Tuesday, May 17, 2016
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
Former Warren schools home-economics teacher Tracy A. Gogel, charged recently for the third time with felony drug offenses, resigned her job with Warren schools last week.
Gogel, 47, lives in Cuyahoga Falls and worked as a Warren G. Harding High School home-economics teacher from August 2009 through March 2015, when she was removed from the classroom and placed on paid special assignment because of the first charges.
The board of education is expected to approve her resignation May 31.
Schools Superintendent Steve Chiaro, meanwhile, said he was never told a Summit County assistant prosecutor contacted the school-district business manager last September to notify the district of Gogel’s Summit County conviction.
On May 2, Chiaro changed Gogel’s work status from paid leave to unpaid leave. He said it changed just after he learned Gogel had been convicted of felony drug possession Sept. 17, 2015.
Chiaro said there was a delay of about seven months in recommending termination and taking away Gogel’s approximately $60,000-per-year salary because of the unusual way that Summit County court personnel documented the results of the Sept. 17, 2015, hearing in which Gogel pleaded guilty to felony drug possession.
The results of the hearing did not appear in the Summit County Clerk of Courts online database until April 28 this year. A Summit County official later told The Vindicator the reason it appeared so late was because of a clerical error by a secretary for the judge handling the case.
James Pollack, spokesman for the Summit County Prosecutor’s office, however, said Jay Cole, an assistant county prosecutor, called Michael Wasser, Warren schools’ business manager, just after the Sept. 17, 2015, plea and sentencing hearing to tell school officials the results.
When asked about Cole’s call late last week, Chiaro said he was unaware of Wasser or anyone else in the school district getting such a call, but Wasser was on vacation that day and would be off another two weeks, so Chiaro said he was not able to ask Wasser about it.
Chiaro said Wasser had asked for paperwork regarding Gogel’s conviction, and the school system never received it. “It’s a dead issue as far as us as a district,” Chiaro said.
“There was a human error in Summit County.”