Author: SPY

Regarding the recent school board contract fiasco  – and the twisted justifications and rationalizations – a lot of residents would probably agree with sentiment expressed by Fletcher in The Outlaw Josey Wales:

Resident (and former board member) Quinn Hartman: “First of all I’d like to say I’ve been on the board nine and a half years and never seen this many people in the audience. I wish it was like this every meeting. When I heard about this idea of the shared superintendent, I thought man what a great concept, it solves our problems. I’m thinking this should save us fifty, sixty thousand dollars a year, so when I heard it only saves $8,000, I was disappointed. This contract that the board agreed to, can we define Garden Spot as a third party vendor?”

Attorney Michael Grab: “Well, they’re a separate entity with whom we have a contract. Under certain circumstances a separate entity could be considered a third party vendor, I don’t know if that would qualify under these circumstances, but there’s certainly a separate and distinct legal entity from the Columbia Borough School District.”

Hartman: “According to Title 65, Chapter 11, Section 1102, definition. And it states, define a “Conflict or conflict of interest as use by a public official or public employee of the authority of his or her office or any confidential information received through his or her holding public office or employment for the private pecuniary benefit of him or herself, a member of his or her immediate family, or a business in which he or she is a member of, or his/her immediate family is associated.

“Does anyone dispute that definition? I mean I’m reading right out of the (inaudible). So, if I understand the events correctly, the current director of operations was a sitting board member when we made this decision to go into this contract, is that your take?”

Grab: “Yeah, that’s correct.”

Hartman: “Was the position itself approved while he was sitting on the board?”

Grab: “When the statement of work was approved by this board it included provisions both for the simultaneous superintendent for Dr. Hollister and for a position called Director of Operations, so that was definitely included in the statement of work.”

Hartman: “Ok, so we agree that he was sitting on the board at that time, is that what you’re saying?”

Grab: “Mr. Strickler was sitting on the board at the time that the statement of work was approved by the board, now he did recuse himself from any participation in the approval of that.”

Hartman: “Whether he recused himself or not, he was still there then, he was still in the know about what happened.

“When both parties were supposed to vote on it, I think there was a discussion earlier about that, delaying the vote, changing the date, why was that done?”

Superintendent Dr. Robert Hollister: “I was still checking references and I didn’t get references checked in time. There were ten candidates, I interviewed five, I checked references for three and that took longer than I hoped it would, while folks got back to me from vacations, so I had to delay the hiring of the person I eventually chose.”

Hartman: “So, we really didn’t fulfill the contract terms. We were supposed to vote on that date, according to the contract.”

Hollister: “July 18.”

Hartman: “Columbia School Board didn’t have any say in the delay?”

Hollister: “No.”

Hartman: “Just trying to make that clear. We don’t consider any of this a conflict of interest based on the definition I just read?”

Grab: “I do not.”

Hartman: “You don’t think its a conflict of interest?”

Grab: “A conflict of interest for whom? Are you talking about for Mr. Strickler?”

Hartman: “What I’m talking about is a sitting board member, it’s pretty clear to me confidential information received through his authority of job counts as a conflict of interest. Still sitting on the board while you’re making decisions count as a conflict of interest?”

Grab: “Quinn I understand what you’re saying, but my understanding is that Mr. Strickler recused himself from any votes to approve a statement of work or anything to do with the director of operations, so under those circumstances he’s not actively participating in that process for approval of documents, so there’s certainly is no – facially any conflict of interest with regard to the approval of the statement of work, is what I would say.”

Hartman: “No public employee or his or her spouse or any business, which in this case would be Garden Spot, in which the person or his or her spouse is associated shall benefit in any contract valued at $500 or more with the school district or any subcontract valued at $500 or more with any person who has been awarded a contract with a school district unless the contract has been awarded through an open and public process including prior public notice and subsequent public disclosure of all proposals considered and contracts awarded. Now, this actually comes from this board’s policy manual. Now the question I have then is, was this an open and public process? Last week’s meeting the board didn’t have a whole lot of answers to some of the questions that were asked.

