously executed, and that a vote for Obama’s opponent is essential to the nation's survival.

Similarly, Herman Cain… No, skip that.

The point is that my criticism of Jason Popp is not based on who I think he is but on what he did: he routinely used racial epithets with a group of impressionable young black students whose care and education was entrusted to him. He got in their faces and showed disdain for their heritage and culture, for who they were, and for who their parents and grandparents are.

That’s not coaching. It’s child abuse. 

The research says it. 

Ohio law says it. 

And school district policy says it.

But board members Josh Kaye, Aaron Burko and Bob Fox did not publicly acknowledge, even with a thousand legal caveats, the impermissibility of such conduct for months. Even then it took a courageous parent, Nneka Slade Jackson, acting on behalf of an outraged portion of the community, to skillfully and persistently push the school board president to admit in a public forum that well, yeah, that kind of conduct would be inappropriate.

• • •

I will continue to address the conduct of these public officials as I complete my response to another anonymous commenter. I will also focus on the conduct  that is likely to result in multiple findings of misfeasance against the school district by the bevy of public agencies currently investigating Richmond Heights Schools. Then I will to turn to the future and what I hope will be a new course for the school district. 

The hope is based on the outcome of this week’s election and the probability that a new majority will evolve, a majority focused on the education of the children, stewardship of the public trust, and creation of a healthy environment.

Richmond Heights Schools update: Interim Superintendent, questions about investigation

The Richmond Heights Board of Education has named elementary school principal Dr. Robert Moore as interim superintendent to replace Dr. Linda T. Hardwick, who was relieved of her duties with pay on November 3.

The school district is investigating allegations supposedly related to the misappropriation of district property.

Local station WKYC-TV 3 has a brief story on its website on last night’s special board meeting. As of 1:30PM today no other local television station had posted a report.

Nature of investigation unclear

Informed parties believe that the “district property” consists of documents that unknown parties may have turned over to the any of numerous federal and state government agencies that have been investigating alleged improprieties at the district.

In other words the investigation may actually be the attempt by the Board to discover the whistle-blower [s] who has exposed various board practices and actions to investigators. This could mean that public resources are being used to uncover protected behavior.

By a 3-2 vote, the district last week fired central office employee, Peggy Parker, an action almost certain to cost the district money, win or lose. Parker is reported to have already filed a complaint with one or more agencies, and a lawsuit is likely being considered as well.

Money for investigation

Richmond Heights taxpayers should ask the board members Josh Kaye, Aaron Burko, and Bob Fox, the three who voted to suspend the superintendent and conduct the investigation, how much they plan to spend on this investigation, who is getting paid to conduct it, and where the money is coming from.

These questions should be posed and answered even though the Board intends to refrain from making any further statements until the investigation is complete.

The next regularly scheduled board meets is Monday, November 21 at 7PM. By that time district residents will have decided whether to retain the only two incumbents, Linda Pliodzinskas and Bobby Jordan, who have tried to check many questionable board policies, and who they want to join or replace them. Bob Fox's term ends December 31 and he chose not to run for a second term.

BREAKING NEWS: Richmond Hts School Board Suspends Superintendent

The Richmond Heights School Board suspended Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick by a 3-2 vote in a special meeting held last night.

Unconfirmed reports suggest the suspension is pursuant to the investigation of an alleged theft of school district records, but some school observers are suggesting that the action relates to the board majority’s desire to terminate Dr. Hardwick’s contract before January 1, 2012 when a new school board will be installed.

Last week the Board fired clerk-typist Peggy Parker in another special meeting. The same board majority found Parker guilty of misappropriation of district property dishonesty, theft of confidential documents and emails, and insubordination. Parker, who reported to both the superintendent and the school treasurer Brenda Brcak, has filed complaints over her dismissal with the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and the US Department of Education. She has not ruled out further legal action.

None of the three board members who voted to suspend Hardwick are on next week’s ballot. Board president Josh Kaye and Aaron Burko each have two years remaining, while the third Bob Fox chose not to stand for re-election.

Board members Linda Pliodzinskas and Bobby Jordan Jr. voted against the suspension. Pliodzinskas is seeking election to a third term while Jordan, who was appointed in March, is seeking voter approval to complete his term.

