Richmond Heights board may dangle
Pingle tonight
Also: FitzGerald Town Hall meeting tomorrow; African American Museum
talent show audtions; Civic Commons Commentary; County Prosecutor endorsement alert.
Tonight’s special
Richmond Heights school board special meeting to decide the fate of suspended high
school principal Timothy Pingle will take place without one of the key
protagonists — board member Josh Kaye.
Four days after
voting not to renew the contract of suspended Richmond Heights Schools Superintendent
Linda T. Hardwick when it expires on July 31, the district’s school board meets
tonight in special session, this time to consider firing Dr. Pingle.
Pingle was suspended
December 12 after interim superintendent Robert Moore accused Pingle of
unprofessional conduct. The charge appears to have been made after Dr. Moore
obtained a copy of a December 3 email from Pingle to Josh Kaye in which Pingle
questioned Moore’s qualifications to be superintendent.
Following his
suspension, Pingle claimed to have been set up by Kaye, used as a pawn in an
attempt to undermine Hardwick, and falsely accused of manifesting racist
attitudes. Pingle claims to have questioned Moore’s appointment only in
response to Kaye’s alleged confidential disclosure that Moore was being
selected for racially motivated political reasons.
Kaye and Pingle are
white, Moore and Hardwick are black. Pingle has claimed that Kaye told him that
Moore was being hired as interim superintendent so that he Kaye, would have a
defense to being accused of racism.
Kaye’s absence from
tonight’s meeting — he is out of state on business — suggests that the Board is
unlikely to terminate Pingle this evening. The underlying charge against him
appears flimsy to begin with and points to the deeper issues confronting how
the district’s schools have been run for years, with board members routinely
exchanging private emails with school administrators and having clandestine
phone calls that have nothing to do with educational policies.
The whole situation
is rife with hypocrisy on many levels. Under the Kaye regime — which ended when
a new president was elected at last month’s organizational meeting following
the November election — several board members routinely interacted
inappropriately with various central office personnel and others, most often to
undermine Superintendent Hardwick and to advance other agendas unrelated to the
education of the district’s children.
In the midst of
ongoing controversies — the Popp incident, ongoing federal and state investigations,
to name only two— Hardwick’s alleged handover of these inappropriate emails to investigators
led to both her and clerk-typist Peggy Parker being accused of theft.
The result has been a
district accelerating into chaos, with only the district’s attorneys benefiting
to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Irrespective of the results of
the findings from the Department of Education’s Civil Rights Division, the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Ohio Civil Rights Commission, and
possibly the Ohio Department of Education, the district is likely to face
litigation from Hardwick, Parker, Pingle and others over numerous personnel
decisions during the Kaye administration.
The challenge before
the board, and by that I mean principally its new majority of president Linda
Pliodzinskas, vice president Bobby Jordan, and newly-elected Frank Barber, is
to find a way to end years of destructive official behavior, repair relations
with a teachers union that is both
hostile to the district and intimidated by its own leadership, and then regain
the confidence of the district’s voters.
Race has of course
been a volatile factor in the Richmond Heights school district for some time. Charges
of racism have sometimes swirled about irresponsibly, even as on other
occasions clear evidence of racist behaviors have been overlooked or worse,
defended as appropriate. But we must comment on the irony of the interim
superintendent taking offense at an underling’s questioning of his
qualifications and attributing the challenge to a racist attitude. It was,
after all, Dr. Moore, who shuffled his feet and looked the other way when first
students and then parents implored him to assist them in addressing the clearly
hostile racial environment created by then-boys basketball coach Jason Popp
during the 2010-11 season. Astonishingly, Moore earlier this month recommended that Popp be given a contract to coach the boys' track team. [Moore has reportedly applied to be superintendent in the neighboring South Euclid-Lyndhurst School District.]
• • •
County Executive Ed FitzGerald will host another in
his series of district Town Hall meetings tomorrow night in Cleveland Heights.
The meeting begins at 7PM at the Cleveland Heights Community
Center, One Monticello Blvd at the corner of Mayfield Rd.
The meeting is free
and open to all. Near public transportation. Handicap accessible. FitzGerald
will make a presentation to the residents and then engage in a question and
answer session.
Cleveland Heights is
in District 10, along with East Cleveland, and Cleveland wards 10 and 11. Julian Rogers is the county councilman.
• • •
Calling budding or accomplished talent
Final
auditions will be this Wednesday,
February 29 for the African American
Museum’s March 10 talent show. The show will have three contest categories:
11 years and under, 17 years and under, and 18 years and older. Singers,
dancers, musicians, lip sync-ers, and those with any special talent are invited
to audition for the chance to win prizes that include studio time, a cash award
of $250, a laptop computer, and three chances to win an iPad or Kindle.
There
is a $10.00 nonrefundable entry fee.
Info: 216.280.0714
or 216.374.2899
or myafricanmuseum@yahoo.com.
• • •
Green Behavior and Black History on tap
Just a reminder to
tune into the Civic Commons tomorrow [12:30 pm on 88.7 FM WJCU and 7:30 pm 88.5 FM WYSU] to
catch your humble scribe talking about Black History Month. My commentary comes
after some especially trenchant criticism from Cleveland city councilman Brian
Cummins and others regarding Mayor Frank Jackson’s vaunted sustainability
initiatives.
• • •
Endorsement
for County Prosecutor
The Real Deal has been tracking
the county prosecutor’s race for some time. Our early observation about the
history of this office — namely, that this is the voters’ first open choice in
more than half a century — has been repeated by almost every candidate and
countless others. Come on back tomorrow and learn why we think *** is just who
the office needs to clean up an office that everyone agrees is in need of major
reform.
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