Before we talk about the press releases, the glowing city statements, or the sanitized newspaper headlines, I need to be transparent with you: Tondra Frisby is my friend.
I’ve sat across from her, watched her work up close for more than 15 years, and seen firsthand the fierce, unrelenting love she has for Sandusky’s kids. I’ve also watched what happened to her behind closed doors when the cameras were off and the city banners were put away.
Earlier this week, the Sandusky Register published a story announcing that Tondra was leaving her post as Sandusky’s youth program supervisor to become the youth engagement director for the Erie County Health Department. On paper, it was framed as a seamless, happy promotion—a local leader stepping up to a bigger county stage. Health Commissioner Pete Schade saw her extraordinary value, knew the trust she holds in this community, and created a role to let her do what she does best.
City Manager John Orzech and City Commission President Kate Vargo issued statements thanking Tondra for her service, reassuring the public that youth recreation remains a top priority as the city prepares to open its new multi-million-dollar recreation center next summer.
It was a neat, comfortable narrative. It was also nowhere near the full picture.
Two Farewells
If you want to understand how municipal institutions actually treat the people who hold them together, look at how Tondra left.
When her resignation became official, City Hall offered no public ceremony, no formal resolution, no official citywide send-off, not even a card. A handful of white colleagues took her out to a quiet lunch.
Meanwhile, the real farewell happened where it always does—among the people who actually built and relied on her programs. The long-time, underpaid part-time staff—the Black and brown workers who are paid less and get fewer hours than what the rotating summer interns from privileged backgrounds get—joined with neighborhood families and local kids to throw her a roaring, emotional celebration filled with tears, pride, and hope.
That contrast tells you everything you need to know about the gap between Sandusky’s leadership and the community Tondra served.
The Blindness of “Good Intentions”
I know John Orzech. I know Kate Vargo. They are, by all accounts, decent, well-intentioned, accomplished people. I like them personally, and I don’t believe either of them wakes up in the morning plotting how to undermine a Black woman running youth programs.
But institutional bias rarely looks like a mustache-twirling villain. It looks like comfortable, well-meaning white leaders who are completely blind to their own privilege—and completely indifferent to the quiet, systemic friction inflicted on employees who don’t fit the City Hall mold.
For nearly nine years, Tondra did something miraculous. She didn’t just run programs; she created safe havens at the former Mills Elementary. She brought life to that building like it was in the old days, when she was a student there in the 1960s.
She built the two-time, state award-winning Midtown Supper Club, where kids learned culinary arts alongside master chefs and cooked annual banquets for hundreds of residents and raised tens of thousands of dollars for city programs. She spearheaded Juneteenth celebrations before it was a national holiday. The celebration this year attracted 5,000 people. She fought to have fireworks at the Juneteenth celebration every year for the last five years, “because it’s only right.”
She established Community Collaboration Days, and out-school spaces for children who are too often ignored, politically powerless, and blamed for society’s ills. She built legendary programs for kids who had no one else fighting in their corner.
And yet, over the last four years, the environment inside City Hall grew steadily colder.
It escalated after Tondra raised a formal complaint about a city employee using an explicit racial slur in a professional setting. Instead of receiving unyielding institutional protection, Tondra experienced the slow, subtle burn of bad management and cold-shoulder bureaucracy.
At one point, during an 18-month stretch where Tondra underwent two life-threatening surgeries and spent weeks hospitalized, the city placed her on an administrative list of employees accused of “abusing sick time.”
Think about that. A dedicated public servant fighting for her life in a hospital bed was flagged by city administrators as a time-card problem.
The Challenge to Sandusky
Pete Schade and the Erie County Health Department didn’t just hire Tondra—they rescued a vital community asset that Sandusky leadership failed to protect. In her new role, Tondra will have county-wide resources to keep mentoring kids, training adults in youth mental health, and building safe networks across Erie County.
But Sandusky City Hall is left with a glaring question it can’t press-release its way out of.
City officials promise that an interim team of part-time attendants will hold down the out-school programs at Mills, and that the new rec center coming next July will expand opportunities for “every child in Sandusky.”
A shiny new building is easy to cut a ribbon on. But a building doesn’t build trust. A building doesn’t stay up late cooking with kids, listening to their hopes, dreams and challenges, or making them feel seen in a world that routinely writes them off. Tondra Frisby did that.
If Sandusky’s white leadership genuinely wants to honor Tondra’s legacy, they need to stop pretending her departure was just a routine career move. They need to pause, reflect and recognize the systemic blind spots that put the city in her rear view mirror, and ensure that the grass-roots, soul-nourishing programs she built aren’t quietly phased out because they serve the “wrong” kids.
Tondra is moving on to bigger things. The question is whether City Hall is capable of learning the lesson she left behind.
Thank you, Matt! Sandusky wouldn’t even be building a new Recreation Center without Tondra Frisby’s efforts to make our community a better place for children! Tondra originally wanted a swimming pool-they shot that down! Her hard work, dedication, and love has been noticed for years! She will be such an asset and I can’t wait to see what she does in her new position with the county! Keep reporting about your friend! She is more than awesome!
Well said, Matt! It's good to read about the background behind Tondra's change in jobs. No one works with kids like Tondra does.