This board meeting clocked in at just over 3 and a half hours, so feel free to watch our video cliff notes or read them below.
Darbi Boddy’s misinformation-filled resolution to remove all COVID policies came to a vote and failed as expected. It was covered by multiple local news channels. One also picked up her strange insistence to delay a vote on continuing membership in the Ohio High School Athletic Association (OHSAA) due to the existence of both sex at birth and “gender of identity” (sic) on one of their forms as well as the fact that they have DEI initiatives.
Lakota’s Treasurer/CFO, Mrs. Logan gave an update on what ESSER funds have been spent on and also provided some more information on Ohio House Bill 290. The board president provided excuses on why they were not able to weigh in on House Bill 290, despite the fact that many residents have asked them to take a stance.
A large amount of time was spent talking about policy updates during the first reads. Mrs. Logan noted that the board should consider an alternate formation of the committee as there was essentially a full policy meeting during the board meeting.
The three policies discussed were:
- Public Comment Rules – Mostly minor changes here were approved here.
- A new COVID policy which moved the ability to mandate masks from the superintendent to the board, unless it was mandated by law. There were many questions about this policy’s wording and legal analysis as it was added to the agenda not long before the board meeting after coming back from legal. Many members of the public did not have a chance to review this policy, and many board members still have questions on it.
- Curriculum – The new policy requires all curriculum to be approved by the board, but that all requests for access to classroom specific materials by an individual board members would need to go through the superintendent and should not be onerous. It was noted there is an existing policy for complaint resolution for concerns about classroom materials already in place. There were a few different trains of thought on this:
- Mrs. Casper and Mrs. Shaffer stated: Mr. Miller should be the gatekeeper to curriculum, which is currently defined too broadly right now. If it were to be higher level: courses of study, classes, learning objectives, etc, they would be in support of board approval. They recognized an issue with the teacher retention across the nation and locally with threats and implementation of similar policies that are being discussed.
- Mrs. Boddy wanted full access at any time to any teachers’ curriculum and thinks that the board should have full authority to approve curriculum. She wanted to expand the curriculum definition to include online resources, TV channels, any classroom materials or activity in the classrom. (Since she mentioned installing cameras in the classroom at a previous meeting, the assumption is that she was referring to cameras when she mentioned this.) She claimed that Mr. Miller was hiding things from parents and firmly stated that she doesn’t trust him either which is why she doesn’t want to go through him to access teachers’ curriculum materials. (She mentioned that her concerns are based on claims of problems brought up by community members. These have generally been disproven and unsubstantatiated.)
- Mrs. O’Connor and Mr. Adi said they didn’t want to burden the teachers and approve every single item or piece of classroom material. They also said they wanted the board to be proactive in their curriculum review, not just reactive, which is why they want the board to approve all curriculum; an expanded definition of which would include surveys/questionnaires, textbooks, workbooks, software, video, and other instructional materials being used by the district.
- Aside from board members showing up at random to inspect classroom materials, the only true difference between Mr. Adi/Mrs. O’Connor and Mrs. Boddy’s policy stances here seemed to be the sophistication with which they were presented – at least to this observer. (In other words, these three seem to be fairly aligned on making changes in this area.)
If you don’t want to watch the 30 minutes long “Cliff Notes” video, feel free to enjoy the full video below, as well as the student spotlight at the front of it. The public comment sections are also linked below as they were mostly not addressed by the board president, just summarized.
Full 3:30:00 Board Meeting Video
Update: The day after the board meeting House Bill 529 was introduced in the Ohio legislature that requires curriculum to be posted by July 1st and is very close to Mrs. O’Connor, Mr. Adi, and Mrs. Boddy’s proposed curriculum.