Baldwin-Whitehall Board Member Calls Dean of Students Cuts 'Bush League'

Baldwin-Whitehall School Board member Larry Pantuso can't say for sure why B-W School District administrators recommended eliminating the district's two dean of students positions this past month—but he has his suspicions, he says, mostly rooted in the way that the cuts were made.

Meanwhile, district Superintendent Dr. Randal A. Lutz, whose recommendation was supported by the majority of the board (7-2), says that the eliminations came with good reason, such as a state-mandated teacher-evaluation process.

Gone as deans of students with that 7-2 vote on June 19 were Baldwin High School's Peter Wagner Jr.—also the school's head football coach—and J.E. Harrison Middle School's Mike Voelker—Wagner's defensive coordinator. Both men will be reassigned in the district as teachers but with a much lower salary.

Neither Wagner nor Voelker were aware that their positions were being considered for elimination, Pantuso said, until about five minutes before the vote came down and only after Pantuso urged Lutz to notify them.

Lutz does not deny that Wagner and Voelker were not made aware of the cuts until the night that they were board-approved but says that he didn't want to notify the two men in case the board ultimately chose not to accept his recommendation.

"It could be a dead issue (if the board doesn't approve the recommendation)," Lutz said.

Wagner told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in June, "It came as a surprise to me. I received a phone call from the superintendent from the board meeting about five minutes before the decision was made."

Asked why he joined fellow board member Tracy Macek in voting "no" for the dean cuts, Pantuso told Patch, "It's aggravating to me. Whenever you have two people where you want to eliminate their positions but you want them to retain employment here and be productive employees, what does that say whenever they're going to go home and read about it on the Patch or somebody's gonna call them from the meeting and say, 'Hey, your job just got eliminated?'

"I don't know if you can get much more 'bush league' than what we did—than what seven people did a few weeks ago.

"That really makes me think that there's more to it than what everybody wants to let on. That raises a level of suspicion. I'm not 100-percent sure that the whole thing isn't motivated by the fact that Pete got chosen as the football coach because I know that that created quite a bit of controversy in administration whenever the board members didn't approve (administration's recommendation)."

In February, Lutz and his colleagues recommended Seton-La Salle Catholic High School head football coach Greg Perry to replace Jim Wehner as Baldwin's coach, but that recommendation was shot down and replaced by the board with Wagner, who will lead the Highlanders for the first time this fall. Voelker, who wasn't a part of the football team during Wehner's last season at Baldwin, will rejoin the team under Wagner.

Lutz does not cite football motives as a reason for cutting the dean jobs. The superintendent says that a mandate from the Pennsylvania Department of Education to install a more intense teacher-evaluation process in Baldwin-Whitehall does not leave space for deans of students.

The dean jobs were student-discipline ones in Baldwin-Whitehall, and individuals need the word "principal" in their job title, as well as principal certifications, in order to evaluate teachers, Lutz said. Wagner and Voelker had neither of those things.

"One area of my goals talks about evaluating building-level administrative teams," Lutz said, "to see if we have the right combination of people in the right places, including principals, vice principals and deans of students. So, in some ways, it (the dean eliminations recommendation) should not have been a surprise. This whole year has really been looking at making sure that we have the right people in the right places.

"And really, whether it's this year, whether it's next year, we know coming down the pike, with a new teacher-evaluation model, it's very labor-intensive and it's much more aggressive than the current evaluation model. There's just no doubt about it. It's pre-conference, post-conference; there's goal-setting. It's a good plan; it just takes more time."

Lutz said that Baldwin-Whitehall will implement the state-mandated evaluation process by the fall of 2015 at the latest.

"Our goal is to do some things earlier than that just to make sure that we're ready," he said, "but by 2015, we have to be geared up for that. So, looking at that, knowing what's coming down the pike, my belief is that we should not have any building-level administrators that would not be able to observe and evaluate. So, I felt that a move in the right direction would be to move away from dean positions and move to a vice principal- or to an assistant principal-type of model."

Pantuso, however, said that there was no need to rush the process.

"We're not in a panic looking for people who can evaluate," he said, pointing not only to existing building principals in B-W but also to the district's Director of Programs Darlene DeFilippo and its Director of Curriculum Andrea Huffman. "It's not like, if we don't hurry up and eliminate these two people and put two people in there with principal papers, we can't evaluate teachers. That's not the case."

During the same board meeting where the dean positions were eliminated, John Saras, a math teacher at Harrison, was voted in as Baldwin High's newest vice principal. And the district website now lists a vacant assistant principal position at Harrison.

The high school is still without a head principal, though, as the school board accepted former Principal Kevin O'Toole's resignation on June 12.

"So, you've got a high school without a principal; you've got an unstable building administration already," Pantuso said. "So, now, we're gonna pull out a piece of stability in Pete Wagner?

"Pete Wagner, in my term as a school director—I've never heard anybody saying anything about him not doing a good job. He and Mike Voelker.

"You talk to people on the streets, and by and large, everybody is very supportive of both of those two individuals and the job that they've done, especially at Harrison."

Macek concurred.

"I felt it was not in the best interest of our students and completely unnecessary at this time," she said. "Currently, we have no principal in place (at the high school). I believe that trying to acclimate two new individuals into administrative positions in the same year will prove to be chaotic, put much strain on the current administrative staff, and most of all, reduce the stability of the high school.

"Personally, I believe that students tend to thrive and be more successful in a stable environment. I believe that Mr. Wagner has played a vital role in helping to keep the high school running smoothly despite much administrative turnover throughout the years. And Mr. Voelker has also been a key figure in the success of Harrison. I think disrupting this administrative team is not in the best interest of our middle-school students."

Macek, like Pantuso, also did not like how the news was broken to Wagner and Voelker.

"I believe that, after years of dedication to this district, both Mr. Wagner and Mr. Voelker could have been made aware of the process in a more respectful manner," she said.

Lutz said that he and his colleagues could have recommended that the dean positions be cut at a time when no teaching vacancies existed in B-W but that that is not the case right now with both men expected to teach in the district this fall.

"This could have been a furlough, but that was not my desire," Lutz said. "The timing of it being this year was such that we have some vacancies. That was our desire—to move in this direction but not cost anyone a job.

"Reassignment means changes, but there's still employment."

Lutz said that moving either Wagner or Voelker into a principal's role in B-W in the very near future isn't likely.

"They've both been substitutes or long-term subs or what we would call building subs, but neither have ever had their own classroom," Lutz said. "How do you evaluate teachers on things like lesson planning and classroom management and accountability of instruction when, authentically, you've never done it on a long-term basis yourself?

"They were absolutely satisfactory in what they were doing as deans of students. They did a fine job. This is nothing about merit, nothing about performance; it was just a philosophical difference in moving in a different direction long-term."