While striking Reynoldsburg teachers mull the latest contract proposal from the district, parents are chafing at new rules barring them from school parking lots and worrying about student safety under Huffmaster substitutes.
Parent and lawyer Tom Drabick filed a lawsuit last week in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, asking a judge to close schools during the strike, citing a lack of supervision and safety issues, claiming students are packed into classrooms with not enough desks or seats or herded into gymnasiums and left there for hours.
“The lawsuit is on hold right now,” Drabick said Friday, Sept. 26. “I’m waiting to hear from the judge.”
A parent posting on the Raider Strong We Care Facebook page said she sat in on her daughter’s fourth-grade class at Taylor Road Elementary last week and ended up supervising the class after the substitute “disappeared” several times.
The district announced today, Sept. 29, that all parent-teacher conferences, which were scheduled on the Summit campus, are cancelled until further notice.
Teachers met at 11 a.m. this morning Sept. 29, to get an update on the latest board contract proposal, said Kathy Evans, Reynoldsburg Education Association spokeswoman.
She said the school board appears to be unwilling to compromise on the major sticking point - caps on class sizes - despite the fact many other area districts have caps written into their contracts.
“The board offered no new suggestions or solutions, neither verbally nor in writing,” Evans said.
Superintendent Tina Thomas-Manning said the district proposal would give 79 percent of teachers “a guaranteed raise of 13 percent or more over three years,” as well as merit-based performance bonuses.
Health insurance benefits under the latest district proposal would make teachers responsible for 10 percent of their premiums, with deductibles of $400 for individuals and $800 per family.
Thomas-Manning said the union proposal would be too expensive. It requests caps of 25 students at the elementary level and 30 at the junior high and high school levels, which would mean hiring more than a dozen new teachers.
“We believe we have presented a contract proposal that is fair and reflects the economic realities of our school district,” she said.
Meanwhile, parents who thought only teachers were barred from parking at the schools, have encountered Huffmaster security guards blocking access to the lots. A sign at Rose hill Elementary states, “You are not permitted to park on school property to go to the picket line. Your vehicle will be towed if you park on school property and go to the picket line.”
According to the contract between the district and Huffmaster, 60 security guards are being paid about $300 each per day, for a total of $18,000 per day. The district also pays hotel costs for the out-of-town security officers.
A Huffmaster contingency planner is being paid $800 per day and two consultants have been paid $500 per day.
Parents on the Raider Strong We Care Facebook page discussed school attendance in light of the fact many decided not to send their students to class on Friday.
Parents said despite calling in their children as absent, many students were marked “present” on the Power School program, leading them to believe attendance records are not accurate.
Former teacher Alicia Stoll said she left recently to teach in another district after five years at Baldwin Road Junior High because of crowded classrooms, no planning time and a “rampant disrespect” for teachers. She said she sometimes had 35 students in her classes and several teachers had 38-plus students.
“It is virtually impossible to reach every student with such large classes,” she said.
Stoll said teachers tried to speak up for students, especially when the district decided to “push ninth- and 10th-grade science down to the seventh- and eighth-grade levels.”
“Teachers explained the challenges the students would face and felt it was not in their best interests,” she said. “The district administration response to this was either do it or ‘maybe Reynoldsburg is not the place for you.’
“This level of disrespect for teacher input was rampant in my experience,” she said. “The continued push for things that went against what I felt was right for students was a professional struggle for me.”
She said teachers were told to use Mastery grading, for instance, a few weeks after school started, but were given little training on it, which led to “student confusion and panic over grades.”
Class planning time was so inadequate, Stoll said, that she “traditionally worked one to four hours in the evenings or hours on the weekend preparing curriculum for courses.”
“It was emotionally and physically draining,” she said.
The district has not answered requests for attendance records or comment on student safety under the current number of substitutes