Vote for Madelon Horvath for Chardon School Board

Good afternoon
I am writing to tell you that after months of serious consideration, I have decided that I cannot run for school board this year. My husband and I have recently learned that we have some health issues. These have made us look carefully at our age and what we are reasonably able to do, and a campaign (for anything) right now would be difficult.

The first time I ran for school board, I put up 50 signs, filled out the newspaper questionnaires, went to Ohio School Boards Association trainings, and participated in candidates’ nights. The second time was the same. The last election was different – as most of you know. I was up against candidates following the COVID epidemic and people who were angry about my vote on masking. At least one candidate’s spending totaled more than $10,000. Hundreds of signs popped up all over the district; large rallies and negative social media were all a part of this campaign. Approximately 5000 votes were counted - I lost by 22 votes. I believe that a campaign for November would be a total commitment and I don’t feel I can do that right now.

I want to alert voters to worrisome trends that can affect our school’s future. Our district is in the top 10% of all of Ohio’s schools academically, has excellent programming in arts and sports, and wonderful families, many of whom have moved to Chardon because of our schools. Yet our school and all public schools are currently under attack by people who have a specific often moral agenda and who have resolved to start with local elections. This agenda is national, well organized, and well-funded – and it is working.

The Ohio state legislature is also having an effect on our schools. With every new budget, the legislature is voting more money to charter and private (religious) schools and less to public education. This year the legislature has established Universal Vouchers, allocating up to $8407 per student in grades 9-12 and $6155 for grades K-8 in private schools. It costs $11,000 per year to educate a public school student in Chardon. The 2023-2025 Ohio state budget will provide approximately $1420 to Chardon public school students.

Hot button issues like books, dress codes, curriculum, SEL (Social Emotional Learning), trans and LGBTQ students are generating misinformation, fear and distrust. School boards have been targeted by those focused on these culture war issues and it is not always easy to discern where a candidate’s focus is.

When I came on the board in January of 2014, we had finally passed an operating levy – on the 6th try. The district was concerned that it would not be able to make payroll. We had not bought books or buses in years and teachers had had their salaries frozen at least twice. During my time on the board we passed 2 operating levies and reconfigured our buildings. The reconfiguration created the space needed for all day, every day kindergarten, a preschool, and arts rooms. It also added special needs as well as other academic services to more students. The district saved over $7 million dollars, putting it on a sound financial basis for the first time in more than 30 years. Other accomplishments included the ability to get back to regular curriculum revision and textbook purchases, and put computers in the hands of every student. We worked with staff to get contract agreements that gave both staff and the district solid financial conditions. I am very proud of that work - accomplished by school board members working cooperatively for the benefit of ALL of our students, our families, and our community.

Please be informed about who you are voting for in this upcoming election. There are 3 seats up for the vote – enough to put a screaming stop to the progress we have made. I will be staying involved as much as I can and will continue to post here on my Horvath on School Issues page. Your vote counts! More now than ever it is important to be aware of what is happening. Our schools are the heartbeat of our community and they need your knowledgeable support.

In a couple of weeks I will delete this page. After that you will be able to find my school posts on my "Horvath on School Issues" page

This is the immediate result of the State Board of Ed vote.

Ohio State Board of Education delays decision on resolution about President Joe Biden’s transgender student protections The 19-member board discussed the resolution after four hours of testimony Tuesday afternoon from people on both sides of LGBTQ rights.

Tickets are on sale now! Scan the QR Code!
Click this link!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hungry-for-history-tickets-417608557437
We are so excited!

Have questions or want to learn more about our schools?!? Here is your chance to learn more about the excellent work being done in the district!

Our success featured in the state!

Currently I am not using this page. My information is on a new page now: Horvath on School Issues. Please check there if you want info from me. I just posted about an idea I have for holding meetings this year to talk about different issues in public education - beginning with funding.

Hello, everyone. I have tried to change the name of this page since I am not officially running for School Board right now - but since it's a "Political" page, FB won't let me make any changes in the name. So I will need to start a new page. I realize that may cause people to miss my posts - at least for awhile. But it is weird to me to keep this name. So . . . I am going to pull the plug and start a new page called Horvath on School Issues. Hope you will be able to find and like it. Thanks for your understanding.

Thanks to our Chardon staff (teachers and administrators) for an amazing presentation tonight on the strengths of our district with reconfiguration in place. I learned so much about the wonderful things that are happening for our kids! Academically and financially it’s the right thing for our kids and our community.

And thanks to the board for their vote (4-1) to keep this program in place.

Hello all,
It seems that there is a lot of buzz out there about the possibility of going back to the way buildings were set before reconfiguration. I would like to speak to this.

