Wednesday Politics RICHMOND HEIGHTS: Longtime mayor to face opposition

Wednesday Politics

RICHMOND HEIGHTS: Longtime mayor to face opposition

[Editor’s Note: Technical difficulties prevented our posting yesterday. We couldn’t get online.]

This is the first of a series of periodic snapshots on local 2013 municipal election campaigns.

This blog took a big leap forward in May 2011 when we followed our curiosity to Richmond Heights and its sociocultural struggles as they were being played out in its high school basketball program. Over the course of the following nine months some of our most widely read and circulated pieces covered key developments in the small but significant bedroom community [See here, here, and here].

Sometime this year we will return to the Richmond Heights school district to catch up on how the district is faring educationally. We can report today however that, thanks to a nearly complete turnover of the district school board, the costly shenanigans rooted in cronyism and race have pretty much disappeared. Only one member remains from the Board’s January 2011 organizational meeting.

Richmond Heights Board of Education, from left: Carmela Carter, Frank Barber, Linda Pliodzinkas, Tamitra Peavy and Bobby Jordan Sr. Jordan is president, Barber is vice president.

In reporting on Richmond Heights schools we came to understand the ways in which the district’s issues were only a part of the city’s underperformance. The city was in such financial straits that it would have been placed under fiscal watch in 2011 had the current standards of the State Auditor been in place at the time.

Perhaps this is the reason that the city’s longtime mayor, Daniel Ursu, in office since 1989, stopped giving "State of the City" addresses after 2010. His office told us today that he is working on an SOC this year.

Richmond Heights has four municipal races this year: mayor, council president, and the two council at large seats. These are held, respectively, by Ursu, David Roche, Miesha Wilson Headen, and Donald O’Toole.

Eloise Henry
Ward 3 Councilwoman

Miesha Wilson Headen
Councilwoman at Large

Whether Ursu pursues his seventh four year term may turn on whether he relishes a challenge from at least one and perhaps two or more city council members. While ward 3 councilwoman Eloise Henry is telling friends that she is in the race “no matter who else is running”, Headen faces a choice between running for reelection to the seat she won four years ago in her first try for public office, or going up against her colleague and perhaps others in a mayoral bid. The answer will likely depend on how much money she thinks she can raise.

Council president Roche told us that he is leaning towards running for re-election as opposed to seeking the mayor’s seat. Likewise, O'Toole says that he expects to run for re-election.

Ursu has yet to announce his plans.

Candidates can begin circulating petitions on June 8 and must file them by August 7. Richmond Heights offices are nonpartisan. The city has no primary.

Gender Gap between parties is growing

Prof. Karen Beckwith

Political scientist Karen Beckwith will lead a discussion this Friday on why Democratic women in Congress outnumber their Republican colleagues by such a hefty margin and what significance this may or may not have.

Beckwith, the Flora Stone Mather Professor of Political Science at Case Western Reserve University, will be the featured guest at this week’s Public Affairs Discussion Group from 12:30 to 1:30PM in the Kelvin Smith Library Dampeer Room. The library is adjacent to Severance Hall.

Eighty percent of female senators and more than 75 percent of female representatives are Democrats.

All-but announced 2013 State candidate Nina Turner to speak in Shaker Heights

State Senator and Minority Whip Nina Turner, D-25, who delivered impromptu remarks that fired up a diverse crowd of Democratic activists two weeks ago when state party chair Chris Redfern was in town, returns to the same location tomorrow. This time the microphone will have her name on it, though she didn’t need it last time.

Turner is the presumptive frontrunner as her party’s nominee to take on Secretary of State Jon Husted next year. Husted is a prime target for those upset by the restrictive voting procedures he has sought to impose since he won the seat in 2010. She is expected to talk about voting reforms but it’s a fair assumption that her talk will be anything but dry.

The program begins at 7PM at the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Community Center, 3450 Lee Road.

The event is open to the public and refreshments will be provided. Sponsors include the Cuyahoga Democratic Women's Caucus, Beachwood-Woodmere Democratic Ward Club, Bedford/Walton Hills Democratic Party, Cleveland Stonewall Democrats, Ohioans for Democratic Values, Shaker Heights Democratic Club, South Euclid Democratic Club and University Heights Democratic Club.

