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The Allentown School District Board elections took place without the standard zoom for the public to view. $88,000 was spent with no approval from the Allentown School District board. 

They're paying $175 an hour to go on an employee witch hunt. 

There was an $88,000 unapproved expenditure.  Allentown School district is paying Mr. Parker the balance of his contract.  They must pay Dr. Stanford 170.000+ dollars for letting him go for no reason. Now we have an interim Superintendent who costs $850 a day, and we're spending $175 an hour investigating an employee. We can only hope it’s not another Black employee. When will the Allentown school district be financially responsible and educate our children with that money?

Yet the Allentown School Board still fights to do a forensic audit. 

Read the article.

The Allentown School Board will have a new president for the next year as the district tries to stabilize after the recent departure of another superintendent.

Audrey Mathison, a former president who acknowledged the district has had a “rough year,” was elected to the position Thursday night at the board’s annual reorganization meeting. Nancy Wilt, the board’s president for the past year, was elected vice president.

Mathison and Wilt will both serve one-year terms. Mathison was approved in a 5-3 vote over board member Patrick Palmer. Wilt beat out both Palmer and Lisa Conover in the vote for vice president. Wilt received five votes; Conover, the vice president for the past year, received three; and Palmer received one.

Mathison previously served as both board president and vice president. She was elected to the board in 2015. She is a former English teacher who served in the Parkland School District for 40 years before retiring in 2006. She was president of the teachers union when the educators hit the picket lines in 2003 for five days during contract talks.

Mathison said she felt she owed it to the community to take on the president’s role for the next year.

“It’s scary because it’s a big responsibility,” she said. “My goal is going to be to bring us together a bit more because this has been something of a rough year.”

Wilt, who is chief of staff for state Rep. Peter Schweyer, led the board as president during this past year in which former Superintendent John Stanford departed in October, less than a year into a five-year contract. Carol Birks has been serving as interim superintendent since Oct. 31.

Wilt wouldn’t comment after Stanford’s departure about whether she wanted to remain board president. At protests held by local NAACP chapters in the wake of Stanford’s exit, some community members called for her resignation.

Wilt was first elected to the school board in 2019 and served two terms as president. She has three children who graduated from ASD.

Forensic audit discussed

The board also discussed the possibility of paying EisenAmper, a Philadelphia-based auditing firm, to meet with and interview board members about a potential forensic audit at an initial cost of up to $5,000.

Conover has been calling for a 30-year forensic audit of the district’s finances following Stanford’s departure. Board member LaTarsha Brown also voiced her support for an audit. Board member Jennifer Ortiz voiced opposition.

Richard Fazio and Charles Linderman, interim business managers, told the board that a forensic audit would require more specific direction on what the auditors should examine.

The board didn’t vote on whether to proceed with hiring an auditing firm. Linderman and Melissa Smith, executive director of school improvement and compliance, spoke about the purchase of 308 Chromebook laptops for $88,623.92 in a move that went against board purchasing policy.

The laptops were purchased for middle-school student intervention sessions with Comprehensive School Improvement Funds, which are allocated to Title I schools with the most significant academic achievement challenges. The funds needed to be used before the end of September, or the district would lose the money.

But the purchase wasn’t initially reviewed by the board, per board policy. Interim business managers discovered the purchase when they were reviewing district finances.

The board will vote at the Dec. 15 meeting on whether to approve the laptop purchase to comply with its board policy. If the board doesn’t approve the purchase, then the computers will either have to be returned or the district will have to pay the cost from its own funds to keep them.

The board also decided to hold a vote that will impact the upcoming budget at the Dec. 15 meeting. Then, members will vote on whether to “opt-out and not raise property taxes beyond the approved index of 6.3%” in the upcoming 2023-24 budget.

The board voted to approve the board of directors report, which includes a contract for the district’s confidential/executive administrative assistants, starting retroactively in July 2022 and ending June 2025.

The report also included a new contract for Tom Smith, executive director of facilities services, who was originally supposed to leave the district for a new position this month. He will stay on with ASD through June 2025.

The board also hired Robert Copeland to investigate allegations regarding an ASD employee at a rate of $175 per hour and $75 per hour for transportation. When asked about the investigation, Mathison said she had no comment because she can’t speak about district personnel.

Morning Call reporter Jenny Roberts can be reached at 484-903-1732 and jroberts@mcall.com.

CRIME 

'The school failed': Allentown mom speaks out after son arrested at middle school

BY JOE HOLDEN

NOVEMBER 16, 2022 / 5:52 PM / CBS PHILAD

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (CBS) -- JC has rhythm. The 12-year-old, whose name we are withholding to protect his privacy, keeps the beat going at his Allentown church on Sundays.

The last year has been hard — the 6th grader was arrested and charged with assault in March.

"He was fingerprinted, mug shot, ankle bracelet, juvenile detention," Kristen, his mother said.

Kristen says four years ago her son was diagnosed with ADHD and oppositional defiance disorder.

On the day JC was arrested at Francis D. Raub Middle School, he was in class and upset.