Several issues are roiling the Richmond Heights community at present. Two council members on the city council have challenged the tax increase placed on the ballot by their colleagues, pointing out serious lapses in the administration’s fiscal reporting as cited by state auditors.

Meanwhile, school officials await what are likely to be harsh findings from the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, based on complaints filed by school administrators, parents and students. Other investigations, by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission and the State Department of Education, are also pending.

The school board majority has authorized tens of thousands of dollars in legal expenses aimed at forcing out the superintendent and defending the charges that have piled up against them since early this year.

Calls and emails placed to Mr. Kaye and to Charles Tyler, Sr., the board’s attorney and a former board member himself, had not been returned as of post time.

Hardwick’s indefinite suspension is without pay. When contacted by The Real Deal she declined comment other than to say she was not present when the vote was taken and had not been officially notified of the Board’s action.

We will have a fuller report here before Monday rolls around.

BULLETIN: Richmond Hts school board apparently trying to fire superintendent amid federal investigation

The proverbial stuff is about to hit the fan in Richmond Heights tonight where the school board has called an emergency special meeting in an apparent attempt, once again, to fire superintendent Linda T. Hardwick.

Grounds for the attempted discharge — which we understand requires an affirmative vote of four of the five board members — are Dr. Hardwick’s alleged insubordination for purportedly interfering with what was probably an inappropriate and possibly unauthorized edict from board president Josh Kaye to investigate “theft” of public documents.

These documents apparently consist of a number of immature, ill-advised, and intemperate emails written mostly by none other than the board president himself. Some of these emails evidence Mr. Kaye’s penchant for malevolent micromanagement and reveal a total lack of appreciation for his role as a public official. For instance, in one email Mr. Kaye volunteers to protect a board employee from the superintendent, essentially granting the employee license to disregard the superintendent’s directives.

Most of the emails were written months ago during the in-fighting between a board majority that includes Aaron Burko and Bob Fox, and Dr. Hardwick, over her attempts to discipline former varsity boys basketball coach Jason Kopp for his mistreatment of team members. Mr. Kopp has wielded great influence with the board majority — he taught Mr. Kaye only a few years ago — and is also the head of the Richmond Heights Education Association that only recently concluded contract negotiations with the school district.

Our investigation has determined that while the board majority was posing in exasperation with the superintendent for dithering over whether Mr. Popp would return as coach in 2011-12, the Kaye-Fox-Burko team was actually working to thwart any sanction against the coach, even enlisting the district’s expensive legal team on their behalf.

The board majority appears to some observers to hold the upper hand against its superintendent — it has on several occasions this year chosen to embarrass her, citing her for insubordination and voting to non-renew her contract more than a year ahead of time. But the actions of Mr. Popp and Mr. Kaye have prompted investigations into the school district by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Education as well as the Ohio Department of Education.

These investigations, prompted by a series of complaints filed mostly by parents but also by the superintendent herself, have been vigorously contested by the Board majority at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, all without disclosure to the district’s taxpayers.

Preliminary findings of the federal investigation are expected to show that Mr. Kaye has presided over an environment hostile to the superintendent and the vast majority of the district’s students. The smoking gun for much of the government’s findings is the series of email exchanges cavalierly tossed about by Messrs. Kaye and Fox themselves.

Mr. Kaye’s recent discovery that investigators are in possession of his self-indicting emails is the trigger for tonight’s emergency meeting, whose motivating logic can only be panic. For the board majority to fire the superintendent under these circumstances would only add another to the list of retaliatory charges it is already facing.

The Real Deal has been tracking this story for much of the past several months in preparation for a thorough exposition of the dysfunction over which Mr. Kaye presides. We have outlined here only a portion of our findings so that the taxpayers, students, parents, teachers, and administrators of the district can have a basis for appreciating the truly bizarre nature of the board’s efforts to humiliate the superintendent it hired.

Our next report will detail how many of the efforts Dr. Hardwick has made to improve the district have been thwarted by the controlling board majority.

Edited for clarity, July 28, 2020.

Silence in the Face of Outrages in Richmond Heights

It is increasingly apparent that the response to the initial outcry from members of the boys’ varsity basketball team a few months ago was the proverbial canary in the mine: a signal that there were poisonous elements in the air and that emergency remedial measures were in order.

