Lehighton Area School District will rent a post office box in Palmerton that will be used as “a suggestion box” that stakeholders can use to interact with the district.

The motion for the rental was passed by a 6-2 vote during a special school board meeting called Wednesday night to focus on student safety. Director Dave Bradley, among several other school board members, called for the meeting to “seek input on protecting the students, fix our hazing policy and adjust the means to which the board can be engaged by stakeholders on the topic.”

Asked why he wanted the post office box rented in Palmerton instead of Lehighton, Bradley said, “it’s obvious.”

“Given the amount of intimidation and harassment in this district, people would feel more comfortable if it were moved to Palmerton,” Bradley said.

Bradley, Gail Maholick, Richard Beltz, Barbara Bowes, Joy Beers and Larry Stern voted in favor of the post office box rental, while Nathan Foeller and Rita Spinelli objected, saying they would rather see it rented at the post office in Lehighton.

According to Bradley, the post office box will cost around $70 per year to rent.

“I’m not quite sure why we would need one,” Superintendent Jonathan Cleaver said. “I feel having a post office box is like going back in time. Everyone has access to the board members’ emails and they can contact them at any time. Let’s hope people use it for what it is meant for.”

Earlier in the meeting, district resident Jason Roeder said he worried certain board members may get prior access to the information sent to the post office box, which could lead to it being used for “personal YouTube videos or social media speculation.”

The board then voted 7-1 to put Beers in charge of picking up the mail sent to the post office box with Spinelli being the lone dissenter. She had suggested Business Administrator Edward Rarick be the one to manage it.

“We trust him with every dollar in the district,” Spinelli said. “He’s done so many good things to help us along. I trust him to bring back the correct number of suggestions. That way no faction of the board is in control.”

Unanimously, the board voted to review policies 247 and 249, which deal with hazing and anti-bullying. October’s policy committee meeting is scheduled for Oct. 6 at 6:45 p.m.

Statistics questioned

Wednesday’s meeting kicked off with a video posted by Bradley to YouTube late Sunday night, during which he questioned statistics reported by Lehighton to the state for its annual Safe Schools Report.

“When you look at that, our district has all 22 arrests reported across Carbon County school districts for that year,” Bradley said. “Lehighton also has 69 of the 89 incidents reported in the county that required law enforcement involvement.”

Cleaver explained why Lehighton is the only district with reported arrests and what that data actually means.

“We do not arrest,” Cleaver said. “We issue citations, but there is nowhere on the report to list citations. Also, because our district has our own school police, those citations are listed in the Safe Schools Report. For other districts, who turn those matters over to the municipal or state police, that won’t show up on the Safe Schools Report.”

Most of Lehighton’s citations, Cleaver said, are for vaping or e-cigarette infractions.

Lehighton Area Middle School Principal Stephen Ebbert and High School Principal Sue Howland shared data from recent school years as it pertains to interventions and consequences.

At the middle school in 2018-19, there were 67 warnings issued, 12 instances where students lost an activity such as a reward day or a pep rally, 304 lunch detentions, 151 after-school detentions, 165 Saturday detentions, 9 instances of Level Zero (similar to an in-school suspension, but with behavioral specialists involved), 18 bus suspensions and 97 cases of an in-school or out-of-school suspension reportable to the state.

At the high school in 2018-19, there were 59 total incidents among 51 different students including 44 in-school or out-of-school suspensions reportable to the state, 15 lunch or after-school detentions, and 7 Saturday detentions.

“I think one of the things you have to look at is 88.3% of middle school students did not have a state reportable incident,” Ebbert said. “I think that gets lost and we need our students to get that positive feedback. Also our data shows that after an intervention or a consequence of an after-school detention, the number of repeat offenders drops down to 15 and then just four students who had three or more detentions. That shows our intervention process is working.”