"The assistant principal actually came at him to remove him from the classroom, grabbed on him, and now you're grabbing on a child with mental health who already shows aggression when he reacts so he wound up hitting her," Kristen said. 

Court documents his mother provided to CBS3 allege JC was disruptive and cursing at staff. The arrest records, filed by Allentown Police, claim JC hit a vice principal in the chest and arm with a closed fist and kicked her.

Court papers indicate she had redness on her body and was evaluated by the school nurse.

His mom says JC should have been in what's known as a partial hospitalization school -- a facility with a concentration on behavioral health.

She believes such a facility would have offered a highly therapeutic environment for JC.

"They kept saying they didn't have any placement, they didn't have any room…every excuse under the sun," Kristen said. "No one would help me."

Arrests of young people - even in elementary schools - are more common than you may think. A CBS News analysis of the most recently available data from the U.S. Department of Education Civil Rights Division shows the Allentown School District in  referred disciplinary matters to police more than any other school district.

And as for arrests, data from 2017 to 2018 shows Francis Raub Middle School sits at the very top of the list. That's JC's school.

While a district spokesperson said they couldn't specifically comment about JC -- we were pointed to a memorandum of understanding between the district and Allentown Police.

Approved last year, it spells out when police should be called and shows the school has discretion when notifying police given a child's age, and if the child has a disability, and if that disability has an impact on the child's behavior.

JC's mother showed us texts -- pleading with teachers if her son were ever to become combative, they should call 911 to send him to the ER for crisis intervention — where professionals would de-escalate the matter.

Instead - JC was arrested and charged. He faced the prospect of juvenile detention.

"I know his attorney, they wanted us to take a plea deal. Just to drop it down and they saw all the loopholes of how wrong they were … and how much they wronged him," Kristen said. "Plea deals, as if we are talking to an adult." 

Reached for comment -- Allentown police told us: "There are at least three instances involving this juvenile in a short time frame. In each instance our detective consulted with the Lehigh County District Attorney's Office and the appropriate outcome pursued."

But mom believes had JC been in a more appropriate school setting or if administrators had worked harder to de-escalate the situation, her son would never have been arrested.

Kristen: "Special education found that the school failed as far as his IEP."

Joe Holden: You've just described a whole string of failures."

Kristen: "Yes."

Holden: "You've been yelling about this over and over. Any answers?"

Kristen: "No."

Holden: "And not until court intervention did your son get moved to an appropriate setting?"

Kristen: "Because I want to get rid of him because it solved and got that weight off of their hands. They were done with it, move on."

Holden: "And he's 12?"

Kristen: "12."

The Lehigh County District Attorney did tell us charges of aggravated assault were first filed against JC because he says the attack on that vice principal involved someone in a "protected class" given her job in school.

The school district declined to make the vice principal available for questions, saying they couldn't talk about the case.

As for the data on arrests in Allentown schools, the district attorney's office disagreed with the numbers uncovered by CBS News.

They argued figures from the state showed lower arrest rates. That's something we continue to look into.

As for JC -- he did plead guilty to a lesser charge of simple assault. He is now on juvenile probation -- in a diversionary program -- and doing better at a new school, according to his mom.

Joe Holden came home to join the CBS3 Eyewitness News team as a general assignment reporter in May 2016. In August 2018, he became anchor of the weekend evening editions of CBS3 Eyewitness News and CW Philly.

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Press Release November 4, 2022, 

- For Immediate Release -

Allentown, PA, November 4, 2022, NAACP Allentown will hold another public demonstration to protest the release of Dr. John Stanford as the Superintendent of the Allentown School District.

On Saturday, November 5, at noon, the members of the NAACP Allentown will hold a public demonstration to protest the release of Dr. John Stanford as the Superintendent of the Allentown School District. They will be joined by members of both the Bethlehem and Easton NAACP Branches. The protest will be held at Noon at Allentown's Northwest corner of 7th and Hamilton Streets.

The public demonstration led by Allentown Community leaders will express the Community’s disapproval and specifically call attention to the lack of transparency surrounding issues with the Allentown School District. The Women in the NAACP (W.I.N.) will not stop demonstrating until the Allentown School District tell them why they did what they did.

The NAACP was founded in 1909 and is the oldest civil rights organization in the world. Contact Ms. Barbara Redmond, Secretary, Allentown NAACP, at 610-393-3548 for more information.

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We're responding to the decision that the Allentown School board made last night., October 27, 2022, regarding the interim School Superintendent Dr. Carol Birks.

The NAACP, Women in the NAACP (W.I.N), has deliberated over this matter.

And we are demanding that the PA State Board of Education take over all operations of the Allentown School District immediately.

We still need an answer as to why Dr. John Stanford, an exemplary Superintendent, was fired from the Allentown School District. At the same time, the board has hired an Interim Superintendent, who has been fired from Chester, PA, School Board and New Haven, CT, School Board.

Video of Shawn Redmond, President NAACP Allentown Youth Branch, speaking at the St. Timothy Lutheran Church Welcome Worship Center Land of Promise Worship On Wednesdays (WOW) June 22,2022, at 7PM. The WOW will be held each Wednesday through August at 7:00 PM, 140 S. Ott St, Allentown 18104.