Note to Republicans: we know some of you read these posts. We will be pleased to report your events in this space, as we have done in the past. Send your announcements to us here.

County Executive to speak in Cleveland Heights next week

Finally, Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald will be at Grace Lutheran Church, 13001 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights, at 7PM next Thursday, February 28 for what sponsors Cleveland Stonewall Democrats and Cuyahoga Democratic Women’s Caucus are billing as a “conversation”.

Free; open; refreshments.

Richmond Hts. School Board takes step to end Hardwick era Part I

Richmond Hts. School Board takes step to end Hardwick era

Part I

The Richmond Heights Board of Education is expected to vote tonight not to renew the contract of superintendent Linda T. Hardwick when it expires July 31. The vote will take place in executive session at a 7PM special meeting called for this purpose.

Dr. Hardwick has been on paid administrative leave since November after a tumultuous two year in which a majority of the board seemed bent on thwarting her efforts to improve the quality of education in the small and shrinking school district.

In a city that is roughly fifty percent white, only about half of the school age population of approximately 1900 students attend the city’s public schools. Most white parents and a sizable number of black ones choose from an array of charter, parochial, other public, or private schools, or undertake to educate their children at home.

Leadership issues are key to the district’s woes, which also include a worn out physical plant, outdated textbooks, tightening financial straights, an anxious and disengaged faculty, and what has increasingly come to be seen as a hostile environment for the captive African American students and those administrators who are seen as sympathetic to the students.

Most of these problems have been a decade or more in the making. Voters rejected seven school levies in succession, a short but bitter teachers strike in 2007 resolved no key issues, and the district continued to unravel under the comings and goings of a host of new union leaders [five in five years], superintendents [four in seven years], and a school board that often seemed in need of musical chairs with training wheels.

The problems of the Richmond Schools are not isolated to the district’s single campus, which is effectively hidden away — it almost seems by design — behind a brand new municipal complex. The sparkling new city hall that shows its rear to the schools boasts a part-time mayor whose twenty year tenure is as tired as his city’s schools, though he pretends the school district’s sickness is unrelated to his city’s maladies. A lifetime company lawyer in his day job, Mayor Daniel Ursu seems wholly unsuited for the challenges of what are likely his final years in office. Colleagues describe him as secretive and conflict-averse, a fact this reporter observed first-hand in the mayor’s repeated refusals to be interviewed, even scurrying away on one occasion into the safety of City Hall and hastily locking the door behind him.

[It has been reported to us that the mayor, as he seeks to shape his legacy, is now in the midst of a fevered attempt to shred thirteen years of public records pertaining to his administration. His efforts, while apparently legal, do raise questions as to his rationale, since he reportedly has never bothered to dispose of a single record during his tenure.]

But while the mayor personifies Alice-in-Wonderland municipal leadership, it is Jason Popp,  a long time physical education teacher and current head of the teacher’s union, who brought instant notoriety upon the school district and hence the city when he was accused last January of perpetrating regular emotional abuse of the boys varsity basketball team. His alleged repeated belittling of his players’, their families, heritage, intellect, and morals — allegations which he has never denied and all but admitted — led to a revolt by the players and their parents, who presented school authorities with a choice: either replace the coach immediately or the team would boycott the remainder of their then undefeated season.  

After meeting with all parties over the next few days — players, parents, the coach, other administrators, and a few school board members — Superintendent Hardwick essentially put Popp on paid administrative leave from coaching in early February 2011. In so doing, she unknowingly put her own career as a first-time superintendent on the accelerated track leading to tonight’s expected action.

I previously reported on much of this last year in posts between May and November. As it appears that matters have gotten increasingly grave and are now coming to a head, I wanted to provide a summary that would prepare readers for what I believe is on the horizon. Part II will appear tomorrow.

Part II: Popp defender questions parents' actions in Richmond Hts. coaching controversy

@Anonymous:

I have taken a more thorough look at the questions you fired off in your comments to my second post of June 22.