More than the coach’s outrageous behavior and impermissible language [well, impermissible to most citizens of good conscience, if not to the majority of Richmond Heights school board members], it was the lack of an appropriate response that was a measure of the toxicity in the Richmond Heights public sphere.

It seems that while many if not most people in the sleepy suburb are still unaware of what is being done in their name, those who do have an inkling of what has been happening have either made personal adjustments [e.g., removing their children from the school system] or turned their backs to the odor emanating from the city’s school board.

We have tried over the past few weeks to restrict ourselves to more or less dispassionate reporting of the board’s public meetings, with some occasional contextual comments to explain some of the back-story.

But the back-story is now the story, or at least it should be. What is going on in Richmond Heights can no longer be confined to the sports pages of the daily paper or the fly-by coverage of local TV news seeking to capture the sound bites of human conflict.

And it certainly won’t be found in the weekly Sun Messenger, whose editorial and reportorial coverage is, to put it charitably, clueless. Earlier this month the paper called for Hardwick’s removal by the board, accusing her of being “more interested in carrying out personal vendettas … than in properly running the school district. “

Now let’s look at what the public has not been told:

1.     The board recently voted to give members of the district’s teacher’s union a two per cent raise retroactive for the school year just concluded.

2.     The superintendent claims publicly to have been improperly excluded from these negotiations.

3.     The school district has not been accredited since approximately 2000.

4.     Notwithstanding whatever public posturing has been going on, the operating board majority of Josh Kaye, Bob Fox and Aaron Burko is foursquare behind reinstating Jason Popp as basketball coach next season.

5.     The Kaye-Fox-Burko majority has consistently interfered in school matters well beyond their duties of policy-setting, interacted improperly with district employees on a regular basis, and gone so far as to inform several of them of their intent to fire the superintendent.

6.     The board president had to be backed into a verbal corner by a district parent at a public meeting before he would concede that the outrageous behavior alleged to have been committed by the basketball coach violated district policy.

7.     The board demanded in writing of a non-district employee assigned to the school to be advised of  the person’s personal relationship to the parents who are fomenting “racial” trouble.

8.     Basketball coach Jason Popp not only applied to coach the boys’ basketball team in 2011-12, he also applied to coach the 2011-12 girls’ basketball team.

9.     The board majority has failed to acknowledge the enormous impropriety of having the union president — Jason Popp — serve as party to contract negotiations while simultaneously contesting his discipline by the superintendent, discipline that they oppose.

10.  The board majority has thwarted or undermined virtually every educational initiative sought by the superintendent, fired key aides she brought in to assist her, rejected an offer by one of those aides — a Clevelander highly celebrated for his contributions — to volunteer his time and talent on behalf of the district, and stood by idly as the teachers union forced the return to the State of $100,000 in Race to the Top funds.

We could go on, and we will.

Come back tomorrow and we will let you know the real deal on what happens at tonight’s school board meeting and how the Kaye-Fox-Burko trio may try to block the superintendent’s recommendations of a new coach.

And for those of you are watched the video from the last board meeting: a major reason this trio — more than nine months before the law would require such action — resolved not to renew the superintendent’s contract , was to turn her into the lamest of lame ducks, and send an unmistakable signal of complicity to the teachers’ union with whom they are about to negotiate another raise.

Richmond Heights voters will have a chance to weigh in on all this in November.

Divided Richmond Heights school board fires another potshot at Superintendent

Hot debate precedes vote not to renew contract

Legal and ethical issues surround pair of 3-2 board decisions to dump supt., hire former board president as legal counsel

In a highly contentious and legally suspect fashion, the Richmond Heights Board of Education voted 3-2 at a 7:30AM special meeting yesterday not to renew the contract of Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick when it expires next year on July 31.

If the board does not offer Dr. Hardwick a new contract, it would continue the revolving door of district leaders that had one teacher in attendance estimate that at least nine superintendents have come and gone during her 20 years in the district, including three in the past four years alone.

Board president Josh Kaye introduced the resolution immediately after the board reconvened following the executive session it had entered as soon as the meeting starting. Only two board members — Bobby Jordan and Linda Pliodzinskas — registered surprise at Kaye’s motion, as did the superintendent, creating an inference that while the issue had not been discussed at the closed door session, the other board members — Aaron Burko and Bob Fox — had been apprised of Kaye’s intent.

