Belle Vernon fills school board vacancy
BELLE VERNON – Director Joseph Stringhill returned to the Belle Vernon Area School District’s board of directors to fill a vacancy left by Terri Guadino. The board chose from three applicants including Stringhill, David Riley, and William Melilli, after conducting public interviews with all three candidates.
Complications arose when the board brought up the requirement of each member of the board being a registered voter in Belle Vernon, because Riley said he could not verify that he was because he was unable to vote during the last election.
After some discussion about the issue, Riley decided it was best to withdraw his application.
“I apologize for casting a shadow of a doubt on my qualifications,” said Riley. “If I had known that this was a requirement, I would not have wasted anyone’s time.”
President Aaron Bialon said there was no apology necessary, and several directors encouraged Riley to run for a position on the school board during the next primary election in May because they felt he was qualified to serve.
Faced with the choice of either Stringhill or Melilli, the board voted in favor of Stringhill by a five-to-three margin.
Voting for Stringhill were directors Bialon, Dale Patterson, Charles Kraft, James McKevitt and Michael Gigliotti.
Voting for Melilli were director Deborah Puglia, Toni-Jo Kunka, Edward Naylor.
“I want to thank all three candidates for their interest in serving on this board,” said Bialon. “We have a fairly large community and only three applied to volunteer their time. I do appreciate that.”
Bialon said the reason he had cast his vote for Stringhill was because of his previous 16 years of experience serving on the board when he helped the district through some trying.
Stringhill’s term will be for 11 months, and he said when that time is up, he will decide if he wants to run again. District Justice Jesse Cramer swore Stringhill in.
In other matters, the board approved the resignation of maintenance man Rudolph Greco, and the retirement resignation of Carol Metrosky from her secretary position.
The board voted to add to new people to the staff at the recommendation of Superintendent Robert Nagy. Paul Sasko was hired as girls’ varsity head soccer coach, based upon the understanding and contingency that this is subject to continued financing and furtherance of the program by the Board of Education. They hired Christopher Stasicha as the girls’ head track coach, based upon the same contingency.