It seems to me that I answered most of them yesterday and that the remaining issue implied by your comments is this: what must be done to ensure that the Richmond Heights Local Schools accomplish with integrity and excellence its stated vision and mission?

The following is taken from the District's website:

Vision:  Every Day Every Child will be so engaged in learning that s/he always learns what is personally valued, expected by the school, and valued by parents and the community. 

Mission: To provide a safe environment, a challenging curriculum and permission for all students to dream. To deliver a highly individualized education developing motivated, self-reliant, and productive citizens. To foster learning by designing engaging, challenging, and satisfying work.

Even a cursory review of these statements calls into question whether the Board’s behavior in the Popp episode comports with the District’s stated beliefs that:

• “the keys to improved academic performance are the professional practices of teachers and leaders, not the economic, racial, ethnic, or linguistic characteristics of our children. …
•  “to improve the performance of students in our schools, we must continuously improve … leadership.
• “… the quality of the relationship between the student and teacher as well as the school and community is essential to the quality of learning for every student.”

As your early comments suggest, Jason Popp was a teacher before he was a coach. Coaching is teaching in another form. Coaches are paid to coach. The playing field, the locker room, the bus rides: these are extensions of the classroom. Winning and losing are incidental to the learning experience.
Let’s strip away the hysteria surrounding Coach Popp’s crude and intemperate remarks and examine the complaints of students and parents in their essence.
When we do so, can there be any doubt that the parents’ February 7th letter was a stinging outcry against the quality of the relationship between student and teacher/coach and its negative consequences for the quality of learning for team members? Or that the letter was a rebuke of the teacher/coach’s unprofessional practices and a demand for improved leadership?
The letter reflects the steps taken by parents before issuing their demand for Popp’s removal: discussions with the coach, the athletic director and others had been unavailing.
And until the parents stood up to the Board on June 13 and cross-examined its President into a corner [see Video, segment beginning at 3:48], there was never — not once in four months — an indication that the Board earnestly considered its employee/coach’s behavior to be unacceptable and in violation of school district policy.
So how can this be a learning experience for the community that results in a committed reaffirmation of the district’s Vision and Mission?
Leadership starts at the top. Let the Board begin by becoming more open, more transparent, more engaged with the community it is sworn and obliged to serve. Here are several suggestions in that regard:

1.     Publish notice of its meetings in more timely fashion. Announce the agenda online.

2.     Resort to executive session only as mandated by law.

3.     Publish minutes of meetings in more timely fashion. Put them online.

4.     Invite the community to become part of the education process. Expand and elevate the community comment portion of board meetings. Put it at the beginning of the meeting, not the end.

5.     Report to the community. What is the status of teacher negotiations?

6.     End the public bickering and nitpicking of the Superintendent. You hired her. Work with her. Give her the freedom to do her job and evaluate her performance on the basis of her job description and agreed performance measures.

7.     Stop the hideously self-defeating micro management. Be policy-makers, not pseudo mini-superintendents.

The Superintendent and the teachers are the chief professionals when it comes to delivering quality education to students. They need to find ways to improve their working relationship. The Board should foster this outcome.
Parents need to be watchdogs, paying attention first and foremost to their children’s efforts, but also to the content of the curriculum and the professionalism by which it is imparted.
Richmond Heights is a small enough district with enough resources that if properly focused and utilized, could be a model as well as a magnet for public education. This community should be near perfect in more than just basketball.

Popp defender questions parents' actions in Richmond Hts. coaching controversy

@Anonymous: I can’t thank you enough for your questions. Many of them are useful in getting at what should be the heart of the matter: the quality of the education the children are receiving in the Richmond Heights Local Schools.  The answers to that critical issue implicate all of the participants: the teachers, the administration, the school board, and, of course, the students themselves.

I am going to try and provide a succinct recap of what has led the District to its current state. I came late to address this issue, and from what I have gathered since my first post on the matter, I gather that many of my readers have as well. After the recap, I will address your questions in two groups: the easy ones, and the important ones. The easy ones I will address in this post. The others I will write about tomorrow.

