CONCORD, Ohio — At Auburn Career Center in Lake County, this Board of Education meeting was not going to be a pleasurable experience.
"Every court from here to Columbus has agreed: They violated contracts," teacher Jason Gardner told 3News.
Gardner and dozens of working and retired teachers are demanding to be paid what they say is already owe them.
"If a teacher does not have a planning period in the student day, the school district is required to compensate them for it, and our contract clearly says that compensation is 10% of our salary," Gardner explained. "And one day, the Board woke up and said, 'No, we're not going to do that anymore,' and that's when this lawsuit started."
Sue Leffler, who is retired, says she is owed $65,000.
"I could pay off my house," she told 3News of what she could do with that money.
Speaker after speaker addressed the Board, wanting to be heard. They were ignored for almost 13 years.
In October of 2021, the Lake County Court of Common Pleas ordered Auburn to pay the teachers more than $1.4 million million in back pay. Court documents obtained by WKYC state paperwork for an appeal was filed back in December, but that appeal was denied.
The union says the Auburn Board tried to appeal with the Supreme Court of Ohio, but they refused to hear the case. We asked superintendent Dr. Brian Bontempo for comment, but he denied us an interview, and referred us to a statement released by the attorneys representing the Board.
In that statement, attorneys for the Auburn School Board claim officials tried to pay the $1.4 million judgment, but blamed a dispute over how the money would be distributed to eligible teachers, writing that, "the Board has requested that the Trial Court permit the Board to immediately deposit the total $1,486,045.78 judgement amount with the Trial Court for safekeeping, payment, and disposition to all eligible teachers."
"It means that they don't want to pay us through payroll," Union President Robert Hill said. "They want to pay us, like, in a lump sum amount. And it's always been paid to our retirement fund, the STRS, but that's what they're trying to circumvent."
Now, Gardner and others are calling for the dispute to be settled.
"The only one that's getting rich off this whole thing is that attorney that's sitting in that room right now, telling them not to talk to you or us or anyone."
Attorneys for the board filed yet another appeal in January with the 11th District Court of Appeals. Teachers here say it's merely another stall tactic to not pay them what they deserve.