Pliodzinskas, the senior member on the board, registered a number of objections to the resolution, especially pertaining to the timing of the resolution and the existence of many issues of much greater urgency.

Board president Kaye, aside from explaining the effect of the resolution, offered no rationale for its support, leaving that task to Burko. Bob Fox joined Kaye and Burko in supporting the motion, with Pliodzinskas and Jordan opposing. Video of the motion, discussion and vote here

Board member Fox then introduced a resolution that the school district add former board president Charles Tyler to its roster of attorneys. Tyler was board president last year when he resigned as a result of a job transfer out of town. 

When asked about his relationship to Tyler, Fox at first downplayed his connection to Tyler before eventually admitting that Tyler had represented Fox’s wife in litigation and was the family attorney. 

Fox defended his recommendation by saying that “the hiring of friends has gone on here forever.” Fox praised Tyler’s legal skills and suggested that Tyler could save the district money on its legal bills. After the meeting, Fox told The Real Deal that the district’s legal bill for the fiscal year ending this month could exceed $200,000.

The debate over Tyler raised questions of ethics, conflict of interest, and public perception. Pliodzinskas and Jordan opposed hiring Tyler at this time, citing ethical and professional concerns, the haste with which the issue was presented, incomplete information, and the departure from board norms in making decisions in June on organizational matters usually resolved in January. 

Jordan's motion to table the hiring of Tyler but his motion was defeated 3-2, as he and Pliodzinskas were on the losing side on all meeting long.

Several legal experts consulted by The Real Deal raised a number of legal questions about the meeting, including the Board’s possible non-compliance with Ohio’s Sunshine Law, with respect both to the adequacy of public notice for the special meeting, and appropriateness of the items presented under “new business”. 

After the meeting, Brenda Brcak, the district's chief financial officer, said that the Lake County News Herald  (an out of county publication) was the district's daily paper of record and that the Sun Messenger was its weekly paper of record. However, the Sun-Messenger did not publish an edition after the meeting was scheduled and it is unknown whether the News Herald published notice of the meeting. Brcak also said the meeting notice was published on the school district's website, but several people, including at least two city officials ,have said they looked at the site but did not see any such notice.

Of possibly greater concern was whether board member Bob Fox had a conflict in proposing and voting for the district to retain an attorney who has represented members of his immediate family.

“The hiring of friends has gone on here forever.”

— board member Bob Fox, in support of his resolution to hire former school board president Charles Tyler, his friend and former family attorney.

The board is scheduled to have yet another special meeting tomorrow night at 6pm to determine formally whether disgraced coach boys basketball coach Jason Popp will be allowed to return next season, or whether the superintendent's recommendation for his successor will be accepted.

* Three short videos on the portion of the meeting covering the discussion of Charles Tyler are being uploaded at Facebook as I post this. Each video carries "RichHts action on ChasTyler" in the title. The links will be posted as soon as they are available. 

Video Links added at 2PM: 
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFe9hzNO8cU

Richmond Heights School Board Tables Action but the Decision Has Been Made

 The fat lady hasn’t sung yet but you can hear her warming up just off-stage.

Officially, the Richmond Heights Board of Education tabled until June 22 the recommendation of School Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick to appoint Beachwood High assistant coach Jason Priah to coach the Spartans varsity boys basketball team for the 2011-12 season.

Unofficially, putting the decision off for a week was a clear signal to savvy board watchers that the struggle to save Popp’s basketball job is over and he is out. 

This result was not immediately apparent when board president Josh Kaye came out of what was surely a contentious executive session lasting about two hours and announced that the board would not be deciding on the boys’ coach at the meeting. His statement came just before 10:30PM, three and a half hours after the meeting had started.

Kaye attributed the board’s decision “not to decide” to the introduction at executive session of “new information” that had been brought to the Board’s attention and said the matter required further “research”.  He indicated that the Board was likely to decide by the end of the month.

The meeting then returned to the published agenda as the television news teams and the Plain Dealer reporter all began to withdraw.  Kaye’s announcement signaled to them that there would be no dramatic action to announce on the 11PM news or in the morning sports headline. As it turns out, they left prematurely.

The twenty-plus members of the public who stayed to the end included several parents of the boys who had protested coach Popp’s intemperate reign. Among the parents and relatives were Frank Barber, Nneka Slade Jackson, and Carlos Slade.