A. RECAP

I. In a letter dated February 7, 2011, the parents of the boys basketball team advised the superintendent of the district of serious charges against coach Jason Popp. [i][This letter is reproduced below.]

2. After a meeting with the parents, followed by an immediate investigation, school superintendent Linda Hardwick relieved Mr. Popp from coaching the team and appointed an interim coach for the balance of the season.  This action did not prejudice Mr. Popp’s rights in any way, as his supplemental coaching contract was not terminated and no final decision was made regarding his eligibility to return as coach.

3. Between February 11, when Popp was suspended as coach, and May 16, when the superintendent delivered a letter to each board member advising them of her decision not to recommend Mr. Popp as coach for next basketball season, furious activity was taking place behind the scenes involving certain school board members, the superintendent, the board’s lawyers, and the coach himself. Much of this maneuvering was initiated by allies of the coach on the board, who appear to have believed that a) Kopp did nothing wrong; b) if he erred in any way, it was minor; c) the concerns of the parents were exaggerated and not worthy of serious consideration; and d) the situation could be exploited to damage the public image of the superintendent, whom they had already decided should be fired.

4. During this period, the school board suffered the abrupt resignation of its most recent appointee, Gannon Quinn, and replaced him reluctantly with Bobby Jordan Jr. Meanwhile, the coach, who to this day has never repudiated the charges made by the parents, refused to apologize to the students or their parents, and was apparently reassured on numerous occasions that he would be reinstated. Undaunted, Mr. Popp proceeded to coach the boys spring track team pursuant to a contract he was awarded in 2010. [The Superintendent would later acknowledge that she was unaware Mr. Popp was coaching the track team; had she known, she might likely have intervened. From my vantage, I would wonder why the athletic director failed to bring this matter to her attention.]

5. Mr. Popp applied to coach both the boys and girls basketball teams for 2011-12. The Superintendent stuck to her guns in finding that Mr. Popp’s virtual admission of the allegations against him, coupled with his refusal to meet the conditions she had established [apologize, take sensitivity training], rendered him unqualified to coach as a matter of school district policy and state law.

6. Neither the board majority nor its legal team could find a way around the superintendent’s position and so ultimately, were required unanimously to accept her recommendation of a new coach.

I have multiple sources for most of the above truncated account. Some part of it is based on inferences drawn from my sources. I stand on the accuracy of my reporting.

B. EASY QUESTIONS

1.     Have I bothered to ask questions about Coach Popp’s history with students? What about as a teacher? What about his character?

No. The coach has established a moratorium on speaking with the media. He is president of the union and every teacher I have spoken with has virtually curled up into a fetal position when I have attempted to engage with them. I haven’t stopped trying, though.

2.     Why, after 16 years of teaching and coaching in this district, is the coach suddenly being accused of being insensitive, discriminatory, inappropriate and/or demeaning?

This question might be relevant if the coach denied the acts and statements of which he stands accused. His refusal to disavow the behavior, or to apologize for it, raises the more pertinent question of what in the Richmond Heights educational environment made him feel entitled to engage in behavior that in most enlightened and engaged districts, would have led to his suspension, not just from coaching but from teaching as well.

3.     Has he ever done good things for the district or the students or the athletes, including ever helping his accusers?

I would hope so, since I presume he has been paid for every one of the days he has been under contract to do just that.

4.     Could it be that the parents do not like him? What effect did the February 4, 2011 Plain Dealer have on this situation?

All the parents I have spoken with want the same thing for the boys on the team, and for all of the students in the district. They want their children to be respected, supported and educated.

They do not want their children to be called out of their name by faculty. They do not want their children to be demeaned, ridiculed, and undermined. They do not want their children to be stereotyped as ghetto, unworthy of scholarship aid, or in any way “less than”.

The parents understood the news article as being full of stereotypes. One man’s reality is another’s stereotype. I will say that none of the parents with whom I have spoken qualifies as a hothead, or a radical, or quick to “play the race card”. [I mightily dislike that phrase by the way, because I find its use more typically obfuscates rather than illuminates].

