Wetmiller Sheds Interim Tag, "Brown-Bag it Day" and More at Wednesday Night's School-Board Meeting

Pry Absent

President George L. Pry could not attend Wednesday night’s Baldwin-Whitehall school board meeting. As such, First Vice President Kevin J. Fischer presided.

Awards

Superintendent Dr. Lawrence C. Korchnak opened Wednesday night’s meeting by recognizing a Baldwin-Whitehall employee and a number of B-W students who had recently earned awards.

Korchnak started recognitions by congratulating Bethany Bernarding, a public-relations secretary in the school district, for receiving a 2010 “Award of Honor” in the Newsletter (3+ colors) category from the Pennsylvania School Public Relations Association for her work on the district’s Highlander Highlights publication.

Korchnak then recognized student Alexandria “Rudy” Hazen for receiving an educational grant from the Brentwood-Baldwin-Whitehall Chamber of Commerce.

Also, BHS student Marissa Catanzaro was recognized for receiving an Extra Effort award from Steel Center Area Vocational Technical School.

Korchnak congratulated another high-schooler, Belma Nurkic, for recently receiving two different awards as a girls basketball player. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette selected Nurkic, who has accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Duquesne University this coming fall, to its 2010-11 Fabulous Five team on April 7. The Post-Gazette considers players from every WPIAL and City League school for its annual Fab Five squad.

WTAE-TV also selected Nurkic as its Clearview Federal Credit Union Student-Athlete of the Week back on March 3.

Finally, Korchnak recognized the team of Baldwin High students Callie Corcoran, Jaclyn Sirc, Ryan Romack and Fitz Doyle for defeating a four-time defending championship team from North Allegheny High School and winning a regional round of the 2011 Euro Challenge competition, held at the University of Pittsburgh on March 29.

Corcoran, Sirc, Romack and Doyle will now advance to the semifinals-and-final-rounds portion of the national competition, to be held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from April 26-28. 

The Euro Challenge is a national competition for ninth- and 10th-graders that tests their knowledge and understanding of the European economy and the euro.

Kortz Address

, who represents the 38th Pennsylvania House of Representatives District, which includes parts of , shared his concerns with the Baldwin-Whitehall school board about the , a budget that calls for drastic cuts to many areas, including basic education, which is being reduced by approximately $500 million.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association reports that the B-W school district, specifically, stands to essentially lose $1,555,278 in state funding under Corbett’s plan, down from $10,356,550 in 2010-11 to $8,801,272 next fiscal year.

“(The proposed budget) cannot go through as it is,” Kortz said. “We are hurting children, period. We are hurting homeowners, period. We cannot allow this.

“Many school districts are going to be in trouble … What does that mean for Baldwin? Well, as you know, the (proposed) cut was about $1.5 million, about 14.6 percent. That’s a drastic cut.

“So what do we do? Well, we’ve gotta be very loyal, and we’ve gotta oppose this budget … The governor has absolutely sunk his feet in concrete on this, and we gotta change his mind. It’s unacceptable.”

Kortz urged the board to attend a town hall meeting that he, Rep. Marc J. Gergely and Rep. Harry A. Readshaw will be holding at the McKeesport Area High School auditorium on Thursday, May 5, from 7 to 9 p.m. to organize opposition to Corbett’s plan.

“We have to educate the public that this budget is bad–and I think we all know that–but (also) that there is a way to resolve it, because there are funding streams that the governor doesn’t wish to address.”

Kortz also expressed concern over Pennsylvania Senate Bill 1, which, if passed, would give some public-school students tuition vouchers to use toward a private-school education. Funding for those vouchers would come from students’ home school districts.

Later that night, B-W school board member Martin Michael Schmotzer made a motion for the board to send a letter written by Korchnak to state representatives and senators urging them to oppose Senate Bill 1. That motion passed unanimously (with Pry absent).

Executive Session

The board held a private, executive session after Kortz’s address, which lasted less than 10 minutes. The board then came back to a public session.

Deasy Address

Virginia Deasy, the Baldwin-Whitehall school district’s director of pupil services, gave a presentation to the board about ways that her office is trying to increase student achievement.

Deasy’s presentation was met with no major issues, and the board praised the performance of her office.

Deasy expressed a desire to push more special-education students into regular classroom settings rather than pulling those students out of those settings so as to “provide services in a more inclusive setting.”

She said that her office is always pursuing that goal.

Lutz Address

Randal A. Lutz, the school district’s assistant superintendent of elementary education, joined librarian Ann Sopczynski, Baldwin High School Vice Principal Janeen Peretin and the district’s Directory of Technology Tim Winner for a joint presentation on how the district is using available technology to educate students.

Sopczynski discussed learning-response technology with the board and showed board members how a teacher could use pods that students hold to answer questions in class.

Peretin then presented how a teacher could use Blackboard technology and blendedschools.net products to allow students to observe classes, or at least class materials, via the Web.

Winner finished the technology presentation by showing the school board how a teacher could use an interactive whiteboard that is connected to the Web instead of just a traditional whiteboard.

