An Indiana County Senior Judge has ruled in favor of the River Valley School District and several members of its board in a lawsuit filed by the Save Our Saltsburg Schools group.
The SOSS had filed the lawsuit in an effort to stop the reconfiguration of the Blairsville-Saltsburg School District that resulted in middle and high schoolers attending classes at the Blairsville campus, and shutting down the Saltsburg Middle-High School. The complaint from SOSS had two points to it. One point accused River Valley violated procedural due process in the Pennsylvania Constitution, and the other point accused the district of breaching their fiduciary duties. That second point was changed in an amended complaint and instead put that charge toward board members Rick Harper, Anthony Canzano, Molly Stiles, Connie Constantino, Holly Gibson and Mary Whitfield. The realignment of the district happened on July 1st of this year.
In a ruling issued on Wednesday, Senior Judge William Martin said that while the court was sympathetic to the group’s wish to keep the Middle-High School, and recognized the efforts of the group to keep the school open, the court was bound by legal principles to the actions of River Valley School District and it’s board members. He also said it was “beyond the scope of the court’s decision making latitude to question the propriety of the board’s decisions provided they were made within the confines of the law.”
Superintendent Phillip Martel said that this does close a chapter on this portion of history for the River Valley School District, but as far as dealing with negativity concerning the realignment, he said that the students have benefitted from the process in more ways than one.
We reached out to Save Our Saltsburg Schools legal representative Joel Sansone and a statement from the group is expected later today.
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