Due to receiving several emails with questions related to this topic, I am sending this

email on behalf of the board that will cover all questions:

I sincerely empathize and understand all of your concerns and questions.  I want to
make sure I am providing a clear picture of several things.  This is in no way an excuse
for Mr. Gibson's actions, but rather details that are important in regards to his
interactions with student-athletes from BGCS.  
 
Mr. Gibson was never "hired" as a staff member for BGCS. Fastrak was an organization
that was paid through an athletic fund.  Mr. Gibson was an employee of
Fastrack. Neither he nor Fastrak ever appeared on a board agenda for the school board
to vote on. In fact, Zach Gibson's name was not known by any board member
until the Spring of 2022. 
 
After investigating the sequence of events and looking at all of the details, there was no
policy or administrative guideline violated by any of the administrators within BGCS.
Within the previous policy, a person could come into the district as long as they were
within the presence of a BGCS staff member, which includes coaches.  Through our
investigations, it was reported that Mr. Gibson was never alone with student-athletes on
school grounds. Anything that may have happened off school grounds is outside the
scope of our authority to regulate. 
 
As a governing body, we are to uphold policy and issue discipline to the superintendent
and/or treasurer when they violate that policy.  Again, this did not happen.  In regards to
Mr. Gibson's previous conviction, please understand that when background checks
come in, following Ohio law, our HR Director and Superintendent look at convictions,
not charges. The conviction of Disseminating Matter Harmful to Juveniles is a
misdemeanor.  He was not a registered sex offender. 
 
Prior to any time spent at BGCS, Mr. Gibson also worked with multiple BG families in
regards to strength and agility training for high school aged boys.  At least one of the
families recommended Mr. Gibson to work with our athletic teams.     
 
As I stated above, this is not an excuse for Mr. Gibson's actions.  It is far from it.  I
believe what happened was and is horrible.  I feel for all of the families affected.  I truly
do.  As we sit at the seats of the school board, we are faced with, "What can we
do?". As I stated above, neither policy nor administrative guidelines were broken.  This
makes discipline not an option. What we can do as a school board is use our
governance to make the district safer and more aware. 
 
With that said, the events that unfolded made it very clear to us as a school board that
we needed to strengthen policy.  I want to note that the previous policy regarding
background checks was one that was recommended to us from NEOLA, which is an
organization that works with more than 1500 school districts across six states writing
and recommending policy. Nearly 85% of the school districts in Ohio use NEOLA for its
policy services. The same previous policy we had is the exact same one that continues
to be used today by most districts. I say this to communicate that we at BGCS have
taken further steps to make the policy more stringent.  This policy is 8142- Criminal
History Record Check for Contracted School Services and was updated on July 14,
2022.  We are currently looking at another policy 1613- Student Supervision and
Welfare. We hope to clean up language to ensure social media communications are
only on platforms that cannot be erased.  
 
In addition, we have asked our athletic director to develop a plan to provide awareness
and training regarding grooming behaviors moving forward. Our goal is to have this
rolled out for our fall 2023 sports. We want to provide this to all coaches as well as
parents and student-athletes.  
 
While we understand damage has been caused by Mr. Gibson, the school district has
learned from this incident and has taken steps to be more proactive moving forward.   

Ryan Myers
BOE President