Down River – Nov. 14, 2013
By John Lipez
Looking for Answers:
These are tough times within the Keystone Central School District.
All too often in recent years the district has taken some hits, from its role in the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal, to woeful test scores, to declining enrollment, to the recent public relations debacle over a Lycoming County young man who was vilified on social networking sites and in some of the local media.
(Although it should be noted the district responded admirably in the unfortunate incident on Monday of this week where some wack job telephoned 911 with what proved to be a false report of an armed man in Flemington).
This column doesn’t have enough space to detail all the problems this district faces but they’ve received plenty of media coverage in recent years.
Meanwhile the district has taken an enrollment/budget hit because more parents are electing to send their children to the Sugar Valley charter school, this even though test schools from that operation are even lower than those at district schools.
Sugar Valley enrollees from Keystone Central at the end of the last school year (June 2013) stood at 220. In September of this year that number jumped to 276, an increase of 56 students.
A school district representative told me that equates to better than a $500,000 hole in the school district budget, based on the unbudgeted approximately $10,000 per additional student the district grudgingly pays into the Sugar Valley coffers.
So where do we go from here? There certainly is an increased public awareness that problems need resolved within the district. Some of these problems likely can be attributed in part to the difficult socio-economic status of many district students and their families, but some also result from a less than adequate district response.
District superintendent Kelly Hastings has promised this myriad of problems will be addressed. She knows it will take the entire school district community to resolve them.
But the public needs to be a participant in this also. School district board seats should be coveted, not something filled on a write-in or appointed basis.
Our children deserve better; the school community and the community at large need to be players in this effort.
Will you respond? Or just let the problems fester? That one is up to you.
Ascension:
Let’s set the record straight here and now: Clinton County’s district attorney for the next two years will “ascend” to the job, not be appointed to the job.
This writer last week wrote current District Attorney Mike Salisbury would be appointing Karen Kuebler as his replacement as he, upon swearing in on Jan. 7, will relinquish his current elected post to become the county’s second sitting judge.
Salisbury meticulously explained to the media on election night that Kuebler, his office’s assistant DA for the past handful of years, will become the interim lead DA for the next two years.
I apparently was not paying quite enough attention, however, and reported last week that Salisbury would be appointing Kuebler as his replacement.
That won’t be the case; she will take over through a state-established mechanism allowing her “ascension” to the lead DA post. Salisbury said the same procedure was being followed in Huntingdon County.
Salisbury has gone to great lengths to make his DA’s position replacement plan non-partisan, non-political, citing voter support over the years from both of the county’s two major political parties.
So on election night he said the process to be followed will allow for what he called “a level playing field” in determining a permanent office replacement; this is because, as part of the agreement with Kuebler, she has pledged not to be a candidate for the post in the 2015 election cycle.
The playing field will be “level” to a point; that depends on who Kuebler names as an assistant district attorney.
It is no secret that Republican Thom Rosamilia and Democrat Dave Strouse had an interest in the fulltime post. The next question becomes would Kuebler, who political persuasion is unknown as this is written, choose one of the two, or someone else, to serve as her assistant through that 2015 election cycle.
Either way the person selected will gain in-house DA office experience that would that person well as a resume-builder come 2015.
Strouse, Rosamilia and anyone else interested in a run for the office, I am sure, would like to get a few moments of Ms. Kuebler’s time between now and her decision on an assistant sometime in the next couple months.
As a sidebar, it’s too bad county voters will have to wait until 2015 to elect a fulltime replacement; it’s too bad it could not be “piggy-backed” onto the 2014 election process.
We note other states can call special elections at off-times to fill vacancies; New Jersey Governor Chris Christie earlier this year cost ‘Jersey taxpayers $12 million when he dictated a special October election to fill a vacancy in one of New Jersey’s two U.S. Senate seats (he could have waited a month and made that choice part of the November voting process, but chose not to).
