Sun falls in Richmond Heights

Whatever credibility newspapers have in making endorsements in electoral contests rests on three assumptions:

1. That newspapers have done their homework on any given contest by covering, researching and studying the issues and candidates;

2. That their endorsements are reasonably tied to the first assumption, and

3. That their endorsements are not the product of hidden agendas.

It was no surprise to us to learn that the Sun Messenger endorsed incumbent councilman Mark Alexander over sharp newcomer Nneka Slade Jackson. Nor was it an eyebrow raiser to read that neither of the two black men vying for election to the school board was endorsed.

But we think Richmond Heights residents should be greatly disturbed about the way the Sun Messenger conducted several of their endorsement interviews, and the abysmal way the paper has overlooked and/or underreported the dysfunctional and anti-student behavior of the school board majority. We find the paper’s default so stunning that it raises questions about whether the Sun Messenger is in league with the school board majority and city fathers or just incompetent.

Endorsement Interviews

When city council candidate Nneka Slade Jackson was interviewed jointly with her opponent, she was repeatedly encouraged to identify school superintendent Linda T. Hardwick as “controversial” and to identify the superintendent as the cause of the conflict with the school board. She was also asked her views about then Cleveland councilwoman Nina Turner winning a state senatorial party caucus for a vacant senate seat over State Rep. Kenny Yuko. That vote took place in 2008!

Perhaps equally stunning in 2011, Slade Jackson was asked about her ability to manage motherhood and the [part-time!] city council position simultaneously.

When Frank Barber Jr. was interviewed for the school board, the college professor was not asked a single question about his views on education. Instead he was asked repeatedly for his view about the relationship between the board and the superintendent, and invited time and again to point fingers at the superintendent.

The priorities of the Sun Messenger are clear: they favor the Superintendent’s removal. That was pretty much the sole qualification for their endorsement.

[Their pursuit of this objective is somewhat hindered in that there are three seats up for election this year but at most only two clear votes for removal among the candidates.]

While this concern was evident and paramount in their endorsement interviews, it somehow totally went unmentioned in the endorsement editorial.

The paper endorsed former board members Dori Mittinger and Terri Wade-Lyles with a wholly unsupported statement that “they deserve another chance to serve the district.”

Precisely why is that? Mittinger failed to complete her last term on the board, resigning her seat to become the school district’s business manager. She was not rehired when her contract expired.

Most telling of the Sun Messenger agenda was their failure even to mention that incumbent Bobby Jordan is running to complete the unexpired term to which he was appointed in April. Jordan has distinguished himself as a board member by his willingness to ask questions, challenge dubious board decisions, and object to attempts by the board majority to railroad through decisions based not on educational principles but on cronyism or other personal agendas.

Shrinking coverage

Somehow, the Sun Messenger endorsement editorial failed even to acknowledge that Jordan is in the race.

Richmond Heights residents should ask themselves why the Willoughby News-Herald, based in Lake County, provides more and better coverage  [see here and here as examples] of their school district and community than their supposed neighborhood Sun paper.

And they might also ask why the Sun Messenger has failed either to discover, investigate or report any of the following actions by  one or more  members of the current board majority, including: relentless micromanagement;  repeated improper intervention into personnel matters; the wholly inappropriate countermanding of the superintendent’s directives to her staff; the discharge of every central office employee who has supported the superintendent; their total abstention from or concern with sound educational policy; their profligate ways with public funds, including incurring, authorizing, and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight against claims they engendered and have no hope of winning; their subversion of city resources by unlawful and inappropriate investigation of parents; or the fact that an incumbent board member has withdrawn his children from the district, may no longer live in Richmond Heights himself, and has failed to disclose this information publicly.

The shame of Richmond Heights does not rest solely or even principally upon the shoulders of a coach who was ill-equipped to lead his basketball team on or off the court. No wonder he thought he could conduct himself with impunity.

Here’s an unequivocal endorsement: for the resignation of Board President Josh Kaye within 24 hours of his receipt of the soon-to-be released findings from the Department of Justice and/or The Ohio Civil Rights Commission, and/or the State Department of Education.  Failing his resignation, we would endorse his recall by the citizens of Richmond Heights.

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.