The Board of Education Refuses to Comply With the Law

It’s smoke and mirrors when the Brecksville-Broadview Heights Board of Education files frivolous unfair labor practice charges attempting to intimidate teachers into silence while publicly professing a commitment to transparency.

From the beginning of this process, the teachers were committed to bargaining in good faith. Unfortunately, the Board sought to propagandize this process by releasing proposals on their taxpayer funded Web site in order to leverage the teachers into a coercive settlement, negatively affecting the bargaining process and in the end the students.

The Board is attempting to prevent teachers from talking about a proposal that the Board made public the second it was posted on their website. This is also the same proposal that the Board openly talked about in detail during their last Board of Education meeting.

The State of Ohio agreed and found Probable Cause against the Board for the violation. Sadly, instead of complying with the law, the Board has chosen to appeal this decision and continue wasting taxpayer dollars on exorbitant legal fees rather than investing in the students of the district.  This is precisely the kind of coercive and intellectually dishonest behavior that only a fee-chasing attorney could enjoy.  Unfortunately for the taxpayers, the Boards tactics are running the district into the ground and driving the Association towards a strike. The money they are wasting on these unfounded charges could have better been used to reach a settlement, provide technology upgrades for classrooms and students, purchase new and updated textbooks or even to reinstate high school bussing.