In Saucon Valley, incumbents run on their record
Challengers seek to end ‘legal melodramas’
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In the Saucon Valley School Board race, five incumbents who are running on their record are being challenged by four Democrats who want to end “legal melodramas.”
Five seats with fouryear terms are open on the nine-member board Nov. 7. The incumbents running include a bipartisan slate of Republicans Susan Baxter, Shawn Welch and Bryan Eichfeld, and Democrats Michael Karabin and Laurel Erickson-Parsons.
The four challengers, all Democrats, are part of a slate called Saucon School Board Choices for Change. They include Bill Broun, Donald L. Carpenter III, Vivian Demko and Jay Santos.
Baxter, Welch, Eichfeld, Karabin and Erickson-Parsons said they feel they have demonstrated an ability to work together as a bipartisan team and that their strength is their diversity of skills, experiences and viewpoints.
“We are running on our positive record and positive campaign. Our work is in our votes,” the group said.
They said their successes include only raising school taxes twice over the last 12 years, and reaching an early agreement with teachers in March on a five-year contract.
In addition, they said the board hired a security specialist firm that is capable of addressing lethal threats to district students and personnel. Further, they said, they increased academic standards, including doubling the high school math requirement.
If reelected, the incumbents, among other goals, want to “continue a strong academic focus concentrating on the critical skills — with a transparent curriculum — minus current politically divisive concepts and materials.”
Broun, Carpenter, Demko and Santos said they stand for putting academic excellence back on the front burner, restoring the relationship with teachers, and making parents and community members feel heard at school board meetings.
They also want to promote sensible and prudent financial decision-making and bring “an emphatic end to years of unnecessary and financially wasteful, ego-driven legal melodramas.”
On March 30, Saucon Valley was sued by the ACLU over Superintendent Jaime Vlasaty’s decision in February to give then revoke permission to the non-school affiliated After School Satan Club to meet on school grounds. On May 1, a federal judge ordered the district to allow the group to meet on dates that were initially approved by Vlasaty.
The Choices for Change slate said the school board should have known the denial would not stand up in court, citing it as an example of unnecessary legal bills the district has accrued. The group says it obtained legal bills from 2016 through March 2023 that showed the district spent $1.6 million. That figure did not include all costs related to the ACLU lawsuit.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. These wasted tax dollars should be paying for needed educational resources and long-overdue improvements in our curriculum and facilities — not in making lawyers rich,” the group said on its blog.
In response, Baxter said all school districts rely on solicitors for legal advice, saying Saucon Valley’s fees are lower than other districts of similar size.
“These services are mostly related to cases of special education, personnel, policy updates, and contract negotiations,” Baxter said in an email.
“Without understanding these legal claims, they are now making inaccurate accusations about wasting ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ on legal costs without providing a single example of an expense that they think is not justified,” she said.
On their blog, Broun, Carpenter, Demko and Santos also questioned the board’s negotiating skills over a contract for a sports medicine provider.
In June, the board approved a motion to accept an offer from St. Luke’s University Health Network to continue to be the provider. A final vote was set for July 11 but removed from the agenda “for further review,” according to meeting minutes.
On Aug. 22, the board voted to enter into a contract with LVHN to become the sports medicine services provider.
“It is virtually impossible to know what really happened during these negotiations,” the blog post says.
Regarding the sports medicine contract with LVHN, Baxter said, “This was a business decision based on the financial proposals as well as the needs for our district.”
Baxter said the new contract includes a quality training program, well-being of the district’s student athletes and a commitment to non-sports programs such as mental health services and career readiness services.
She also disputed allegations that students were without trainers during the process. “The transition has been smooth and the students and families are very pleased with the personnel and services,” she said.
The Choices for Change candidates are also questioning plans to negotiate a new contract with Bethlehem Area Vocational-Technical School, which serves the Bethlehem Area, Northampton Area and Saucon Valley school districts.
According to a board resolution to enter into negotiations with the vo-tech, the district spent $8.1 million over the last decade to send students to the school, paying on average 33% more than its share of student attendance. The slate’s blog questions why Baxter has called for a better deal when she was among the school board members who signed the current contract.
In response, Baxter said the current contract dates to 1995 when student enrollment of the participating school districts was similar to that of the original 1965 contract.
“Both Saucon Valley total student population and share in participation at BAVTS has continued to decrease over the last 20 years, which has prompted us to request that the funding formula be adjusted to pay our fair share,” she said.
Baxter said the Choices for Change candidates “neither understood the initial problem when it was raised by our board a few months ago, nor did they support opening the agreement for negotiations.”
Saucon Valley serves Lower Saucon Township and Hellertown. It has about 2,000 students in three schools.
In June, the board unanimously adopted a $51.8 million budget for 2023-24 that maintained the tax rate of 54.6589 mills.
Following is a look at the candidates. Information on the candidates was found on campaign websites, Facebook pages, Linkedin sites, news articles, board meeting minutes and videos and email interviews.
Incumbent candidates
The incumbents running for reelection are:
Republican Susan Baxter, a retired electrical engineer who has served on the board since the 1990s and is the board president.
Republican Shawn Welch, a self-employed consultant and retired Army colonel whose last assignment was in the Pentagon. He is the board’s vice president. He serves as co-chair of a federal advisory committee for the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Republican Bryan Eichfeld, an 11-year board veteran who is a Navy veteran and works in sales. Over the years, he generated headlines for calling an environmental science book’s chapter on global warming “propaganda,” for questioning a student UNICEF club because of the group’s ties to the United Nations and for trying to postpone a gender studies vote over concerns about activism and victimization.
Democrat Michael Karabin, a former Army operating room technician who was a price analyst at Bethlehem Steel. He served on the board in the 1980s and returned in the 1990s.
He co-founded the Lehigh Valley Regional Charter School. He won a Republican nomination in the May 16 primary.
Democrat Laurel Erickson-Parsons, a physician specializing in pediatrics and physician education at St. Luke’s University and Health Network. The mother of four district students was appointed to the board in August 2022 to replace Edward Andres, who resigned. She is the only candidate to win a nomination on both ballots.
Choices for Change candidates
The Choices for Change candidates are:
Bill Broun, an English p r o f e s s o r a t E a s t Stroudsburg University and author who has a blog called My Private Hellertown. He was a resident fellow and taught writing at Yale University. He ran unsuccessfully for Hellertown Council in 2021.
Donald L. Carpenter III, a researcher at ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering in New Jersey and president of a labor union. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Lehigh University.
Vivian Demko, a former president of the Saucon Valley Education Association. A graduate of Saucon Valley High School, she taught in the district for nearly 30 years. Demko unsuccessfully ran for school board in 2019 and sought to be appointed to the board in August when EricksonParsons was chosen to replace Andres.
Jay Santos, a technical solutions engineer at Coface. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Penn State and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Western Governors University.