Waiting more than four hours for the public participation of the meeting was not going to deter them. After all, they had been waiting more than four months for a fair and final resolution. Last night, with boys and girls summer basketball leagues already underway, and every school in the conference reportedly participating but their own, and with the superintendent on record with her choice to replace Popp, the parents focused their fire on the Board and unleashed their frustration.

The brother and sister team of Jackson and Slade performed a pick-and-roll that pushed the board to advance its next meeting, promise to resolve the situation, and, after four months, to acknowledge, virtually for the first time, that Popp’s alleged behavior was inappropriate. We will be posting video of the public exchange later today.

Slade was even able to prod board member Aaron Burko into admitting that he had filed a report with fellow board members months ago about what his observations after sitting in on the February meeting where coach Popp was presented by the parents with the charges against him and denied nary a one.

Intelligent and affirmative citizen action is a beautiful thing.

Video of Supt.'s Announcement on Richmond Heights Basketball Coach

This video was shot by The County Reporter for publication here at The Real Deal. The video speaks for itself but confirms the account published here in our last post. 

The video begins by showing the adjournment of the official May 16 meeting, followed immediately by Board President Kaye’s gestured invitation to Carlos Slade to pose his question. In the context of the evening as well as prior events, Kaye and everyone in the room knew that Slade was going to ask about the school district’s stance regarding Popp.

Slade is the father of a Richmond Heights middle school student and the uncle of a varsity basketball player. His pointed question, directed to  school superintendent Linda Hardwick, asked whether responsibility for inaction on Popp’s status  rested on her shoulders or on the Board of Education.

Her reply, made with the tacit approval of the Board, as indicated by their silence, was that she had made her decision in the best interest of the children, and that she would not consider an application by Popp to return as coach. Her response produced vigorous and agitated responses from board members Aaron Burko and Bob Fox.

• • •

Interested citizens may wish to compare the video with the account published by The Sun Messenger, which reads as if ghostwritten by the operating Board of Education majority.

That account invites readers to infer that the superintendent spontaneously began discussing her decision not to accept the application from health teacher  — and teacher’s union president — Jason Popp to coach the school’s high school basketball team next school year. Hardwick had relieved Popp as coach in February after the team refused to continue playing if he remained as their coach and the players’ parents had submitted a letter detailing Popp’s alleged verbal abuse and denigration of the team, their family members and the community.

The S-M account fails completely to acknowledge that school superintendent Linda T. Hardwick was responding to a question from a resident that board president Josh Kaye invited and permitted after the board’s official meeting had ended.

Let us know your views of the following account after watching the video:

http://blog.cleveland.com/sunmessenger/2011/05/jason_popps_coaching_status_re.html

See also:
http://mobile.cleveland.com/advcleve/db_96574/contentdetail.htm;jsessionid=F9D76EFCD402DA752CA46AC204D79FF8?contentguid=XFUOFAG5&detailindex=4&pn=0&ps=5&full=true

• • •

Next week’s board meeting promises to be as entertaining as any Spartans basketball game. If you care about education in Richmond Heights, you might want to be there early. The meeting is scheduled to start promptly at 6PM on Wednesday, May 25.

Superintendent Announces Decision on Richmond Heights Basketball Coach

Superintendent Announces Decision on Richmond Heights Basketball Coach

Disarray and Discord Dominate Richmond Heights School Planning Meeting; 
Board Member Fox Outraged

“Things are seldom what they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream.”

—   Gilbert and Sullivan

Shortly before the start of Monday’s special board meeting, Richmond Heights school superintendent Linda Hardwick placed an envelope on the table where each board member would sit.

The envelopes remained unopened throughout the regular meeting, perhaps because the board members sensed the contents contained political anthrax. After all, last Friday’s Plain Dealer had reported that Hardwick planned to announce her decision about whether to reinstate Jason Popp as high school basketball coach. She had removed him ¾ of the way through the team’s undefeated regular season when team members, supported by their parents, complained about his regular and repeated use of racial slurs. Popp is white; all team members are black.

The published agenda for the meeting called for the board to hear a report on family and civic engagement from Deniese Spencer followed by an executive session to discuss personnel, legal, and other sensitive matters that public bodies are allowed by law to consider outside of public view.

