Thanks to The Phoenix for reporting on this.
-Is there any connection between this story and the resignation of the new superintendent?
-What is the total cost to taxpayers for this fiasco?
FLOODGATES OPEN FOR PASD
Friday, November 14, 2008 6:18 AM EST
Board opens up on KES project, former staff
PHOENIXVILLE — Phoenixville Area School District has filed a claim in arbitration against former Superintendent of Schools Dr. David Noyes "for errors and omissions he committed" in connection with the purchase of property for the now-abandoned Kimberton Elementary School project, it was revealed late Thursday.
The Board's action was announced in a statement from the Board of School Directors read out by board president Mark Casaday. The statement detailed the results of the district's investigation of the circumstances of the property's purchase.
The 15-page statement detailed actions and inactions by Noyes, former PASD business administrator Michelle Diekow and others, as reflected in email, correspondence, notes and time-records of the principles.
Diekow was dismissed, the statement said, as a result of her involvement with the purchase. The board is continuing to evaluate the possibility of additional action against her.
The statement argued that Noyes and Deikow failed to keep the board informed concerning activities surrounding the identification, appraisal, and environmental conditions of the property and the terms of the agreement of the property's sale.
For more on the story, be sure see tomorrow's The Phoenix for the next in our series, "State of our Schools."
— G.E. Lawrence
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/11/14/news/srv0000004042235.prt
© 2008 phoenixvillenews.com, a Journal Register Property
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PASD Superintendent Resigns
Just appointed to the position in July, Dr. Maria Schwab steps down from post
Friday, November 7, 2008 9:24 AM EST
By G.E. LAWRENCE
Journal Register News Service
PHOENIXVILLE — Dr. Maria M. Schwab, who began her work as Superintendent of Schools of the Phoenixville Area School District only in July, has resigned her position, effective Saturday, November 8.
At a special meeting of the Board of School Directors held Thursday evening, a separation agreement between the District and Dr. Schwab was approved by a 7-2 vote, with Keith Wickstrom and Joshua Gould in dissent.
In a subsequent action, the Board unanimously approved the appointment, also effective Saturday, of Dr. Maryjane Richmond, currently Assistant Superintendent, as Acting Superintendent.
A statement on the matter was read publicly by Board President Mark Casaday. “Effective November 8, 2008, Dr. Maria Schwab ends her employment [with PASD] as a result of her voluntary resignation. We wish Dr. Schwab well. …
“Dr. Richmond will serve in [her new] capacity,” Casaday read, “until such time as Phoenixville Area School District appoints an Interim Superintendent. Once an Interim Superintendent is appointed, [PASD] will conduct an extensive search through a professional recruiter to find excellent candidates.
Casaday concluded, “After conducting interviews, [PASD] will select a permanent Superintendent who will provide the outstanding leadership that this community expects.”
The terms of the separation agreement with Schwab were not released.
Reached at home late Thursday, Dr. Schwab said that she “could not make any comment.”
More on the issue will appear in tomorrow’s edition of The Phoenix.
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/11/07/news/doc49144c9745e14860285323.prt
© 2008 phoenixvillenews.com, a Journal Register Property
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The Phoenix (phoenixvillenews.com), Serving Phoenixville and the surrounding communities
News
State Of Our Schools
PASD still in shadow of KES
Sunday, October 26, 2008 9:21 PM EDT
By G.E. Lawrence
The Phoenix Correspondent
PHOENIXVILLE — The 2007-2008 academic year concluded for the Board of School Directors of the Phoenixville Area School District in an unusually dramatic fashion.
The 2008-2009 academic year has begun, by all appearances, as its opposite, a return to the Board’s quieter but purposefully efficient, business-like style. The consequences of the end-of-year drama over Kimberton Elementary School, however, are still apparent. And have not ended.
At last year’s final regular business meeting June 19, Board President Mark Casaday announced to an audience of one hundred the decision to “abandon Kimberton Elementary School construction plans,” citing as justification “var
ious considerations, including but not limited to community concerns.”
The decision drew a conclusion to something under six weeks of struggle over six years of issues on the site’s selection, the building’s design — and, above all else, the site’s safety. No one argued against the plain fact that groundwater aquifers there were contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) and other volatile chemicals, presumably originating from the neighboring Ciba-Geigy Superfund site. It was a question of assessing the threat.
The June 19 session had even been preceded, most unusually, by an outdoor press conference, held by the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, an alliance hastily formed to put up a late-in-the-game, very public fight against the project. The Coalition argued that they had not been at all well-informed on the pending decision. Their very public fight drew the presence of the cameras and microphones of a half-dozen regional media outlets.
District business administrator Michelle Diekow wondered aloud just what arrangements would have to change to better inform a public that had clearly felt so ill-informed. Superintendent of Schools Dr. David R. Noyes calculated aloud the dollars lost to a now-defunct project, and got to $3.8 million.
And that evening’s meeting was the last for the retiring Noyes. The cameras followed him out of the hall.
The Board’s opening meeting of the new year on August 21 was held before an audience of forty-some, including several Concerned Citizens. At this one, a return to normalcy, to a well-constructed agenda efficiently gotten through.
Yet, still another surprise, another public statement read out by Casaday, another turn in the KES story. The Board would take legal action against parties, as yet unidentified, “who we [the Board] have determined acted improperly and caused the School District and the taxpayers financial loss.”
“[W]e have instructed our counsel to take any and all actions necessary to protect our interests, to ensure that the persons responsible are held accountable, and to recover all taxpayer dollars lost,” Casaday said. The decision followed a thorough summer-long internal investigation. In its results, said Board counsel Ron Williams, the public “will have answers to each and every question.”