Why did we do it in the first place?
1 - Whenever class sizes were uneven. (i.e. 17 first graders in a class in Hambden and 30 in another in Munson) we had no way to fix it.
2- Teachers were not able to work together to plan classes at grade level because there was often only one section of a class in a particular building. Planning together is an important element of keeping classes moving forward at the same pace, and of helping teachers do the important work they do. They trade ideas and create tests so that all students benefit.
3- Inefficiencies in staffing the buildings created higher costs as enrollment was coming down.
4- We often had no rooms for classes such as art and music, or for advanced classes and special needs students.
5-Advanced students had to be transported separately to Park School and leave their neighborhood school and friends if they were to participate in the program.

How has it helped?
1 - (Conservatively) We have saved over $3 million dollars on reconfiguration alone
2 - With other savings and careful spending over these years, we have saved a total of $7 million dollars. This savings and creating space has allowed us to institute both All day-Every day Kindergarten (free to all) and our preschool program (Tiny Toppers) which has been incredibly successful and has also saved us money because we no longer pay to send our preschool special needs children to other programs. (For the record, people had to pay to send students to all-day kindergarten before reconfiguration.) All day-every day kindergarten, by all reports and research, is an extremely important factor in creating academic success for all students.
3 - Class sizes can be kept relatively even in size.
4 - Teachers are able to meet to plan within their grade levels.
5 - We have room for our specials (art, music) to have their own rooms.
6 - Special needs and advanced classes are much more accessible for all students.
7 - in order to participate in advanced classes at the high school, 8th graders had to go to another building (the high school). They are now able to take advanced classes and college credit plus classes which can enable them to earn college credit while still in high school. This can save thousands of dollars in college tuition for parents.
8 - The high school is at capacity - as it was in the 90’s (I believe). Because of declining enrollment, within 2 years, the high school including 8th graders will be back to where we were at 9-12 levels when we started reconfiguration.

What if we go back?
1 - Our enrollment is still declining. If we tried to go back to grades K-5 in 4 buildings, grades 4-8 in middle school, and grades 9-12 in high school, our buildings will be underutilized, i.e. we will not have enough students to fill them. Yet we will have uneven class sizes and lack of room for special classes and possibly for Tiny Tots because we would still need to do at least one classroom at each grade level in a K-5 building.
2 - Staffing and running all buildings will put us right back where we were in terms of costs.

My thoughts
If kids are in any school setting, younger ones will be with older ones. So, how is the worry about “little” 4th graders being with “big” 7th graders any different than “little” kindergartners being with “big” 5th graders? I taught 8th grade; some kids were the size of 5th graders and some of them had beards. This is a fact of growth at that age. We have provided incredible programming at the high school for the 8th graders. Our teachers presented this programming at a conference where it was highly praised - and they are making it stronger all the time. A recent survey of our 8th grade students showed that they overwhelmingly like being there. Before reconfiguration the 9th graders were always intimidated by coming into the high school, just as 6th graders were scared of going to middle school and some kindergartners (like my daughter) cried daily as they went to kindergarten. Putting certain ages together in a building has been a construct that we are used to, but it isn’t something that HAS to be the way it was in the past.

This reconfiguration is working! Our teachers love being able to plan together and this has created solid academic progress and better test scores. We have been able to add kindergarten and preschool programming that we were not able to afford or house in the prior configuration. Our administrators and staff have created ways to make this configuration better for our kids, much more cost effective, and academically sound. To go back now seems to me a disservice to our students, our staff, and our community.

Always there doing the work that needs to be done. Thank you!!

Hi. Hard to believe we are at the end of January! Hope you had a great holiday.

I’m writing to tell you that I'm working with Chardon Schools as we are beginning the strategic planning process. Approximately every five years this work is done. If you want to see what the final product will look like you can see our last plan on the schools website (chardonschools.org) under Resources - called Vision 2020 - Later start on the new plan than we had hoped. We have restarted the process after dealing with COVID issues) It’s a comprehensive set of goals that Chardon Schools means to achieve over the next five years. We hope to finish the process by August at the latest – lots of work ahead.)

In one of our earliest steps we are now working on having small group meetings, with the intent of touching as many people in the community as possible in order to get their input. These meetings will take place over the next two weeks, concluding by Feb 15. If you would like to participate and you have not been contacted, please let me know ASAP. These groups will be small (only 10-12 people) so that open discussion can happen easily. Results will be forwarded to leadership who will synthesize it and use it to move to the next step. We want to know what you think and what you want us to know about our schools.

Hope to hear from you at a local meeting. Contact me here if you want to be contacted.