A new board attendance policy for members was approved by majority vote at the Weatherly Area School Board’s regular January meeting. Gerald Grega, the longest-serving board member, for over 28 years, has been attending meetings by phone due to an illness for the past few years.

Grega has missed executive sessions and some regular meetings. At this meeting, he attended as part of the audience, which meant he could not vote. He was only able to provide comments via the chat feature. This has happened at other meetings in 2020.

The board tried to approve this policy change the previous week at their caucus meeting, but did not have the six votes needed to put this into effect due to member absences.

The new language adopted at this meeting, on a vote of 7-1, with Grega not able to vote, applies to members who miss more than two executive sessions in a row, or multiple committee meetings. The policy cuts off the member from getting additional emailed school director materials until they meet with the superintendent or board officer to get the information on meetings they missed. The reasoning is that getting the member briefed on what they missed brings them up to speed with the rest of the board.

School board member Tom Connors Jr. was the sole “no” vote. The reason for his vote was that the member cut off from getting emails puts them further out of touch. He also pointed out that there have been lots of executive sessions.

School board directors who miss 10 consecutive meetings of any kind on different dates will be suspended from receiving all district related documents. In addition, their district email account will be suspended. This will remain in effect until the school board director can provide a valid reason to the school board president or superintendent and the school board votes to reinstate their suspension based upon the validity of the reason provided to validate the need for the absences.

The board has previously limited members from attending meetings virtually, allowing a member to do so only twice in a year. That policy has since been ended, and with the COVID-19 pandemic making virtual meetings the norm, the public has been shown that virtual attendance works, though not quite as well as in-person meetings.

Right-to-know requests

In a 7-1 vote, board members added a new policy about member attendance that directs members who miss executive sessions or consecutive board meetings to learn what happened by meeting with the superintendent or board chairman. The penalty for missing many meetings is losing board email privileges.

New to the board meeting agenda was a list of right-to-know requests made to the district since the fall. The new information identifies who made the RTK request, the topic and specific information being sought, and the cost to provide them. Of the 25 RTK requests on this list, 17 are by Grega. Sixteen of these are pending. He is looking for copies of bills and invoices on 10 of them, and texts and emails on the rest related to a board decision. One of his requests was filled in October that sought email correspondence. It cost $2,746 in attorney’s time. School board attorney Christopher Slusser projected the costs for the remaining pending requests at about $5,000 more.

Seven other requests from the list were by a handful of residents. Those items listed costs of $50 and under, per request. One other request is pending, by Jennifer Colecio for Class of 2021 information.

Board members have pointed out that costs incurred by these requests are covered from the general fund, so are paid for by the taxpayers of the Weatherly Area School District.