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.

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.