Today, NPR reported that the Forest Hills School District offered to settle the lawsuit surrounding the Culture of Kindness Resolution, a written document created in part between Sara Jonas and several local residents and implemented in a flurry of chaos over a year ago.

In June of 2022, members of the Forest Hills School District Board of Education Linda Hausfeld, Bob Bibb and Sara Jonas voted in support of a resolution that banned assignments where students would have to consider their race, socioeconomic class, religion, gender identity and sexuality. Board members Leslie Rasmussen and Katie Stewart voted against the resolution.

Soon after, a group of parents and teachers filed a federal lawsuit claiming the resolution violated their constitutional rights.
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In October the judge assigned to the case issued a ruling on a motion to dismiss by the district. At that time the district issued a statement stating they intended to continue the fight to enact the language of the resolution “vigorously”.

The negative impact of external agenda-driven groups isn’t a risk here in Forest Hills, it’s already a reality. ​

In a series of emails recovered through a Public Records Request (PRR) and social media content garnered from investigations into education-attacking political groups, we learned
 that the “4 for Forest Hills” may have allowed the influence of potentially fringe political party members, dark-money group leaders and non-FHSD residents, to drive the agenda that they've attempted to implement — bringing expensive and embarrassing consequences to our district as shown in previous blog posts. 

​For school districts, the intolerance of extremism can have a multitude of costs, we lay out a few significant and measurable costs of extremism in school boards here. 

Legal expenses: when controversial or illegal actions are taken by board members, the school incurs legal expenses to defend against the lawsuits and investigations.  Court fees, insurance company’s higher premiums, settlements and the hours and hours of employee’s time spent in depositions and defense takes away from the true work of the district. In July 2023, the Cincinnati Enquirer estimated the district had spent around $500,000, nearly $75 per student, compared with CPS - a district with three times the number of students, spending $33 per student. ​Insurance covers most of this, but premiums will suffer - if the aggressive and exclusionary actions were never taken, we would not be dealing with lawsuits. 

The 2023 candidates for FHSD School Board discuss one thing that MUST be implemented going forward and one thing that MUST stop going forward.

The second video in our school board candidate series answers a question voted on by our community Facebook group. The question is "What is your experience or training related to educational standards for success, both academically and social/emotionally in regards to students?"

Here is the first video from our school board candidate video series. This is the intro video for the candidates PLUS a bonus question to get the ball rolling. Stay tuned for answers to six community group questions throughout the next weeks.

All candidates were contacted to participate in our video series. Appearance in this video does not imply an endorsement on the candidates.

An Advocate FHSD co-chair caught up with Kevin Commerford at the 9/20/23 school board meeting to ask about his participation. His reply was "We have our own thing happening, thanks."

Kris Wahlke expressed interest in submitting written answers and a photo so we could add a voice-over, but did not meet the Sunday, September 24 deadline for this video. His answers were submitted after the video was edited and posted on Monday, September 25. His answer to these questions are below:

Q: Why are you running for FHSD School Board?
A: To reclaim the Redskins name.

Q: Why now?
A: There is momentum for the Washington Redskins and our current board ran on an anti-CRT platform. The numbers should be there.

Q: How does the Ohio school funding model impact FHSD?
A: Seems our tax dollars are being used outside the district. A lot of the coolest things in the schools are parent funded after taxes.

On August 29th, 2023, a soft-lockdown was enacted at 7 of the district's 9 schools. In the first email sent to communicate the lockdown (full email here), Superintendent Hook stated only that "we located an unauthorized individual walking around the Anderson High School campus a short while ago" followed by his second email (available here) which stated, "After a thorough search of the area, it has been determined that the unknown individual is no longer on district property" both quotes seem to imply the man was outside the school and then somehow disappeared.

Hook's email from today (shown above) explains a more serious breach. He provides details explaining that a staff member discovered an adult male had entered Anderson High school through a propped-open side-door and found his way into the hallways during school hours. 

Several sources advised us a week ago following the Forest Hills Council meeting (days before the district communicated to the public) that Superintendent Hook had shared the details now provided in an email. We at AdvocateFHSD.org have been gathering information about the incident, and before publishing anything, we reached out to the district yesterday asking for any statement on the situation and submitting a PRR for the surveillance video. Our full email is here. 

It's official ... we now have our list of 2023 school board candidates for the Forest Hills School District (FHSD). They've turned in their petitions and while one candidate is still waiting to have his signatures confirmed, it is likely district residents will see these names on the ballot for FHSD school board on November 7th, 2023. While Advocate FHSD does not endorse candidates, we are committed to presenting election information as quickly and as accurately as possible.

Stay tuned for more updates as the campaign unfolds.

In late 2022, a lawsuit against the Forest Hills School District suing to rescind the controversial and divisive 'Culture of Kindness' resolution was brought forth.  

Community members widely panned the document as harmful to staff & students, and risky to the district. Despite protests, emails asking for the resolution to be rescinded, national and international negative news coverage, damage to their personal reputations and expensive lawsuits as well as the predictable impact to voter turnout to the levy vote in May - Board members Hausfeld, Bibb, and Stewart seem inexplicably committed to this misguided Resolution. 

Recently, depositions were taken from Superintendent Larry Hook, Board Member Sara Jonas, and Board member Dr. Leslie Rasmussen. Depositions are available for the public to read here. 

Cincinnati Enquirer's Education reporter, Maddie Mitchell, published an article Wednesday, February 15 2023, following up with a summary of the depositions. 

The depositions are disheartening. The statements taken under oath expose conflicting claims of that the Resolution is "unenforceable", but per the depositions, incidents of enforcement and attempted enforcement have occurred against staff & students causing demonstrable harm - the depositions outline at least four instances of action taken against staff and students. 

The resolution has also brought negative press to the district locally, nationally and internationally.. In addition to our local press, national & international media went viral as a TikTok video of Sara Jonas defending "Anti-anti-racism" had over 5 million views and thousands of comments. Nationally, Newsweek covered the video, and an article in the Herald Sun, an Australian publication, ensured international scrutiny as well. 

Sara Jonas reportedly received emailed threats following the publications of her actions, which this group vehemently condemns. Knowing all of this, any reasonable person would question why the board insists on defending the document at all ... but there may be some insight in page 130 of Sara Jonas' deposition.

When questioned about the origins of the document, Sara Jonas under oath stated she merely 'typed' the Resolution - a clear conflict with her public statement at a public board meeting, June 22, 2022 (audio available on YouTube, at 1:32:00) where she claimed,  "I am the one who authored it." ​

The current school board has stated on multiple occasions that financial problems have been inherited from the previous school board. Alana Cropper is the District Treasurer and has worked under many boards, including the present one. She has done a great job attempting to educate this school board about the district financials. Alana has even presented multiple options for an operating levy in either 2022 or 2023 to avoid large cuts and last resorts like consolidation. Her explanation can be found in a video from the April 6, 2022 Work Session. We would now like to present the 2021 Financial Report to you for your consideration: