Controversy over hiring an administrative confidential secretary Monday night nearly cost Lehighton Area School District the chance to move forward with a program to help offset learning loss resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

An agenda item to hire recommended candidates for employment initially failed on a 4-4 vote after Director David Bradley questioned the hiring of Amanda Citro as confidential secretary to the assistant/assistant to the superintendent, at a salary of $35,000.

“I suggest we postpone this because the basic common sense that we as a district hire each and every employee, assign tasks to them, and hold them accountable, is missing in this district,” Bradley said. “You can’t keep going down this path and making all these decisions that are just going to handcuff the incoming board. It’s wrong and immoral.”

Voting no on the hire were Bradley, Richard Beltz, Joy Beers and Gail Maholick.

While Bradley spoke out about the confidential secretary hiring, the motion to approve employment candidates also included seven employees to oversee Lehighton’s learning loss program at the high school and middle school levels.

“By voting no, the learning loss program that we already had in place would no longer be available to these students,” Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver said.

Districts across the state, including Lehighton, are required to use 20% of the funds allocated to them through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief program to address learning loss brought on by the pandemic.

About two hours later in the meeting, the board circled back to the topic and broke out hiring the learning loss teacher candidates as a separate motion, which passed unanimously, 8-0.

Prior to a second vote on hiring Citro as a confidential secretary, Lehighton administrators spoke out about the importance of the position, which had already existed and is in the budget for 2021-22.

“This position, along with our assistant superintendent, is highly involved with the tracking and reporting for all of our grants,” Business Administrator Edward Rarick said. “Without this position, we could be in jeopardy of not reporting our grants correctly and jeopardizing our funding for the district.”

According to the job description, the secretary position is responsible for office work, purchase ordering system, wellness, academic affairs, Title I secretarial duties, district surplus, homeless and foster care records, and the Lehighton Area Virtual Academy.

“That job, along with the one (Rebecca) Karpowicz is currently doing, are critically important to the district,” Cleaver said. “They handle a lot including transportation reports and the pre-K program enrollments, things like that. It is a lot.”

Barbara Bowes was appointed to fill a board vacancy in between the first and second votes on Citro’s hiring. While she didn’t vote either time, Bowes said she would have supported the hiring.

“It seems she would be performing a lot of different functions,” Bowes said. “I’m not sure the job could be handled effectively if it were spread out between a bunch of other people who are probably already doing a lot to begin with.”

The second vote to hire Citro passed 6-2, with Bradley and Beers again voting no.

“We’re grossly top-heavy in this district,” Bradley said in another objection. “We need to apply more of our resources into the classroom. As far as the grants, we’ll get it done. As far as the accounting, we’ll get it done.”