The Heights Observer didn't want you to read this
When local news ignores crucial information, citizens are deprived of an educated decision.
On October 22 I submitted an article to The Heights Observer, which if you live in Cleveland Heights or University Heights you may know of as a small local print and online publication handed out freely at businesses in our area. Below is the full text of the submission, and following it will be some explanation of why perhaps it was never published.
CHUH residents may have received mailers in the past month from a PAC claiming to not be associated with any candidate or campaign for CHUH Board of Education. Known as "Keep MAGA off our Board PAC", the organization presents itself as a group of concerned parents protecting the district from political extremists. Its materials have portrayed each member of the Drake-Lynn-Rennert slate as dishonest, bigoted, or conflicted. The PAC urges residents to vote for any of the four other candidates even though there are only three seats up for election.
The truth of the matter is that their own membership is just as guilty if not more than any of their targets of conflicts of interest and self-dealing.
Two members of the PAC (Ryan Routh and Adam Dew) are on the district Lay Finance Committee, effectively political appointees of the current Board.
Two members (Dew and Krissy Gallagher) have contracts for services with the district.
One member (Jon Benedict) was the vice president of R Strategies, a firm paid illegally to survey district residents in furtherance of a new school levy in 2019.
LFC member (Katherine Petrey) is on the League of Women Voters leadership committee determining endorsements on issues and candidates. She was involved in advocacy for school levies and district bond issues while also performing legal work for the school facilities bond passed in 2013.
Issues with the DLR slate are concerning but they are only potential problems for the event of one of them being elected, whereas those cited above are chronic existing evidences of an overpoliticized command structure. As if these were not enough, the "No MAGA" group recently released a video filmed on school grounds with staff and students included. One viewer pointed out that this violates District policy (9700.A): "All materials or activities proposed by outside political sources for student or staff use or participation shall be reviewed by the Board of Education and/or the principal on the basis of their educational contribution to part or all of the school program, benefit to students, and no such approval shall have the primary purpose of advancing the special interest of the proposing group."
Whoever wins on November 2 will have to actually administer the district rather than point fingers and scaremonger. One thing to start with would be forming a new LFC with none of the lay members currently on it. District decisions should not be made by an unelected club.
So why was this not published in THO? Earlier in the month, I had written an article exposing the personal conflicts of interest of Adam Dew, and how his unethical and often bigoted behaviour made his own article condemning three BoE candidates lacking in context. His byline at the time had only included Dew’s status as a creator of the “Dew Diligence” podcast that is featured by The Heights Observer. In order to get published I had to debate THO editor Robert Rosenbaum via email who apparently did not think originally that an author’s status as a member of a Super PAC, vendor for the school district, and membership of a committee that issues budgetary recommendations for the district is necessary for the background. When they did publish the article it was heavily edited, but I still thanked Rosenbaum for publishing it.
The October 22 submission was time sensitive ahead of the election. I brought receipts in the form of images and links showing that Mr. Dew had engaged in political activity that was both against BoE policy 9700 prohibiting political advocacy on district property and also constitutes an in-kind political contribution on his part to his own Super PAC. In a follow-up email I informed Mr. Rosenbaum that I was aware he had not been forthright about his knowledge of Adam Dew’s activities and associations, and placed the original text of the new article in the email so that it would be recorded in case of editing. Other community members and political candidates had told me that he had been sent information regarding Dew’s conflicts of interest before and done nothing.
But Mr. Rosenbaum, out of either exhaustion with me or dismissing of my concerns, chose not to publish the article. He protested that his main job was to sell advertisements and anything beyond that he was basically doing as a volunteer. He also attempted to explain in his own article from Oct. 29 that he had done his best to accommodate writers regardless of political view, and that he had been unjustly criticized for his decision not to publish anything submitted after October 11.
With an answer like this not just to me but all of its critics, it’s pretty clear that THO is not a paper meant to inform readers but to filter viewpoints. Besides the fact that he had violated both district policy and potentially Ohio law, school parents had complained about Mr. Dew’s filming during school hours with their children in the background without permission. It is stories like this that deserve at least some attention in our local media, but The Heights Observer places a higher priority on deadlines, advertising, and once in a while according to them “civility”. I am committed to something beyond that: Delivering relevant information even if it may be troubling regarding the current management of the district. And this commitment goes beyond Nov. 2 regardless of who will sit on the board.
Note: In the course of this bitter election season for of all things a local school board, I and others have become conscious of how Ohioans are deprived of reliable information due to the poor standards of our local media. In addition, our local situation in the Heights shows that critics of the way our cities and district are run cannot be limited to election or ballot issue seasons. That being said, the information in this article is time sensitive, so you can help by sharing it whether on social media or via private message and subscribing to the newsletter if you have not already.