Tara Seward Is a Hypocrite Whose Personal Life and Biases Render Her Ill-Equipped to Drive the Bus on Dublin Redistricting
Seward wants the educational benefit of Dublin's best for her kids without the heavy financial burden of obtaining that benefit via paying property taxes. Dubliners deserve better DCS board members.
There is a lot to admire about Dublin City Schools (DCS) Board Member Tara Seward. Despite the hostility to the sanctity of life by her progressive political party, she, like my brother, became a parent at a young age and, by all accounts, is an excellent mother, having been raised by loving parents herself. Though it appears Seward never married any of the fathers of her four kids (I found evidence of three dads via Delaware County Court records, but there could be a fourth dad). Her misguided efforts on redistricting notwithstanding, Seward certainly is strongly committed to Dublin and its overall betterment. She is clearly hardworking given her six-figure salary success in the private sector. I’ve never met Seward, but I suspect, political differences aside, she is imminently likable and a pleasure to talk to. These biographical facts make it all the harder to “circle the square” when it comes to her DCS role.
Because she, her four kids, and her brother all live with her parents in a four bedroom house, Seward likely doesn’t pay any property taxes to support DCS despite putting four kids through our schools at a cost of roughly $700,000 (four kids times twelve years times $15,000 per year per kid). It is possible she indirectly pays property taxes via undisclosed rent to her parents, but it is more likely she lives with them rent free. Seward could prove she pays rent to her parents via cashed checks or cash transfer records dating back to 2010 when she began voting at her parents’ address in Delaware County. Thus, since she is neither a homeowner nor a renter, she sends her kids to DCS literally for free. As one of five DCS board votes, she wields enormous power despite having no monetary skin in the game. At roughly $9,750 in property taxes per year (with most of that going to DCS), her parents since buying their house in 1998 have contributed just $302,250 in property taxes (using the current highest rate for all thirty-one years of ownership, so the actual tax payments are less than that amount), which means, after attributing her parents’ tax payments to her (which ignores the twenty-one-plus year cost of educating Seward and her brother), other Dubliners have subsidized Seward’s kid’s educations to the tune of nearly $400,000. That is a great deal if you can get it.
Full disclosure: my three kids also were subsidized to the tune of roughly $45,000 after taking account of the property taxes my ex-wife and I will have paid during our collective years in Dublin—though that subsidy will be eliminated within two years of my youngest kid graduating in 2029.
As to why Seward hasn’t purchased her own home or rented an apartment is a mystery, but one must wonder if it is because she couldn’t afford a home in the Jerome or Coffman High School areas, so her kids would have gone to Scioto High School. She was sued by a debt collector for what appears to be over $19,000 in credit debt with a judgment entered against her in March 2023, so likely lacks a 20% down payment for a home, especially one anywhere other than in Scioto neighborhoods. By living with her parents in Muirfield, her kids get to attend the best Dublin high school. Another mystery is why Seward misleads Dubliners by saying she “attended Scioto High School,” but conveniently omits that she did NOT graduate from Scioto; rather, she transferred to private and expensive Bishop Watterson High School from which she graduated in 2000 (though her brother, Scott, graduated from Scioto in 2006). Seward seems to have no problem relegating Coffman kids to the high school she escaped from during her high school years, which is a classic “what is good for the goose (Coffman kids) wasn’t good for the gander (Seward herself).”
It is clear Seward’s presence in Muirfield is why she wants to shift Bailey Elementary School (BES) kids from Coffman to Scioto. She is trying to protect her kids from being moved to the high school she left for Watterson. Seward knows Scioto won’t give her two younger kids the same collegiate bounce as Jerome gave her two older kids. What is again “good for the goose (BES kids) isn’t good for the gander (her kids).” The fact is her parent’s house (address hidden so as not to dox her and her family) is closer to Scioto than my BES house in Amberleigh—nine minutes versus twelve minutes. Even if you prohibit travel to Scioto using Glick Road, which is an arbitrary barrier intended to protect the Muirfield neighborhoods from going to Scioto, Seward’s parent’s house is only three minutes farther away from Scioto than my house. Three minutes shouldn’t decide whether or not her parent’s neighborhood should be shifted to Scioto. Jerome is overcrowded, so Jerome neighborhoods should be shifted, not Coffman neighborhoods. Seward’s parent’s neighborhood is most certainly one of the neighborhoods that would be selected to shift to Scioto if common sense dictated the decision given its proximity to Scioto.* For the record, Seward’s parent’s house is eight minutes from Jerome. My house is nine minutes.
As can be expected, some of you will throw the race card at me because Seward is black and I am white. Hogwash. Seward opted to make herself a public figure by running for the DCS Board of Education despite her personal life issues. I’m actually stunned none of the above came out during last Fall’s election. Seward is the focus of this piece not because of her race (or gender), but because of her stated goal to redistrict DCS by race or its proxy, because of her benefitting without any burden re DCS via owning or renting a home, because of her personal financial mismanagement as she seeks to manage DCS, and, mostly, because of her efforts to protect her own kids and her parent’s neighborhood to the detriment of BES neighborhoods, including mine. In my world, Seward is a hypocrite. Yes, other DCS Board Members have personal biases given where they live, but they also have the burden of paying property taxes and owning/renting homes that could be devalued if Seward gets her way. Seward herself loses nothing if her parent’s neighborhood gets shifted to Scioto. Given that a majority of DCS Board Members live in Scioto or Coffman neighborhoods, it should be a no brainer to use Jerome neighborhoods to alleviate overcrowding at that school.
For those unfamiliar with my work, I have spent most of the last fifteen years criticizing Republicans and those on the Right who enable them, so don’t come at me with partisan charges. Republican Governor John Kasich once told a colleague I was in the top five on his enemy’s list. I’m likely ranked second on Republican U.S. Senator Jon Husted’s enemy’s list. I do my best to call spades as spades and not to put my finger on the scale when it involves “my side.” Two columns before this one I took a two-by-four to two Republican legislators for circumventing term limits. If you are being objective and not merely a partisan yourself, you will agree that Seward shouldn’t be deciding anything when it comes to DCS redistricting given the above.
Common sense would solve the problem of Jerome overcrowding by shifting Jerome neighborhoods to undercapacity Scioto regardless of minor drive time differences. Seward may be a nice person, but she seems to lack personal financial self-control and to want to drive redistricting based upon nothing but personal biases and political agendas. She wants the educational benefit of the best of Dublin for her own kids without the heavy financial burden of obtaining that benefit via paying property taxes. Dubliners deserve better DCS board members than that.
*I’ve written about this before, but there are BES neighborhoods that inexplicably got skipped over in last year’s redistricting effort that should be selected before going farther north on Dublin Road to cherry pick the northern BES neighborhoods. My neighborhood literally sits across Dublin Road from Muirfield neighborhoods, so the selection of the former and not the latter is simply gross bias. Sorry my friends in those closer BES neighborhoods, but DCS is pushing a zero sum game if it continues to ignore Jerome neighborhoods as the solution to the problem, so one must do what one must do.
I would add no one, and I mean no one, should use the above information maliciously against Seward’s family. She arrogantly opted to run for public office knowing the baggage she carried. Her kids did not.