Sep 28, 2017 By Rachel Basinger for The 3 min read

Regardless of the change in board members in January for the Connellsville Area School District, the jobs of the co-directors of buildings and grounds should be secure for the next five years.

School board member Kevin Lape made a motion at Wednesday night’s meeting to approve the employment contract for Scott Kirsch and Daniel Boggs for a period of five years, starting at their current salary of $50,212 and including the fringe benefits eligible to Act 93 administrators.

Before any action was taken on the motion, school board member Francis Mongell questioned Lape’s timing for the motion.

“This board is going to change in a period of two months,” Mongell said. “Is this why you’re bringing this up now?”

“Absolutely,” responded Lape. “With people (on social media) threatening that these two of the finest employees will lose their jobs when the new board members come on, you better believe it.”

Mongell said Kirsch and Boggs are both under Act 93 and that collective bargaining dictates their salaries.

Lape said they are not Act 93 employees, but will fall under their allocated increases in salary each year.

All board members voted in favor of the motion except Mongell and Jim Duncan. Board member Daniel Martucci was absent from the meeting.

In other business, directors agreed to the sale of the former Dunbar Borough Elementary School property (a total of 24 acres) to CRH Catering, which had the highest responsible bid of $327,000.

Dunbar Township resident Mary Grace Butela was not happy with the two appraisal amounts between $325,000 and $350,000 that the district received from Franklin John Realty in Uniontown and Valbridge Property Advisors in Pittsburgh.

“Who instructed the appraiser (Valbridge) to use the comparison method to determine the appraisal?” Butela questioned, adding that she felt the comparison method was used purposefully to keep the appraisal low.

“I’m going to file a complaint with the attorney general’s office because this appraisal is incorrect,” she added.

Robert Geletko, assistant to the superintendent for finances and operations, said both were independent licensed appraisers who used their professional judgement on how to best appraise the property.

He added that the district advertised the sale of the property as well as two other former elementary schools (C.N. Pritts and South Side) two different times in three different newspapers.

This was the only property that received any bids.

Directors also approved a motion to accept a donation from CRH Catering for the Food Service Department in the amount of $12,500.

In other business, directors agreed to authorize the solicitor to file the appropriate action with the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas to authorize the formation and assignment of a school police force.

Those named in the motion as part of the force include: Donald Whitaker, Kenneth Sanner, Robert Buford, John Irwin, Scott Cooper, John Maczko, Perry Culver, Mike Mullins, Ken Brooks, Albert Younkin, Charles Mills, Jesse Snyder and Mark Lynch.

Directors also approved several additions to the professional substitute list as well as the food service substitute list and accepted donations of $2,500 each year for the next five years from Somerset Trust Company, Ford Business Machines and Excela Health for the new stadium scoreboard.

During public comment, former teacher and CAHS Patriots founder and advisor Linda Shearer told board members that the Warriors Rock band that will tour all over the country has used the students with CAHS Patriots in their promotional video.