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Thursday, 18 October 2007 |
By KAREN CAMPBELL
Staff Writer
WAPAKONETA — Wapakoneta City Schools filed an appeal against an Auglaize County Common Pleas Court decision in the case of a middle school math teacher that school board members decided to non-renew in April.
School Board President Dave Copeland and Superintendent Keith Horner declined to confirm or deny whether an appeal was filed in the decision of the case issued by Judge Frederick Pepple in September. A board member decision was not required to file the appeal, which had to be filed within 30 days of the decision.
Heather Buchanan, the affected seventh-grade teacher, said she received notice on Tuesday the appeal was filed. She declined to comment further, citing pending litigation.
School board members issued only this typewritten statement: “Based upon the advice of counsel, the board is exercising the only mechanism available to maintain all of its options.”
Jack Prater, a Wapakoneta resident, approached school board members about the issue during a public comments portion of Tuesday night’s regular school board meeting.
He said he was there to express concerns about the board’s decision to appeal.
He asked if it was in the best interest of the school’s children and the district to do so, just two weeks before taking a levy to the voters to help pay for renovating existing schools and construction of new schools.
He also asked on what grounds board members thought they had to appeal when the superintendent recommended in April to renew Buchanan and the court ruled in her favor.
“Personally, I think your time, effort and money could be better spent on educating the children rather than appealing,” Prater said.
After the meeting he said board members can do what they want to with what he had to say, but he was trying to think of the children.
“I’m 100 percent for what’s in the best interest of the children and the schools,” Prater said. “I don’t think this is it.”
“We’re doing what we think is in the best interest of the children of the district,” Copeland said during the meeting.
He said because the case is ongoing he could not say more.
Pepple ordered in September that the district re-employ Buchanan – offering her a continuing contract at the same salary, plus any increment granted by the salary schedule.
He also ordered that she be reinstated with any back pay for the period of time for which the district did not employ her.
Until the lengthy appeal process is complete, she does not receive her job back or any compensation as Pepple ordered.
In his decision, Pepple wrote that the April 2006 contract between the school board and Buchanan, after she was accused of giving students a practice test too closely resembling the actual proficiency test they would be taking that week and suspended for the rest of the year, might have avoided difficult decisions to be made at that time. But, the board’s decision to use the term “extended limited contract” in describing what it was offering Buchanan, gave her the right to be employed under a continuing contract.
“The (Ohio Revised Code) statute requires the board to give a continuing contract to a teacher who holds an extended limited contract when her contract comes up for renewal unless the superintendent recommends against the employee,” Pepple wrote. “Since the superintendent of the school recommended re-employment, the appellant has the right to have her continuing contract.”
Board members voted 3-2 in April against Horner’s recommendation and despite favorable reviews from school administrators.
In a letter to Buchanan, Treasurer Susan Rinehart said she had “engaged in actions against the board’s commitment to provide a ‘safe, productive and nurturing educational environment for all its students.’ ”
Specifically mentioned was a pizza party Buchanan planned for her biological children to be held in a middle school classroom in the spring of 2006, during her suspension.
The children invited only those students who sat at their lunch tables.
Buchanan said she planned the party, which never took place, as a parent.
Such parties hosted by parents had occurred in the past at both the middle and high schools, she said.
But the school board said her actions violated the district’s bullying policy by engaging in social exclusion.
Horner said although not specifically addressed in code, such parties are acceptable only if all members of a classroom are included. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 20 October 2007 )
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