Shaker Heights Parent Group Frustrated Over School Board's Stance

SHAKER HEIGHTS, OHIO – A day after calling for the Shaker Heights Board of Education to call for an immediate return to the classroom, an organization made up of district parents is expressing its disappointment that classes for students will remain on a remote basis for an undetermined period of time.

Organizers from Shaker Heights for In-Person Schooling (SHIPS) remain frustrated over what they call indecisiveness on the part of the school board, which met Tuesday night. On Tuesday, the group demanded the board push for an immediate return to in-person learning after Shaker Heights Superintendent David Glasner pushed back a return to the classroom for at least a week due to ongoing concerns over the coronavirus. A day later, organizers are the group is voicing is displeasure with board members after the board did not take action at its meeting.

In a message to district families last week, Glasner said he was delaying a return to hybrid learning until at least Nov. 2 as positive coronavirus cases across Ohio continue to surge. The state surpassed 200,000 confirmed cases this week and on Tuesday, Gov. Mike DeWine said 82 of the state’s 88 counties are reporting high instances of the virus over the past two weeks.

During Tuesday’s meeting, Glasner proposed Nov. 4 or Nov. 9 as options for a return to the classroom but no action was taken on plans, which has only created more angst for the SHIPS group. Organizers have called the reliance on the state’s color-coded coronavirus system “misguided” and have said that county ratings have been all over the map, including in Cuyahoga County, which is currently coded “red”.

“Since schools are not a significant source of coronavirus spread, there’s no reason to base an education model on these ratings,” SHIPS organizers wrote in a news release on Wednesday. “To do so is to give parents and students zoom-induced whiplash.”

An email sent Wednesday morning to school board officials was not immediately returned to Patch.

According to the group, Shaker Heights is one of 38 public schools in Ohio which has not returned to the classroom in some form this fall. The district was to have shifted to a hybrid model this week before Glasner’s announcement last week. The superintendent is scheduled to give district families another update on Friday. Parents that are part of the SHIPS group have expressed frustration with the continued remote learning model, which they say is not effective.

The put much of the blame on school board members, whom, organizers say, had seven months to finalize a plan for in-person learning, but have “continually failed to deliver,” the group wrote in the news release.

“My son’s kindergarten teacher is fantastic, but there’s simply no substitute for live interactions between students and their teacher and with each other,” Megan Moini, a SHIPS member and Shaker Heights parent said in the release. “I don’t think spending hours on the computer, on mute, is developmentally appropriate. It has been sad to watch his interest in school steadily decline over the course of this school year.”