Recreation Equipment for McAnnulty and Paynter, Part I

Baldwin High School junior Edward Lippl, who is a student-body representative for the board, commented on one of the night’s agenda items related to approving funding for recreation equipment at McAnnulty and elementary schools.

Lippl said that he personally asked the young students from those schools how they felt about a lack of playground equipment.

“One of the students told me that he could not swing without swings,” Lippl said, drawing smiles from board members. “Another one said that jumping rope is boring.”

Lippl urged the board to approve the funding.

Lumping Together Voting Items Irks DiNardo, Martin Schmotzer

A recurring theme of the night was board member Sam DiNardo Jr.’s contention that the school board should not lump sensitive agenda items together into one vote since he or other board members may support one of those items while opposing another.

Related to that was a motion from Martin Schmotzer to remove two agenda items from one such grouped vote—one item being the hiring of a new district employee that is not related to a district administrator and the other being the hiring of one who is (daughter of Athletics Director Vince Sortino).

Martin Schmotzer’s motion was approved, and the hiring of the would-be related employee did not pass. The board turned that hire down with a 4-4 vote. It takes five positive votes to hire a new employee.

Board members Nancy Lee Crowder, Second Vice President Diana Kazour, Martin Schmotzer and DiNardo cast the negative votes.

The board did elect to hire the unrelated employee with an 8-0 vote.

In a strange turn of events, DiNardo later motioned for the board to reconsider the related-employee item. Board member John Schmotzer explained to fellow board members that the would-be employee’s relative would have no supervision of her.

Upon reconsideration, DiNardo and Kazour switched their votes, and the item then passed, 6-2.

At the crux of DiNardo’s complaint with lumping certain items together was a group of agenda items that included whether or not to approve a corporate sponsorship of a track & field meet along with whether or not to approve the purchase of several computers, among other items.

“It seems like certain things that want to get done get put together,” DiNardo said, pointing out his dissatisfaction with the decision to include those items together as one vote. 

As such, DiNardo cast the only negative vote for that grouping.

Still, the motion to approve the purchase of 164 replacement computers for at a cost of $102,636.80 passed, as did the track & field sponsorship.

Fischer explained to DiNardo that the board’s president—in this case, Pry—has the power to set meeting agendas.

“The board did entertain this and did discuss this at some previous meeting in the past in an effort to try to expedite the voting on some items that were perceived to be fairly mundane,” Fischer said.

Martin Schmotzer supported DiNardo’s concern and asked Korchnak to discuss that concern with Pry for future meeting agendas.

“Because I don’t wanna go with the computers,” DiNardo said, “it’s gonna look like I don’t wanna support the track & field. Well, I support track & field, but because you put it in such a way, I gotta vote ‘no.’”

Wetmiller Sheds Interim Tag

The board voted, 7-1, on Wednesday night to approve the hiring of Michael R. Wetmiller as principal of Harrison at an annual salary of $90,000. The only negative vote came from Crowder, who made it known before voting that her opinion was based on the proposed salary, not Wetmiller’s performance.

Wetmiller had been serving as Harrison’s principal on an interim basis since Oct. 25, 2010.

Recreation Equipment for McAnnulty and Paynter, Part II

The board voted, 7-1, to approve purchasing recreation equipment for McAnnulty and Paynter at a cost of $31,626.37 for McAnnulty and $26,499.78 for Paynter.

Crowder, who said that she supports the idea of the equipment but “do(es) not support taking educational dollars or district dollars to spend on a playground at this given time,” cast the lone negative vote.

John Schmotzer said that most of the money going to the new equipment was either donated or came from “fees from the libraries that had been sitting out there in space for years.”

No Participation by Absent Board Members

After a lengthy debate, the board voted, 5-3, to approve an amended motion that disallows absent board members from participating in meetings, even through telephone or electronic communication.

“I think, as I tell my children all the time, half of life is showing up,” Martin Schmotzer said before casting a positive vote. “If you can’t show up, you forfeit your vote.”

“I have to vote ‘no’ on this,” board member Kevin A. Stiffey said. “If somebody has a job, and they have to be going out of town … they should be allowed to be able to hear the meeting, hear questions, form opinions.”

Fischer and Crowder joined Stiffey with negative votes despite their losing effort.

Food Service Director Comments on “Brown-Bag it Day”

Jay West, the school district’s Food Service Director, used a public-comments section toward the end of Wednesday’s meeting to make a presentation to the board.

West brought up an informal “Brown-Bag it Day” that some B-W students had recently organized in protest of the district’s food prices and nutritional offerings.

West said that the B-W school district is part of the National School Lunch Program, and as such, the district is required to meet nutritional requirements—two ounces of protein, one serving of bread, three-quarters of a cup of fruit and vegetable, and eight ounces of milk.

West said that the district does meet these requirements and passed a food-service audit in April 2008.

“Our menus are nutritionally sound,” West said.

West also said that the district’s lunch prices—$1.70 at the elementary level and $1.95 (regular) and $2.70 (premium) at the high-school level are fair.

“It’s been three years since we’ve had a price increase,” he said. “I think the prices are reasonable.”

Crowder said that she believed that students who participated in “Brown-Bag it Day” were expressing their displeasure over the district’s a la carte items.

“As a parent, I see that as well,” Crowder said.