The Blairsville-Saltsburg school board voted on executive board positions and offered a statement about the legal proceedings of the lawsuit filed against the District by the Superintendent.
After one Jack Cambest was elected temporary president of Wednesday night’s reorganization meeting, the board voted on Board President and Vice President positions. Beverly Caranese will remain President and Holly Hall will remain Vice President. In both instances, board members Molly Styles, Anthony Canzano, and Rick Harper elected Rick Harper, losing 6 vote to 3 each time.
Later, Cambest read from a prepared statement on behalf of the District pertaining to the Settlement Agreement reached between the District and Superintendent Tammy Whitfield. In summary, the statement says Whitfield’s initial suspension came as a result of a Performance Evaluation and subsequent Improvement Plan, which cite a range of “unethical behavior” and “unprofessional conduct” that violated District policy and Pennsylvania School District Codes, amongst other offenses. The statement says Whitfield filed a lawsuit against a family without Board approval, transferred teachers without Board approval, violated school expulsion procedures, broke confidentiality by speaking out about a student during internal investigations, failed to supervise employees in her administration and often took time off without proper notification, and more. The statement goes on to clarify that the issue of district consolidation was never raised during Whitfield’s Improvement Plan or the Notice of Charges for the Section 1080 Hearing previously held.
In other business, the appointment of District Solicitor was tabled, as was the potential moving of monthly meetings to the third Tuesday of each month, instead of the third Wednesday. It was found that this would conflict with the monthly ARIN meeting, and the discussion was tabled. As such, January’s meeting will still take place on the 17th.
[xyz-ihs snippet=”ST-Bank”]
