The vote came near the end of a nearly four-hour meeting. Board members emerged from a closed-door executive session that lasted more than two and a half hours and unanimously voted to approve a “Last Chance Agreement” for each teacher.
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.
The agreement replaced initial recommendations by Superintendent Stacy Maney to terminate the teachers’ employment
Maney, immediately after the board’s vote, said the past several weeks have been “a difficult time” for all Miamisburg students, teachers, staff, parents and the 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 the upheaval.
“Specifically, the challenges were to identify consequences that would appropriately acknowledge the fact that through their chosen actions, which we believe to have 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.”
The teachers are scheduled to return to work Oct. 20 following the district’s fall break.
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 showed up to Thursday’s meeting just before the school board voted and the audience greeted him with applause. When the meeting adjourned, numerous community members lined up to congratulate and hug him.
Rhonda Vinson, of Miamisburg, said she attended the meeting to support O’Connor and Aylward and ensure their First Amendment rights were upheld. She said she was “very happy” to hear that the board did not terminate either teacher’s employment.
“I hate the division,” Vinson said. “I hate what is happening in our country and in our community and I really, really hope that we can just let this go, let this pass, be Miamisburg Strong, support our students, support our teachers and move on.”
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 that he saw “probably hundreds” of Democrats express sympathy for Charlie Kirk, but questioned whether Trump has ever shown similar compassion for Democratic victims like Paul Pelosi. Another post criticized the selective outrage over gun violence, urging people to care equally about all victims, including children shot in Colorado Sept. 10, and to take action to address gun violence nationwide.
O’Connor, in an audio clip recorded and posted to social media by a student, said Kirk was a “terrible person, the things that he said,” prefacing those remarks with “you should be allowed to say whatever you want without violence being inflicted upon you” and adding that “violence is not the answer.”
Both teachers’ comments were spread online by at least one political commentator who called on the district to fire them.