5.     Is it possible that the parents used this situation to get Mr. Popp out of coaching, and coached their children to come up with reasons to have him dismissed, because there were no real underlying reasons — because he is a good guy?

You are really stretching here. If anything, the parents should have discovered the coach’s tactics and attitudes much sooner. The players had been disturbed by the coach’s behavior for some time, and shared their concerns with adults in the system, but were discouraged from making it an issue. Various reasons were given for this urge to sweep their complaints under the rug, including repeated assertions that “Popp has powerful friends in the system. He is the union president.”

6.     Do I find it interesting that Popp has said nothing to defend himself?

No. Apart from a denial or an apology, there is not much for him to say. I think he has likely received some good advice from his lawyers to say nothing, possibly because the allegations, if established, are so far in violation of school policy and state law as to put his teaching license in jeopardy. And possibly because of the offline assurances he likely has received relative to the probability of his reinstatement.

7.     Have I bothered to ask questions about Coach Popp’s history with students? What about as a teacher? What about his character?

No. The coach has established a moratorium on speaking with the media. He is president of the union and every teacher I have spoken with has virtually curled up into a fetal position when I have attempted to engage with them. I haven’t stopped trying, though.

8.     Coaches are coaches, motivators, disciplinarians, etc.

High school coaches first and foremost should be educators. Coaches are adults.

9.     Have I listened to these same kids when they are on their own? Don’t they use the “n” and “f” words?

We could make this question easy or difficult. I don’t hang with these kids. The ones that I have observed are generally well-behaved in the adult settings where I have observed them. I would not presume to attribute the behavior of any few of them to the many, which I sense that many of Coach Popp’s defenders may do, based on their devotion to the reasoning implied by your question.

If you will provide me with any instance in which any of these boys have used inappropriate language, I would be delighted to pass the report on to their parents, and I would expect the parents to address the situation promptly. That’s how it was done in my community back in the day. That is, when the adult witness didn’t address me directly for my inappropriate behavior. And I wager that you could address them directly yourself, irrespective of your gender, age, ethnicity, and sexual orientation, provided you had the rudimentary ability to let them understand that you were coming from a position of authentic caring.

  These are the easy questions. Come back tomorrow to find my response to your other questions.

---

[i] Parents of Richmond Heights Boys Varsity Basketball

434 Douglas Boulevard

Richmond Heights, Ohio 44143

216.870.3015

February 7, 2011

Dr. Linda T. Hardwick

Superintendent, Richmond Heights School District

447 Richmond Road

Richmond Heights, Ohio 44143

Dear Dr. Hardwick:

Although the boys basketball team may appear to be thriving and well with their perfect record of 15-0, behind the scenes the team is very defeated in spirit and morale due to the behavior of Head Varsity Coach, Jason Popp. There has been ongoing discussion relating to Mr. Popp’s use of inappropriate language, as well as racial and economic harassment. These issues have been addressed in the recent past by both members of the team, and parents with school officials including Athletic Director, George Smith, and Interim Superintendent, Dr. Moore.  Below are recent examples.

• On Tuesday, January 18, 2011 the team was departing the bus for a game against Cardinal High School, and Coach Popp told the team that their opponents will expect them to “play like niggers, which you are….”
• Thursday February 3, 2011, Coach Popp told one of his players that he did not give “two fucks” about his grandmother when the young man asked to be dismissed because practice had run over time, and it was his grandmother’s birthday. (there is a parent meeting scheduled Tuesday to discuss this)
• Coach Popp mentioned to three of his players that one of the boy’s father is a “drunk, and the apartment he lives in is probably government housing”.
• He also mentioned to members of the team that four boys in particular had no reason to pursue athletic scholarships because they were from single-parent homes and would qualify for financial aid. He repeated these same statements in a meeting with Mr. Carlos Slade, uncle of a player, regarding his unwillingness to seek athletic scholarships based on his assumption that these boys qualify for financial aid.
• About three weeks ago Mr. Early, the parent of a player, had a meeting with Coach Popp and Mr. Smith regarding comments made by the coach in which he admitted to saying to the player that he would end up living “down on Superior” if he did not get his grades together.

