Talawanda approves raises for top administrators, discusses board resignation

In its first meeting since David Bothast resigned, the Talawanda Board of Education passed contract addendums for the superintendent and treasurer, updated the process for fulfilling records requests and discussed the process for appointing Bothast's replacement.

Members of community and board support Bothast; one participant criticizes July emails

Bothast resigned after a tumultuous summer for the school board, during which Bothast said his 14-year-old son and family became targets of harassment.

During the Sept. 19 board meeting, two members of the public spoke in support of Bothast and the board. Eliza Sullivan, a 2024 graduate of Talawanda High School and a current student at Miami, said she's been proud of the board's ability to work through political turmoil like the COVID-19 pandemic in the past. Sullivan said she was sad to see Bothast resign, but she hopes the district will find a replacement who puts students first like Bothast did.

"I hope we can continue to work in the best interest of our students," Sullivan said, "rather than sacrificing them in a political crusade."

Calvin Corbin, an Oxford resident, thanked Bothast for his service and said he hopes "David and his family find peace and rest." The board, the administration and the public all need to play a part in turning down the temperature and refocusing on education, Corbin said.

Scotty King, husband of board member Dawn King, also spoke during public comment. He said a previous records request he filed searching for the key word "king" in emails returned a conversation between Bothast, Bothast's husband, Howard, Superintendent Ed Theroux and the board attorney discussing the potential removal of livestreaming board meetings. These emails were sent July 14 and 15, Scotty King said, days after a July board meeting when Bothast said the "vitriol and the abuse" against his family had pushed him to consider resigning.

Bothast and other board members' comments, as well as Scotty King's, were later used as audio in a podcast, during which the host made comments about Bothast and his family and said "You can engage in personal attacks ... That's divide and conquer, and I'm all for it."

In the emails from July 14 and 15, Scotty King said during the Sept. 19 meeting, Bothast wrote that the livestreams could be a liability for the district. In the emails, Howard asked Bothast and his husband if she could forward the email to the board attorney to "apprise of the scope of the slander," King said.

"I struggle to find another example where the board has allowed board members and their spouses to communicate so openly, freely, with all board members, senior staff and attorneys," King said. "Seems like collaboration to me. I'm also amazed that the majority of the board and the senior leadership team is willing to suppress and remove the broadcasting, live broadcasting for the community, to cater to one family."

The board officially voted to record and broadcast its meetings by a vote in late 2019. No agenda so far this year has included an item to stop broadcasting meetings on the district YouTube Channel.

Later in the meeting, board members Pat Meade and Chris Otto both thanked Bothast for his time on the board and said he will be missed. Meade also spoke against targeting board members' families with personal attacks, as did Howard.

"Personal attacks against administrators, elected officials and their families, people who are just trying to do their job — this behavior goes beyond simple disagreement or difference of opinion," Howard said. "[It] has become for some, the preferred method of discourse that is no longer grounded in civility, but in hatred, vitriol, conspiracy theory, disinformation, rumor, unsupported accusations and verbal and psychological violence."

Board lays out process for filling vacant seat

The board is required by law to fill the vacancy left by Bothast within 30 days. The district has published an application for anyone interested in serving for the remainder of Bothast's term, which runs through January 2026.

Applications are due Sept. 24 at 5 p.m. A previous communication from the district put the deadline at 4 p.m., but Board President Rebecca Howard said that was incorrect. After that, the board will hold a special session at 5 p.m. Sept. 30 to review the applications in an executive session not open to the public. If the board reaches an agreement, Howard said, they will return to a public session for an official vote. If not, she said they will detail the next steps at that time.

So far, Howard said the district has heard interest from roughly 20 people, and three to four have submitted applications already.

Ivan Carver, who ran for a board position in 2023, spoke at the Sept. 19 meeting during public comment about his interest in filling the board vacancy. He encouraged the board to consider how involved applicants have been at previous public meetings, as well as how their backgrounds might complement current board members' experience. Carver said he felt his background in IT and data would be an asset to the board.

