Lehighton Area School District board of directors held its first “listening session” Monday night for parents, staff and community members.

“We want the community to be involved in what is happening here in the district and around this board table as that is something that I think has been lacking over the last decade,” Director Barbara Bowes said. “We’d like to develop a vision for the district that can be measured to see if we’re reaching our goals.”

The board heard from various stakeholders on a variety of topics during the nearly two-hour meeting including requests to make LASD more attractive to job seekers.

“We need to make this a place where teachers want to come to teach,” parent Bernadette Rodriguez said. “There needs to be more money for substitute teachers. What we offer isn’t comparable to other area districts. We are losing so many good people. With this new sense of inclusion from the school board, I hope that we can move forward in a way that the district becomes more appealing for people to want to be here.”

Board President Joy Beers said she is aware Lehighton’s starting salary for teachers is “on the lower end.”

“That is something we hope to address in our upcoming contract negotiations,” Beers said.

Acting Superintendent Jack Corby said that has been a focal point of the search for a permanent superintendent and assistant to the superintendent who will lead the district into the future.

“We’re looking for someone who will be here for many years to come and one of the things we want to do is show people the real Lehighton,” Corby said. “If we don’t do that, I don’t know what will happen. What I do know is we have a really good district with a lot of great kids and a lot of great people and we have to start promoting that.”

Rodrigues, parent of a special needs student, also told the board more money should be allocated to training teachers on how to deal with special education students.

Just last week, board President Joy Beers said, the district held Title IX training, part of which dealt with that very topic.

Discussions centered on bullying came up multiple times during Monday’s session, with Director Jeremy Glaush telling parents that it will “never be swept under the rug by this board.”

“Anything that we do going forward needs to be built around the safety of students and their educational needs,” Glaush said. “Inclusion is extremely important. We need to make it readily apparent that everyone is welcome in the district.”

Other topics brought up Monday included making the district website easier to navigate, improvements to the lighting board and microphones in the high school auditorium, the restoration of Lions Club vision screenings in district schools, and updated band uniforms and equipment.

“When I was at Whitehall,” Corby said, “we would encourage anyone who had an instrument laying around that they were not using anymore to donate it to us. A lot of folks who, maybe they retired the instrument, would welcome the opportunity to see a student playing that. That’s just another example of something we have to promote and you’ll be surprised with the outcome.”