Hollister: “I didn’t have an answer to every question that was asked. I don’t think anyone ever did.”

Hartman: “The public didn’t really have a chance to discuss the information, if it’s not a public process this doesn’t meet the definition of this policy. Were proposals sought out? Did you check with any other school districts?”

Grab: “This is a concept that is really outside the intended structure of those kinds of statutes it’s all about a standard kind of contract for contracted services this is obviously an [inaudible] of two districts trying to combine their executive, supervisory duties, so I would say that all of those strictures under these circumstances wouldn’t necessarily apply. For example, you talked about ELANCO being a third party vendor under these circumstances, while you may be able to generally describe it as that, it certainly is not exclusive because it’s a separate school district and so it wouldn’t fall clearly into that category, so I’m saying that this is certainly a bit of a different animal, and I’m not saying that you’re not raising legitimate issues for the board to consider, but it doesn’t fit squarely and neatly within all of those those established parameters. I think everybody acknowledges that, even PDE, Pennsylvania Department of Education.”

Hartman: “In that definition, I consider this position is rendering service to Columbia Borough School District through the third party vendor of Garden Spot. In my mind that violates the conflict of interest. You have to have the ethics, if ethics aren’t there we don’t belong in business. This is the last thing I want to say pretty much to the whole board is you basically gave up control of your school district for $8,000. I just disagree with how we went about this, great idea, but I disagree with $8,000, It should have been a lot more. Somehow it should have been negotiated a little more, in my opinion.”

GO HERE:
http://www.townlively.com/edmond-recognized-for-outstanding-service/

And the value of “hyperlocal” reporting:

http://www.ourtownny.com/local-news/20160824/the-power-of-neighbors&template=mobileArticle

From change.org :

15-year-old Ibram Hanna was shot dead in Mountville, PA on the morning of Friday, August 12th. In under 11 hours, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office under Craig Stedman issued a press release that it was accidental and the 17-year-old shooter would be tried as a juvenile.

There are several erroneous statements in the DA’s press release which implied these were the only two boys in the home where he was shot and that they were friends and were “looking at the gun” when it went off.

Honoring Columbia High School’s rich athletic tradition, the Columbia High School Athletic Hall of Fame is pleased to announce its Hall of Fame Class of 2016, which will be honored on Friday, September 16. The induction ceremony will be held at halftime of the varsity football game with York Suburban. Kickoff for the game is 7 p.m. A reception will be held in the high school cafeteria featuring the Class of 2016 and past inductees from 5-6:30 p.m.

GO HERE:

http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/columbia-students-go-back-to-school-today-they-re-first/article_31c9478e-687a-11e6-bd37-0f8f3b8897d3.html

Residents spoke out at Thursday night’s Columbia School Board meeting about the hiring of a director of operations through a joint venture between the Columbia and ELANCO districts. Selected comments are shown below.

1) Don Groom, resident, took the podium first during public comments: “Regarding [agenda items] D 8, 9, 10 “I’d like someone to explain to me the purpose of these job title changes.”

Business Manager Amy Light:”During public comment, it’s really not appropriate for a board to respond. The reason for the job title changes is to better reflect a more accurate picture of what those duties entail. There were some changes in food service department, and so they requested to change job titles and modify job descriptions a little bit to better reflect what is actually occurring in the food service department.”

Groom: “Have their responsibilities changed?”

Light: “There were no major changes to job responsibilities. There were minor changes to job duties.

Groom: “Were there pay increases?”

Light: “No, there were no salary changes.”

Frank Doutrich

2) Frank Doutrich, resident: “I’d like you to elaborate on [agenda item] D3, executive service contract, so I understand it.”

Attorney Michael Grab: “The purpose of that is to simply conform the existing statement that was approved by the board at the previous meeting to the actual start dates that the superintendent began, so the original start dates of the SOW [Statement of Work] didn’t reflect what the actual dates were, which is August 9.”

Vernon Detz

 3) Former board member Vernon Detz: ” I want to get some clarification on the executive order, to clarify the timeline here, in my own mind.

