Board split on emergency powers
With a 5-4 vote, the Boyertown Area School Board rejected a move to give Superintendent Dana Bedden more authority to act on his own during the coronavirus crisis.
The vote came at the tail end of a three-hour online virtual board meeting Tuesday night during which one administrator after the next reviewed the extraordinary measures being taken to keep the district running and to try to restart some semblance of learning for students.
Frustration was evident on both sides of the matter.
With his computer battery running low, School Board President Brandon Foose went in search of a charger at a crucial point in the meeting and thus was unable to of
fer his comments before the vote, which was begun in his absence, took place.
After throwing a piece of paper in evident frustration, Foose offered his comments at length after the vote. Those comments then spurred angry responses from those who had voted against the measure.
Those voting against the resolution were Ruth Dierolf, Christine Neiman, James Brophy, Roger Updegrove and Brian Hemingway. Joining Foose in supporting the motion were Jill Dennin, Melody McWherter and Lisa Hogan.
The five-page resolution would have allowed Bedden to hire staff, make payroll, make purchases, pay bills, determine who needs to report to work, and other matters, all subject to subsequent ratification by the board.
The resolution would have stayed in place until the stay-at-home order is lifted, or until the board voted to lift it.
But Neiman was having none of it.
“If we give you that, you can go out and do whatever you want,” she said. “You could go out and hire someone and when we vote no, we would look like fools.”
Bedden replied that in fact, he could not do “whatever he wanted” and that the resolution spelled out pretty clearly what he could or could not do.
“I’ve reviewed the governor’s order,” said Hemingway, “and it already gives the administration latitude to make streamlined decisions.”
“But we were elected to represent the community,” he continued. “This is not a trust issue and I don’t want the board to get in the way, but I am not comfortable agreeing to this resolution.”
Brophy praised the administration for the “yeoman’s work” it has undertaken.
“These are chaotic times and they have really stepped up to the plate, but I wasn’t elected to abdicate our authority,” he said. “I do not think the board is in the way. Our job is oversight.”
“I’m not giving my decisions away,” said Dierolf. “There is no question that can’t wait 24 hours and that’s all it would take” to get the board to vote on an urgent matter.
“I don’t think I’m in Dr. Bedden’s way,” she said. “I trust him, but I want to make my own decisions.”
“I’m not comfortable with this,” said Updegrove. “I know this is a lot of work, but he should have taken that into account when he took the job,” he said.
“I don’t think the administration is going to go out and make wild and crazy expenditures,” McWherter said.
“We are in a state of emergency and in a state of emergency, things can move really fast,” said Hogan. “I think this is a reasonable request.”
“Under normal circumstances, I would never vote for this,” said Dennin. “But these are extraordinary circumstances and they often require extraordinary measures.”
She said the presentations earlier in the meeting made it clear how long and hard the staff is working behind the scenes and rejecting the resolution could mean “extra work being put in by the administration” to obtain board approval for routine matters.
Recognizing the resolution was likely to be rejected, Bedden said “I guess what I’m hearing is an increased commitment from the board members to be more available in a shorter time period. I don’t want to be chastised when a time does not work for everyone and be accused of trying to exclude someone. That’s my ask of the board.”
Bedden added, “the goal is efficiency and effectiveness. As long as we can get it done, that’s all that matters.”
After the vote, which Foose managed to get back online into the meeting in time to cast, he took the opportunity to “say what I was going to say before the vote, even though it’s moot.”
He noted that one administrator had just told the board he responded to 500 emails in a single week.
“That’s unbelievable. We were not prepared for this. No public school district was prepared for this, we just had a three-hour meeting just to update us on all the things that are going on,” said Foose.
“To think we need to get in the way of that is not our function,” said Foose. “As a board we set the goals for the district. Our job is not to micromanage the administration.”
Just recently, Foose said, “we had two issues that were time-sensitive and it took more than 24 hours to get everyone together. It’s not abdicating our responsibility. That’s nonsense to me.”
His comments, which ended only after Bedden reminded him he had exceeded the three minutes allotted, did not sit well with the five who voted against the resolution.
“You’re a board member, like the rest of us, and I don’t want to have to sit through a lecture just because you lost a vote,” said Brophy.
“I know you lost this vote, but if you can’t take the pressure, there is another reason you should be doing this, then you should not be the president of this board,” said Updegrove.
“You should wipe that smirk off your face that you’ve had on and apologize to everybody and don’t ever let it happen again,” said Neiman. “We are a board of nine, not just you and what you want.”
Hogan defended Foose saying “he’s allowed to have his opinion and personal attacks are really not OK by anyone on the board. We should all be acting professionally,” she said.
“It’s not abdicating our responsibility. That’s nonsense to me.”
— Brandon Foose, Boyertown School Board President
“These are chaotic times and they have really stepped up to the plate, but I wasn’t elected to abdicate our authority.”
— James Brophy, Boyertown School Board member