These and other insulting and degrading comments have been said consistently to our children while at team meetings, on the bus and at practice.  Coach Popp also had an opportunity to praise our kids for their hard work.  They have been required to practice on weekends, holidays, and school closings.  Instead he used this opportunity to paint a picture of poverty and despair for the undefeated Spartans through an interview opportunity with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. There were many parents who found the previous statements made by the coach implausible, but quickly found them to be summarized in the article’s release on Friday, February 4, 2010.  The article displayed his feelings and attitude towards our children, this basketball team and our community (see attached article and highlights).  The statements in the Plain Dealer mirrored complaints made by the children, as he was quoted making comments referencing kids who come from government housing and receive free lunch. Additionally the coach was quoted speaking of kids who come from single-parent homes and a lot of families where money is not exactly falling out of their pockets. As parents we were equally disturbed to realize that the coach admits to not having confidence in his player’s abilities to play basketball at the collegiate level with the exception of one. In fact there is a remark made by the coach which references losing the area’s best kids to other schools, alluding to the fact that he does not believe our kids at Richmond Heights are among the best.

ACTION PLAN:

At this time the parents and the Varsity Boys Basketball team of Richmond Heights High School demand the instantaneous removal (before the next scheduled game) of Coach Jason Popp. It is our belief that if we are to maintain a winning team coupled with players who are not mentally handicapped by the degradation, and humiliation in which they have had to endure, an interim coach is necessary immediately, pending whatever process the district has in place in order to investigate this matter. It is the wish of the Varsity Boys Team to continue on with their season in order to help maintain the spirit of the school and the community. The school, community, and the entire basketball team are proud of the accomplishments of the varsity members despite the hardships they have faced. Nonetheless, the team and parents are in agreement, and the boys refuse to continue on with Head Coach Jason Popp. Please note that as parents we are outraged! This is about more than basketball and it is our sincere hope that as Superintendent you will be certain that the proper actions will be taken in order to do what is best for the people which have been most affected, and for those who may quite possibly be affected by Coach Popp’s disgraceful actions in the future: the children of Richmond Heights School District. The parents and varsity members embrace a more personal discussion of this matter as soon as possible.

Respectfully yours,

Parents of the Richmond Heights Varsity Basketball Team

cc: Joshua Kaye, President Richmond Heights School Board

         Dr. Robert Moore, Principal/Past Interim Superintendent

         Nathan Bishko, Interim Principal

         George Smith, Athletic Director

Bulletin: Priah is new Boys Basketball Coach

By a 4-0 vote, the Richmond Heights Board of Education accepted the recommendation of School Superintendent Linda T. Hardwick to appoint Beachwood assistant coach Jason Priah to be the new varsity boys basketball coach. Board president Josh Kaye, who had been behind-the-scenes a staunch proponent of returning disgraced Jason Popp to the position, did not attend tonight's meeting. Board vice president and Kaye ally Bob Fox presided at tonight's meeting, which drew a large crowd of parents and residents, along with seven media outlets [four local television stations, three newspapers].

The outcome was foreshadowed at last week's board meeting when, following a lengthy two-and-a-half hour executive session, the superintendent agreed to table her recommendation of Priah. It appeared at that time that the operative board majority had been stymied in its desire to reinstate Popp by the superintendent's insistence that uncontested allegations of Popp's inappropriate and racially demeaning conduct had rendered him unqualified to continue his coaching career at this time.

Still, the tension mounted as what vice president Fox promised would be a speedy executive session,   closed in on an hour's duration. Finally, the board and Hardwick emerged grim-faced from the lengthy session and proceeded to take the Priah recommendation off the table and pass it.

Still to be determined is who will coach the girls' basketball and boys' track team next year. Popp coached the track team this spring after having been removed mid-season from the basketball team. In Hardwick's words, he "slipped through the cracks" as she worked to resolve the basketball situation.

 Popp applied last month to coach both boys and girls basketball. Deniese Spencer has coached the girls team for the last five years and is likely to have the superintendent's support.

When asked by a television news reporter if Popp would coach girls basketball, the superintendent said, "Oh, no."