“On 6-14-16 at the committee of the whole meeting, the ELANCO contract was approved. So it brings me to June 16…If we are entering into this contract with ELANCO, why did we approve to the continuation of Dr. Klawitter as an acting superintendent, from July 1 at an annual salary of $115,000? Klawitter’s position will end on the first day that a permanent superintendent officially takes office or December 21, 2016, whichever is first. To receive a full complement of sick, personal, and vacation days given to administrators. Were we paying $115,000 for a six-month contract?”

Light: “That was an annual salary – $115,000 and pro-rated by the number of days he actually worked.”

Detz: “Was his last day August 8, 9 or is he actually still employed?”

Dr. Robert Hollister

ELANCO Superintendent Dr. Robert Hollister: “Everything took a little longer than we thought, so we had to keep Dr. Klawitter on past his original agreement of July 1. Technically, I am the superintendent of record as of last week. So, he is now officially gone.”

Detz: “Did the board have a statement of the SOW when they entered into this agreement?

Grab: “The process was actually a Master of Service Agreement executed with ELANCO… the first document in connection with the shared technology services project, and so there was a separate statement of work that was prepared for the tech services. The next proposal was for ‘shared executive services,’ and there was a statement of work prepared for that and then that was provided to the board.  The board had that full review in advance of it’s action on it and in fact I had reviewed as well and prepared a memorandum for the board outlining any issues or concerns I had with it and after review of that, the board acted on it at the June meeting.”

Detz: “In the paper last week . . . Dr. Hollister does in fact have a job description, but board members haven’t been given the final job description or the organizational chart. To me that sounds like they didn’t have the job description prior to entering into this, so how you can vote on something you don’t know what’s contained in it?”

Grab: “Just to clarify, the statement of work actually contained for both Doctor Hollister and for the director of operations contained the Schedule A and the Schedule B that listed what those duties would be, so they actually were flushed out. Now whether it included every potential, possible duty that each one might engage in, I don’t think that that was anybody’s understanding. The idea was to outline as fully and as clearly as both districts could what the vision was, but there certainly was an outline of what those duties would be for both the superintendent and for the director of operations and that was in that SOW.”

Fran Resch

4) Former board member Fran Resch: “As important as this meeting was this evening, I think that it seems like everybody is very ill-prepared for the questions that were going to be asked this evening. I hope you didn’t jump the gun thinking that you were just going to come to a meeting and not have questions asked of you. I don’t want things to be hurried along a month from now we’re asking the same questions, a month after that the same questions.”

Vickie Kronenwetter, resident and retired teacher with administrative certification: “Dr. Hollister, in your agreement you said that your goal was to have same level of service in CBSD as we would have with a seated superintendent. You, ELANCO, has hired someone without certification. A few minutes ago you just said we should have checked with PDE what impact “lacking certification” is going to have on his position as DOO. When you have a school district where everyone has levels of certification and you bring in someone without certification and you have them communicate with your administrative team and carry that back to you or you have them communicate with teachers who are members of a union. You needed to check. the person you hired, I dont see them being capable of doing the job that you are going to put upon them. There had to be an applicant out there who had certification. And the fact that few minutes ago you were answering questions and you said we have to check with PDE what impact the lack of certification is going to have on this position, is really bad coming at this point.

Hollister: “That’s not what I said. I said, that I need to vet our job description to ensure that we are not violating anything that PDE would have us do. The job description doesn’t include observations of educational personnel evaluations, so I think we’re splitting hairs.

Kronenwetter: Didn’t [unintelligible] just say “It includes communication between those certified instructional people and administration and yourself?”

Hollister: “I did.”

Kronenwetter: Thats a little scary.

Hollister: “Scary?”

Kronenwetter: “A little scary. I’m a thirty-year educator with an administrative certification, and that just – it threw red flags up.”

Sharon Lintner, resident: “The other evening at ELANCO, Dr. Hollister, you told us that you had furloughed 15 teachers and outsourced. Do you anticipate that could happen in Columbia?”

Hollister: “I have no idea. That was five years ago. Things are a little different here now. That was some time ago. We’ve since hired most of those teachers back, and we’ve saved a lot. Most of them are back with us.”