GALION—At Northmor’s monthly board of education meeting, Superintendent Chad Redmon informed the board of the school’s standing on the situation with Mohican Outdoor Schools.
Each year the school sends its sixth-graders to Mohican Outdoor Schools from a Monday to a Friday to provide the kids with a fun week of outdoor educational experiences. Due to COVID, the camp was closed this past spring, and they refused to refund money to the families of the students.
Northmor administration got legal counsel involved and tried to reach out to Mohican for months without a response until an email was received on December 4.
The email stated that Mohican Outdoor School is in the process of filing for bankruptcy and all staff were laid off in March. Mohican plans to reopen under a new name once the bankruptcy is complete and continue to provide their Monday-Friday program for schools to send their students to in the future.
“This bothers me a great deal, they flippantly can just say that they’re filing for bankruptcy and opening under a new name to continue operations,” Redmon said.
In an attempt to reconcile the situation, Mohican Outdoor School offered to provide the school with credits to be used for the 2021-2022 school year for those students who paid the 290-dollar fee and didn’t get to go last spring due to COVID. The total that Mohican Outdoor Schools have not refunded the Northmor families is over 20,000 dollars.
When the time comes for those credits to be used, those students will be eighth-graders. The school administration feels that those students will be too old at that point, and they do not wish to deal with the organization again.
Many parents have voiced their frustrations to the school for not receiving any refund money, however, legally the school cannot pay them the money being that it was never in their record books, but rather the PTO’s record books. With that being the case, the school also cannot file a lawsuit against the Mohican Outdoor School, but the PTO or parents in general would need to do so.
Board member Louie Cortez asked if there was any way that the school could move funds around to be able to pay those parents back, but the school was advised by its legal counsel that it is illegal to do so because it would be a misuse of public funds.
“This really bothers me because I feel like we are being blamed for stealing from people, and that’s not any part of who we are as an organization,” Redmon said. “This keeps me up at night. To some people, 290 dollars is nothing, but to others it is a lot, it could be their Christmas. I can’t believe this organization; they stole our parents’ money.”
Redmon said that to avoid anything like this in the future and to make sure the school can be involved, anything of this nature must be brought before the board, approved, and signed by him.
Questions raised on the matter were whether or not the PTO could refund the parents or if they could file suit on their own because it was stated that the PTO does have the money to refund the families due to a fundraiser held last year.
Mr. Redmon is looking to set up a meeting with PTO members to discuss any further proceedings on the matter.
“It is absolutely criminal what the Mohican Outdoor School is doing to our Northmor families. It is criminal in nature, it is unethical, and it is illegal,” Redmon said.
Also at the meeting, the board agreed that should Morrow County be moved to purple, the school will look at the numbers in their district to determine whether or not school will stay in-person, go hybrid, or go completely remote pending board consultation and approval.
The next meeting was moved to January 12 at 6 p.m.