HARDING ELEMENTARY SCHOOL Some teachers plan to boycott open house

The superintendent said she appreciates the teachers' hard work in the move.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A day after the school opened, a teacher at the new Harding Elementary School complained to the board of education that teachers had inadequate time to prepare for the new school's opening and said a majority of the school's 25 teachers plan to boycott Sunday's open house there.
"Our lives and the lives of our families have been put on hold," said Roseann Jeswald, a special-education teacher, adding that teachers have been forced to put "countless hours" of uncompensated personal time into the move. "There simply was not enough time to complete the job in an appropriate manner," she said.
Some staff have serious medical conditions "that have been aggravated by the extreme hours, excessive lifting and dust-filled environments involved with the move," she told the board Tuesday.
Two moves
Unlike the teachers at the new Taft Elementary School, who were able to prepare their classrooms during the summer before that school opened at the beginning of this school year, Harding teachers had to prepare their classrooms twice this year, she said.
The Harding teachers prepared their classrooms to open this school year in the Jefferson School building, but then, while teaching at Jefferson, they had to hurriedly move to the new Harding building in recent days and prepare classrooms again, she noted.
Teachers were given some time to work at Harding during Thursday's teacher in-service time. But Jeswald said teachers had also requested that pupils be dismissed early from Jefferson on Friday to give teachers more time to prepare Harding classrooms for Monday's arrival of pupils.
But Superintendent Wendy Webb said some parents invariably forget every time the district has early dismissals. An early dismissal Friday only at Jefferson would have caused confusion and put children's safety at risk, she said. "They moved you to a beautiful school," Webb said, adding that she appreciated the teachers' hard work in the move.
"I have a serious concern with that type of reaction from our staff," said board member John Maluso. "I'm not sure what kind of message this gives the community to have the staff react in this way," he added.
Board member Lock Beachum said it's important to see the building's staff at the 1-4 p.m. Sunday open house for the $7.8 million Harding building. "I just hope you'll rethink this," he told the teachers.
Maluso and Beachum called for more dialogue between the teachers and administration on the teachers' concerns.