Neither of these events took place. Spencer was not present and the board scratched the executive session before proceeding to hear reports from senior staff about future plans for the district. For the most part, these reports appeared disjointed and not terribly useful, more living room discussion than serious information sharing or planning.

The staff reports came out in informal and more or less random  fashion. Topics discussed were varied, including: summer cleaning; the need for air conditioning at the start of school in August; the status of textbook orders; the need for a foreign language teacher at the elementary level; declining enrollment; progress on a master schedule for the school year; the challenges of special education; transportation issues including the need for new busses; school district collaboration, the insufficiency of the district’s supply of working computers; the oncoming need to name new coaches for the winter sports, whether there will or should be a reconfiguration of the middle school this year or next; the desirability of the district’s regaining its accreditation; the importance of behavior modification training to equip school staff to deal with problematic student behavior; the availability and cost of textbooks; the number of seniors at risk of not graduating; the concern that some students may be gaming the system of supplemental education; and the fact that not a single teacher had signed up to teach summer school.

If the foregoing seems complex and disjointed, it mirrors the impression this reporter had from the meeting. There was precious little planning being done at this “planning session”.

Important information was being disclosed however through this two hour and fifteen minute session. The district treasurer revealed that the annual allocation of funds for the purchase of new computers regularly went unused.  School enrollment is declining at a rate of about 50 students each year. Six nurses who applied for the position of school nurse rejected an employment offer once they learned the salary before one accepted. Her probable start date is July or August.

Almost in passing, spurred by its treasurer, the Board seemed to arrive at a consensus that a levy would have to be placed on the ballot in 2012 to deal with the enormous drop in state support to local school districts in the prospective state budget now being negotiated in Columbus. Members acknowledged a duty to propose the levy while publicly presuming a lack of voter support that would make attempted passage a vain exercise.

Throughout the meeting there was a palpable sense of tension between some members of the board — most notably Bob Fox, but also Aaron Burko — and the school superintendent. This manifested itself both in their respective tones when addressing one another and also in the way they repeatedly interrupted each other to dispute things that had been said or done in the past.

The discussions were most antagonistic around two issues. Fox and Burko were irritated by an alleged lack of accountability on the part of community liaison Deniese Spencer. They asserted that she was hired as a direct report to the Board but seemed to hold the superintendent responsible for Spencer’s failure to keep the Board informed. They were impatient and dismissive of Hardwick’s attempts to read and/or summarize Spencer’s reports to her.

For her part, the superintendent claimed she was being kept out of the loop as to the status of union negotiations. Discussion of this issue should have been staged at the elementary school as she and various members of the Board [I’m sorry, the three white men] traded accusations of irresponsibility. [“It’s your fault.” “No, it’s your fault!” “NO, It’s YOUR FAULT!”]

Before this meeting came to its official end, resident Carlos Slade spoke up from the audience. The father of a 7^th grader and uncle of a member of the high school’s basketball team., Slade asked the Board for 5-10 minutes to discuss an important issue. Board president Joshua Kaye attempted to parry the request, citing a legal limitation on the meeting, but Slade was persistent and would not be denied. Kaye then  proposed that if Slade would be patient, the entire board would remain after the meeting was adjourned to hear his question. Slade consented to this request and the meeting continued until 9:15PM as reported above.

During the unofficial continuation of the meeting, Slade directed his inquiry to the superintendent regarding the unresolved status of coach Popp’s suspension and possible reinstatement as basketball coach. Slade said the delay was doing much harm to the district, causing many parents to make plans to enroll their children outside of the district for the next school year.

Hardwick replied by saying she had made a decision, one she believed was in the best interests of the children, and that she had conveyed that decision to board members by letter.

As board members then recognized, opened and read the contents of the envelope in front of each [Fox did not open his letter, saying he would not be able to keep his composure if he read the letter — he lost it anyway!], Hardwick said she would not accept the application from Jason Popp to coach the boys basketball team next year.

The meeting broke up at this point with several board members crying foul. Aaron Burko said that Hardwick’s public statement subjected the district to potential legal liability and tossed out a likely cost of 20 to 30 thousand dollars. Fox did not read the letter but nevertheless verged towards apoplexy.

* This post to be continued. Video of parts of the meeting including the superintendent’s statement will be posted, hopefully within 24 hours. Stay tuned.