By Evan Brandt
ebrandt@pottsmerc.com

POTTSTOWN — Pottstown School Board President Rick Huss might have been a bit surprised when he looked out his front window Wednesday morning.

What he saw was a handful of protesters opposed to what they see as a rush to judgment on how to renovate the borough's five elementary schools.

And so Huss told them what they wanted to hear, that he will be announcing the formation of a task force at tonight's school board meeting.

That task force, which will examine the future of the elementary schools, will include school board members, members of the administration, teachers and members of the community.

"I'm really glad to hear that," said protester Amy Francis, who was among the protesters and is a member of the school board watchdog group called Code Blue.

"That is exactly what we wanted to hear," she sad.

The meeting was already shaping up to be a humdinger, although you might not have known it from looking at the agenda.

In addition to Huss's announcement, which is not on the agenda, is an item in which district Solicitor Stephen Kalis will report on recent questions about the "Sunshine Law."

This report grew out of the March 2 revelation that school board member Thomas Hylton had met with the two other members of the Neighborhood Schools Committee he chairs to discuss a proposal he formally made public later.

Hylton does not deny the meeting and said it is not a violation of the state's open meetings law, often called the "Sunshine Law," because the three members of his committee do not comprise a quorum of the school board.

At the March 4 meeting of the full board, Kalis indicated he believes that to be correct.

However the opinion he offered then is the opposite of one offered by Melissa Melewsky, an attorney with the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and an expert on that law.

Pressed by several members of the board who believe Kalis to be mistaken, he was charged with researching the matter and offering a formal opinion.

Presumably, that is the report he will be offering tonight.

Also on the agenda is a motion offered March 4 by board member Polly Weand, to route all discussions and decisions regarding any renovations to district buildings — including the five elementary schools — through the Facilities Committee.

Currently, plans for the elementary schools have been discussed primarily by the Neighborhood Schools Committee.

Weand tried to make the motion at the March 4 meeting, but school board President Rick Huss said because it was a workshop meeting and not a voting meeting, that the matter would have to wait until tonight.

How her motion would work with Huss's annuncement of a task force remains unclear.

Curiously, the project Weand's motion is aimed at — Hylton's multi-faceted proposal to add geo-thermal heating to all five elementary schools; along with new electric, new wiring, new windows at two of the schools; to also close the administration building and move the offices into the high school and to move the fifth grade into the middle school to get rid of the modular classrooms — is nowhere to be found on the agenda posted on the district Web site Tuesday night.

However it is widely believed that vote crucial to that proposal will be held tonight.

On March 10, at a raucous Neighborhood Schools Committee meeting, that committee voted unanimously to recommend to the full board that the district apply for low-to-zero interest federal bond money made available through the stimulus package to pay for some of the work.

The deadline for that application is April 1.

So while the committee's recommendation is not on the agenda, a failure to bring it to a vote would automatically make the question moot.

Many residents showed up to speak at that meeting, few of them offering full support for Hylton's proposals — although no one spoke against closing the administration building — and tonight's meeting is the next one at which public comment will be accepted.

Although it should be noted that might soon change as the result of another motion by Weand that is on the agenda.

That motion calls for a change in school board procedure that will allow public comment at every meeting, not just the regular voting meeting on the second Thursday of each month.

Perhaps that way, every meeting will be a humdinger.

 print 

© Copyright Pottstown School District. All rights reserved. Disclaimer
230 Beech St, Pottstown, PA 19464-0779
Phone: 610-323-8200  -  Fax: 610-326-6540