Akron Public Schools superintendent Michael Robinson scanned the Sunday morning congregation at Second Baptist Church as he began to speak about the challenges the school district faces.
The Akron Board of Education was scheduled to vote the next day on cuts that would eliminate more than 250 jobs, resulting in the layoffs of more than 50 teachers. The moves would save an expected $24 million, helping the financially fragile district adjust to rising costs and falling enrollment as federal funds that provided a yearslong stopgap dried up.
The issues began before Robinson, who is nine months into his tenure, arrived in Akron. But last Sunday, the superintendent, positioned in front of the pulpit clad in a white suit with a pink shirt, a tie and a pocket square, anticipated “many untruths” from his detractors, actions he wanted to prepare the community for.
“We have a lot of great things that are going on,” Robinson said, his voice soft yet firm. He gestured frequently to illustrate his point. “But I want to just touch very gently on what is going to happen tomorrow night, besides my crucifixion.” Behind him, Pastor Roderick C. Pounds-Solomon Sr. smiled. “And that’s OK,” Robinson continued. “Because Christ died for us, right? And so I didn’t come to be untouched.”
It marked the beginning of a 20-minute speech where Robinson defended his tenure as the head of the school district. He said he thought the district had phenomenal employees and teachers who work hard and “deserve the best that we can give to them.” Robinson said his heart had been heavy as he made tough financial decisions, and that he loved Akron and didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Still, he told congregants they would “hear the ugly on tomorrow, because that’s what the devil does. The devil is coming to seek whom he can devour and destroy.”
Teachers react to Robinson’s speech
The next day, Janell Brown, a vice president with the Akron Education Association — the union that represents the district’s teachers — told a crowd of more than 100 teachers gathered for a Monday afternoon rally that Robinson “stated the union is the devil and he is being crucified.” At the same rally, AEA President Pat Shipe said Robinson’s speech was part of an “aggressive pattern of behavior” and the superintendent’s habit of “playing loose with the truth.”
The statements, from Robinson and union leaders, marked the latest chapter of a long-simmering, public dispute between powerful parties in Ohio’s seventh-largest school district. The increased sparring in Akron schools threatens to cost the district money and talent through legal fees and grievances, negatively affecting about 20,000 students and more than 2,000 teachers and support staff who are members of the AEA.
Robinson’s speech at Second Baptist Church was published on the congregation’s YouTube channel, where it had drawn more than 1,000 views as of Wednesday evening. One of those views belonged to Rachel McConaha, whose son is a third grader at King Community Learning Center.
She said she wished she hadn’t seen it.
“You could be on the chopping block and he’s out there proselytizing about his job,” McConaha said, expressing her concern about teachers and others whose jobs were at risk. “It felt like he was making himself the victim.”
McConaha, who is involved in King CLC’s PTA, said students there and elsewhere will be negatively affected when jobs are eliminated and hours are cut. In that light, she said Robinson’s comments felt inappropriate and offensive.
David James, the former APS superintendent who is now the executive director of the Summit Education Initiative, said even when leaders’ feelings are hurt, they still need to work together.
“In this work, you really do need to have a thick skin,” James said. “When something like this happens, you still have to work with the union. A lot of times, you have to just let that stuff roll off of you.”
In Akron schools, a litany of complaints
The school board approved Robinson’s proposed cuts Monday, as the rancor between the teachers’ union and Robinson, which goes back months, reached a new pitch.
In church, Robinson referenced the issues. Without naming the organization, he said that while there are seven unions, he worked well with “all six of them.”
“One of them has led the district for at least the last five years and one of them is the reason why I’m now superintendent,” he said. “And what I made clear is you’re not going to run the school district.
“We have one leader, that’s me, and I’m going to run the school district.”
Since the beginning of the year, the number of issues between the parties has only grown. Shipe, the union leader, went on to enumerate a litany of complaints, from the proposed creation of a districtwide social media policy to delayed responses to records requests to accusations Robinson edited a video of a school board meeting, a topic that’s the subject of a lawsuit the AEA has brought against the district.
She also accused Robinson of union busting, saying the district’s plan to move employees with teaching certificates out of the central office and back to the classroom was something AEA leaders wouldn’t take lightly.
“We will continue to question, we will continue to stand strong, we will continue to stand together in community,” Shipe on Monday told the crowd, standing in the bed of a Dodge Ram truck on North Main Street in front of the district headquarters.