"The most important aspect I think you should look for as a board is someone that can help unite the community," Carver said. "There's a lot of strife; there's a lot of ambiguity, a lot of distrust going on in the community. If you look at the people that are supporting me, they're from all walks of life — inside of Oxford, outside of Oxford, outside of Oxford, far left, far right — because they recognize you need someone that's gonna look out for the children in our community."

Contract addendums for superintendent and treasurer pass 3-1

Superintendent Ed Theroux and Treasurer Shaunna Tafelski both received contract addendums that have been in negotiation for months during the Sept. 19 meeting.

The addendums raise Theroux's base salary to more than $148,000 and Tafelski's to just over $132,000. Theroux's salary increase is roughly 14.5%, while Tafelski's is 7.5%.

According to reporting by the Dayton Daily News in 2023, the average superintendent salary in the paper's nine-county region including Butler County was $164,000.

Dawn King, the lone vote against both addendums, asked Theroux to "explain to the district's students and employees" why he deserved each line item in the addendum. Both board president Rebecca Howard and board member Pat Meade said Theroux did not have that responsibility and that the justifications for the details of the addendum were discussed during executive session.

King also questioned the decision to make changes to Theroux's current five-year contract which was signed in 2023. Howard said Theroux and Tafelski both agreed to pay freezes last year when the 2022 levy failed to pass, but a property tax reassessment has put the district in a better financial position today.

"They both agreed to a base pay freeze for that contract with the understanding that, as with our administrator contracts, if our financial situation improved, that we would revisit the base pay and some of the, again, line items," Howard said. "All we're doing is living up to our word."

Board member Chris Otto said the addendum puts Theroux and Tafelski in line with other superintendents and treasurers in the district.

"This isn't anything that's unusual," Otto said. "What's unusual is that we've been paying Dr. Theroux so under-market, and I think as a group we decided that we wanted to address the market issues for our staff."

This spring, the board unanimously approved three-year contracts with the Talawanda Educator Association (TEA) and Talawanda Classified Staff Association with raises equivalent to a $2 per hour increase. According to the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, Talawanda teachers earn an average salary of $73,501.

In July, the board passed addendums to 22 administrators' salaries in a 4-1 vote, with King voting against the measure. The addendums put the average administrator salary, excluding the superintendent, treasurer and Bogan Elementary principal who was hired this summer, at $78,265. Among directors, principals and assistant principals only, the average salary is now $95,906.

District adopts new process for handling records requests

The board voted 3-1 during the September meeting to allow the district's legal counsel to play an increased role in fulfilling requests for public records.

Records requests have been at the center of some of the conflicts that have played out at board meetings in the past several months. Treasurer Shaunna Tafelski, who is in charge of fulfilling records requests, said the volume and sensitivity of records people are asking for have both increased in recent months.

"Lately, there have been requests that have made the administrators extremely nervous because it is student information, it is Title IX documents, threat assessment documents that have been done on our students," Tafelski said. "... Once they have been collected, those [records] have been sent to the attorney's office for a paralegal to redact."

Under the new structure which the board voted on Sept. 19, requests will go to a new email, publicrecords@talawanda.org. Both an administrator at Talawanda and a paralegal would have access to the email, and the paralegal would serve as the initial point person to contact the departments with the responsive records for each request and help with redactions.

Between July 1 and Sept. 19, Tafelski said the district has received 35 records requests. That number is more than the district received throughout the 2024 fiscal year, according to the district's records log obtained by the Oxford Free Press.

Dawn King voted against the the change in policy. The district records log shows that 11 out of 28 requests between July 1 and Sept. 8 of this year were made by Scotty King.

During public comment, Matt Lykins, co-president of the Talawanda Educators Association (TEA), reimbursed the district for a prior request by the TEA which he said cost the district $223.80 in administrative labor and materials.

"TEA believes that public records requests, when used responsibly, are an excellent tool to maintain accountability," Lykins said. "But we also recognize that there's a sizable financial burden."

The board will meet again on Sept. 30 to review applications to fill the vacant seat and potentially vote to appoint someone. The discussion will be in executive session not open to the public. The board's next regular meeting will be at 7 p.m. Oct. 17.