Taking Popp's coaching whistle resolves the district's most dramatic issue. However, it does nothing to address any of the other critical issues — among them:  endemic instability, a divided board, an embattled superintendent, a shrinking district, an estranged community — that cry out for resolution.

We will be reporting on these issues all summer long.

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.

Flunking the test in Richmond Heights

We have been digging into issues in the sleepy but deeply troubled Richmond Heights community for about the past two months. What we have learned — from the public record as well as from numerous conversations with public officials, past and present school district employees, parents of children in the district’s effective but critically-ill school system, other district residents, school volunteers and others with knowledge of the city’s schools — has so shocked us that we have had to work to maintain appropriate distance from the story to be able to tell it fairly.

Most county residents, your scribe among them, likely paid scant attention to the tiny suburb of Richmond Heights before the boys basketball coach became an advance ad earlier this year for the forthcoming Cameron Diaz comedy, "Bad Teacher". Aside from the occasional attention  the town may draw as home to the county airport, or for its Richmond Town Center at Wilson Mills and Richmond Roads, the place is easy to overlook. Tucked underneath the City of Euclid, its large municipal neighbor [the county’s fourth largest city] in the northeast part of the county, it is possible to drive through Richmond Heights without even knowing you have been there. Its roughly 10,000 residents live in a mixture of mostly ranch homes and a few large off-the-beaten path apartment complexes.

The city’s profile was raised in February when the entire high school boys varsity basketball team pushed their parents front and center to demand that the school district remove their coach because of his creation and maintenance of a racially hostile environment directed at them. The coach, Jason Popp, is a health teacher at the high school, and also president of the teachers union.  The all black team and ready to forfeit the balance of their then-undefeated season if the situation was not resolved.

School superintendent Linda T. Hardwick, when confronted by the parents, quickly confirmed the likely veracity of the boys’ complaints — which Popp appears not ever to have denied — and replaced the coach for the balance of the season. 

Hardwick later set forth certain conditions under which Popp might be permitted to return. When Popp, with the none too subtle back channel support of several school board members — even as a new teachers contract was being negotiated — defiantly refused to apologize to the students or to take other steps also required by the superintendent, Hardwick told the board  last month that she would not consider Popp as next year’s coach.

Tonight, according to various published reports, Hardwick intends to recommend Jason Priah as Popp’s successor. Priah has been an assistant basketball coach at conference rival Beachwood for the past four years and was highly recommended. He comes with the endorsement of both the district's athletic director and the high school principal who interviewed him.

It is expected that a Board majority, led by its twenty-six year old president, Josh Kaye, who less than a decade ago was a Richmond Heights High School student, will reject Priah as a candidate. They will likely cite for the record vague legal and technical concerns if they choose to comment at all. But Kaye has regularly signaled that he wants Popp to remain as coach even if, as seems likely, not one boy comes out for the team, and that the majority of the best team in school history transfers out of the district.

It remains a public mystery why Richmond Heights parents and taxpayers, have not descended en masse upon the board of education to demand answers to some very basic questions:

1.     Why isn’t the Board on record condemning the utter unacceptability of any district employee gratuitously demeaning, belittling, and/or insulting any other member of the Richmond Heights school community?

2.     How can the Board justify considering extending a new contract any district employee who has so flaunted federal and state laws, as well as board policies and the union contract, by engaging in such conduct?

3.     How does a majority of the Board reconcile its desire to reinstate Popp as coach for next season, knowing that Popp’s conduct is the basis for one or more of the several complaints that have been filed with the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Education and are currently under investigation?

4.     What kind of legal advice is the Board receiving that would protect the District from heading down the expensive road of defending these claims in court?

5.     What makes Jason Popp more valuable to the District than the children he is charged with nurturing and protecting?

To pose these questions is important, even though the Board will likely duck and cover as best it can. All over Richmond Heights, and indeed throughout Cuyahoga County, these questions should be asked until the truth comes out.

The Board meets at 7PM tonight at district headquarters. Return to this space tomorrow for the skinny on what happens.

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.

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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

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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.