Cuts: Why union representing Akron teachers is upset
Among the complaints leveled by union leaders against Robinson was his decision in January to cancel meetings with Shipe. She said he did so after they traded contentious letters in which each accused the other of misconduct. In January correspondence to Shipe, Robinson wrote that her “pattern of conduct has continued to be accusatory and combative towards members of my administration.”
A district spokesperson said in January that the meetings were canceled because the district hired a director of labor relations, Michael Defibaugh, who would “more appropriately” guide them.
Defibaugh, meanwhile, said he does not have standing meetings with the union but has an “open door policy” and meets with union leaders often as issues arise. According to the union contract, Defibaugh said, the superintendent and AEA president “shall meet in private” at least once each quarter, at the request of either party. Defibaugh said no meeting took place in the first quarter and the AEA didn’t request one. No meeting has thus far been requested in the second quarter, either.
Don Malarcik, an attorney representing the union, said Monday senior staff were concerned about Robinson’s leadership style, saying he made it clear that he had no loyalty to APS employees. At the rally, more than one union official made reference to a statement Robinson was said to have made, saying that the Board of Education building was his to control. A spokesperson, Mark Williamson, said he could not verify whether Robinson had made the statement.
“We are told the superintendent recently stated, ‘This is my house, I want union people out of my house,’” said Brown, the union vice president. “It belongs to the Akron community.”
Paula Gandy, a Crouse CLC Kindergarten teacher, said teachers are afraid to speak out, worried that they’ll be singled out for discipline.
“We’re not allowed to speak our minds,” Gandy said. “If I’m not threatening anyone, I have the right to speak.”
Union leader at Akron school board meeting: ‘We are not devils’
At Monday’s board meeting, where the cuts were decided, teachers spoke during public comment with derision about the district’s leadership. When Mike Harkness, an intervention specialist for Glover CLC who is also a union leader, said, “Dr. Robinson, we are not devils, we are professional educators,” board member Barbara Sykes told him to stop referring to the superintendent by name.
Harkness said he believed the superintendent led a “methodical and aggressive campaign” to target AEA members, threatening them with termination and retaliation. He also accused Robinson of burying “clear and irrefutable” evidence of misconduct. The union has been outspoken about its view that a report clearing former North High School principal Kathryn Rodocker of wrongdoing was insufficiently investigated.
Signs held up by union members at the rally and during Monday’s meeting also referenced a disciplinary matter that some teachers questioned. In April, a Ritzman Elementary CLC teacher received a written reprimand for sending a “rude and unprofessional” email in which she “personally attacked the Superintendent in inflammatory and disrespectful terms, emphasized with an overuse of excited punctuation in what appears to be an attempt to convey contempt for the Superintendent,” said the reprimand, written by Yamini Adkins, the executive director of human capital.
The email, in response to communication about the district’s plans for the April 8 eclipse, asked Robinson:
“Can you even make any sense when you type your memos???
“You make zero sense. Staff want a black and white answer. Remote, in person. In a building, on a computer. WHAT!?!!!
“Can you give us that !?!?!!”
The punishment was cited by other educators as an example of overzealous targeting of teachers, though Adkins in an email said it was “unprofessional to say the least” and that she suspected most employers wouldn’t tolerate that kind of communication from a subordinate.
Akron’s school superintendent: ‘It doesn’t mean I’m perfect’
In church, Robinson said he was confident that God would help him as he worked to make “necessary adjustments” to the school system.
“I’m telling you that we’re going to walk out of 10 North Main on tomorrow night as victors,” he told the congregation. “Oh yes, we’re going to have the victory.”
After Monday’s board meeting, Robinson said while he discussed the union during his pulpit speech, it was “nothing about the devil.” In church, he said, he uses a “different dialect” — one he knows isn’t appropriate for a public meeting.
“I can’t talk about Jesus in here,” he said from the Board of Education’s meeting room.
Robinson praised the teachers and students who spoke up respectfully about the cuts through emails, public comment and by rallying before the meeting. He said he heard students “loud and clear about the relationships they have and what those teachers mean to them.” During the service, he said he hoped God would “work this thing out” for the teachers who would be displaced.
He said in church that God had placed him in Akron; after the vote, Robinson said this is what he asked God for “and He gave it to me.”
“My heart is in the right place, I am here to serve,” he added Monday. “There are ways to communicate your feelings without being ugly to someone.”
Robinson said he thinks God will watch over him professionally and personally and that there’s a way to be passionate without being disrespectful. He said he’s a “strong believer in unions” and knows he can’t control people’s opinions of him.
“I am a Christian person,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I’m perfect. I fall short.”
