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Fishel and Hach Shake Up Riverside School District

By Contributing Writer on July 2, 2022

July 2, 2022

LFC Comments by Brian Massie, Riverside School District taxpayer

I attended the Thursday (June 30th) Riverside School Board meeting to observe and record the first one hour of the meeting. During that period, I watched a decidedly divided school board agree on nothing at all other than to hold more meetings a some later date.

It is obvious that School Board members Jennifer Harden and Belinda Grassi will not accede to any suggestions or recommendations by the long time board member Tom Hach and the newly elected Scott Fishel. Lori Krenisky is the swing vote, and, unfortunately, her liberal leanings are quite evident.

Krenisky, Grassi and Harden are adamant that they need a new Board manual and are willing to pay $3,100 to get one rather than use an “off the shelf” model from the Ohio Board of Education. We have been told the manual is needed to reign in the two male members of the board.

The two issues: Responsive Classrooms and Building and Grounds were discussed and it was agreed to send those to committees, presumably to allow them never to come to a vote.

In the video you will hear Mr. Scott Fishel and Dr. Melissa Mlakar, Director of Curriculum, debate a guiding principle of the “Responsive Classroom”, an alleged teacher development course.

The following is a page from the Resource Book we reviewed.

Please note that the #1 guiding principle of the Responsive Classroom is:

“Teaching Social and Emotional skills is as important as teaching academic content”.

For a school district that achieved an overall 75% proficiency score in the State testing, they can ill afford any teacher career development and a program that spends less time on academic content.

The program’s core belief is that students need to learn Social and Emotional competencies – cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, empathy and self-control. These values can be taught by the parents. Indoctrination and propaganda by the State is not wanted or acceptable.

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The Guiding Principles of Responsive Classroom resource book.

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The following video illustrates Tom Hach’s and Scott Fishel’s desire to repair the school, but the three other board members clearly have no interest in that at all. Perhaps the 76% to 24% vote against the monstrous 5.37 mil, 37 year, $275 million school levy still has not sunk in with the three board members that fought diligently to hang that around the necks of Riverside School District’s seniors.