Following a closed-door executive session that lasted more than two and a half hours, the school board voted for a “Last Chance Agreement” for each teacher, which replaced initial recommendations by district Superintendent Stacy Maney to terminate the teachers’ employment.
As part of the agreements, the teachers agreed to an unpaid suspension that would be considered to be “served,” with the pay deducted partially from each of their paychecks until the end of the fiscal year. Aylward will have 20 days of pay in total deducted from his checks, while O’Connor will have 30 days total pay deducted.
In addition, the teachers agreed not to repeat their behavior, with O’Connor also agreeing not to post inflammatory comments on social media. If they do so, that would be grounds for them to be fired, the agreement said.
Maney, following the board’s unanimous vote, said the past several weeks have been “a difficult time” for all Miamisburg students, our teachers, staff, parents, and our entire community.
“At the root of it, what happened here not only reflected national political and cultural divisions, but it brought those divisions home to Miamisburg,” she said. “The challenge for members of the Board of Education, and for me as superintendent, was to identify the best possible solution, if such a thing could be found, for everyone, including the two teachers at the center of this upheaval.
“Specifically, the challenges were to identify consequences that would appropriately acknowledge the fact that through their chosen actions, which we believed had been unnecessary, they brought to our community the type of divisive dialogue and controversy that has inflamed an already fiery fracture between many Americans.”
Maney said that at the same time, school officials sought consequences that would help Aylward and O’Connor acknowledge “the gravity of their chosen actions, yet accept penalties that were proportional.”
“Together, we deemed that a proportional response by the Board of Education was not to terminate or hand down a career-ending penalty, but to instead work towards a board decision that students, faculty, parents, community members and voters could hopefully recognize as terms we can all live with.”
Scores of community members attended Thursday’s meeting, with several holding up signs showing support of the teachers and about a dozen of them speaking in favor of their reinstatement during public comments made before the board made its decision.
Aylward, in written comments in the days following the shooting death of Kirk at an event in Utah, posted to his private Facebook timeline that the political activist ““has been calling for this,” a comment that was later clarified to have referred to Kirk’s stance that “You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry, and you won’t have a single gun death.”
Aylward also wrote “I have seen dozens, probably hundreds of Democratic politicians condemning this and expressing sympathy for his family. Please cite for me any example of Trump expressing condolences for victim that was a Democrat. Like the Minnesota politicians or Paul Pelosi. I’ll wait.”
Another post read, “ALL forms of gun violence are unacceptable and what happened to Charlie Kirk today was unconscionable. How about everyone throwing up “Prayers for Charlie” (which is great) also throw up prayers for three kids shot in their school today in Colorado, or the countless other mass shootings that keep happening in our country? Being frustrated at the apparent hypocrisy of seemingly only caring about gun violence when it’s a right-wing celebrity is not the same as celebrating what happened to Charlie Kirk. How about we care about ALL gun violence and finally do something about the guns?”
O’Connor, in a 32-second audio clip reportedly recorded in the classroom and posted by others to social media, said, “you should be allowed to say whatever you want without violence being inflicted upon you ... he, like I said, was an absolute, terrible person, the things that he had said. Violence is not the answer is what it comes down to, because it violates those founding ideas.”