Diekow was absent. By September’s meeting on the 18th , a new interim business administrator had joined the Board at the table.
Beginning September 24, Board members were holding monthly open forums with members of the public, “opportunities to share ideas and concerns regarding any aspect of the school district, including facilities, curriculum or finance.”
At the Board’s business meeting on Oct. 16 held before an audience of no more than a dozen, a “separation and release agreement between the Phoenixville Area School District and Employee #1544” was approved. Comment surrounding the approval suggested that the employee was Diekow.
At October’s meeting, there was no agenda item on KES, no new public statement planned from Casaday.
There was a voting item for “approval to file arbitration.” Confidential attachment. No employee number.
And there was one public remark: in response to a question about the status of KES and related facilities-expansion issues from Schuylkill Township’s Paul Kuhn, Casaday reiterated the aim of full public disclosure. “We’re close, Paul,” Casaday said, “We’re this close.”
The Board’s next session is a workshop, November 13.
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/10/26/news/doc4905161aac652184503247.prt
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The Phoenix (phoenixvillenews.com), Serving Phoenixville and the surrounding communities
PASD discusses KES issues
EAST PIKELAND EAC HOSTS SPECIAL MEETING ON ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES AT SCHOOL SITE
Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:00 AM EDT
By G.E. Lawrence
PHOENIXVILLE The public complaint, increasingly severe and urgent as the Phoenixville Area Board of School Directors approaches its final decisions on the proposed Kimberton Elementary School, was that residents were not sufficiently informed of the details of the project.
The complaint was answered Wednesday evening in a marathon four-hour session with some 60 residents, held under the auspices of the East Pikeland Environmental Advisory Committee. District officials and project consultants reviewed the project from its inception through stages of environmental testing to building design specifications.
EAC chair Martin Sheehan said that "The township wanted to provide this venue" for airing all issues.
Among the battery of presenters were Ron Miller, Phoenixville Area School District director of operations; Chris Roe, Fox, Rothschild, the district's counsel on environmental matters; Ann Logue and Glenn Harris, from consulting engineers CMX Inc.; Jeff Angstadt, construction managers foreman; Danielle Hoffer, of Gilbert Architects; and Dr. William Schew, O�Brien & Gere engineers, author of
the principal environmental study for the site.
It was environmental safety issues on the 22-acre property, located across Coldstream Road from the Kimberton Superfund Site, that drew most attention.
Logue reported data on groundwater contamination from studies done through 2004, and from groundwater sampling and soil testing done by CMX after the property�s purchase by the District from C. Raymond Davis, Inc., in 2005.
In an area used by the Davis Company for construction landfill, Logue said that soil sampling did not indicate a source of impact on the environmental safety of the site.
But water sampling confirmed some levels of concern in selected areas on the site, especially the occurrence of trichloroethylene (TCE) in deep aquifers 135 feet and 275 feet below ground. The presumptive source is the nearby Superfund Site.
Schew's analysis in a written report and in a presentation to the PASD Board that the District aired online was at the center of the discussion. He had concluded that detected contaminant levels, with the District's proposed vapor barriers and venting systems as second- and third-level protections, meant that acknowledged contaminants did not present a danger to students and staff at the proposed school.
"I realize that I'm probably the least-liked guy here," Schew began. "But I'm doing this by science. I don't have an agenda."
Schew also tested the site, in locations around the proposed building footprint. "If we didn't find a problem 10 feet down, we're not going to have a problem. It comes down to the physics of the situation: there is just no physical way that vapors from shallow aquifers will volatilize [up into the school]. And contaminants cannot volatilize from deeper levels.
The school board meets tonight at 7:00 p.m. in the Phoenixville Area High School Auditorium to consider bids for the project.
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/06/19/past stories/19964254.prt
© 2008 phoenixvillenews.com, a Journal Register Property
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The Phoenix (phoenixvillenews.com), Serving Phoenixville and the surrounding communities
Coalition unites against Kimberton Elementary site
Sunday, June 15, 2008 3:00 AM EDT
Why are some people so against the proposed site for the new Kimberton Elementary School? If you are wondering this yourself, please read on.
Every parent and school administrator agrees that yes, we need a new elementary school. Most parents are aware that a new school is in the works, but many only recently learned how large the red flags are concerning the school site. In fact, the red flags are so big and so red that we began to question if our school should even be built on this site.
Readers probably know that the Kimberton school will be a 650-student building, much larger than the East Pikeland building which currently houses 344 students. This will help PASD solve the problem of overcrowding at Barkley school, and thus, there will be some redistricting when the Kimberton school opens. Most people know the school site will be adjacent to a superfund site. (Superfunds are hazardous waste sites placed on the US EPA's National Priority List.) People may or may not know the contaminated Superfund groundwater is being cleaned by an aeration process called Air-Stripping, and off-gases are produced from this air-stripping process. Readers may not know that there has been NO air quality testing at the school site to date. We do know the Kimberton Elementary School will sit on top of the contaminated groundwater plume seeping from the adjacent Superfund site. Most people know the groundwater at the school site IS contaminated with 2 volatile organic compounds called TCE and DCE and so there will be no use of groundwater at the school site.People may or may not know that the school district planned to install a state of the art geothermal heating and cooling system, but due to the contamination found while drilling, the school CANNOT go ahead with this heating/cooling plan. Most people probably know a municipal dump that operated in the 1950s sits on the school site as well. The total contents of the dump are unknown.
Most people probably don't know that a letter from Ciba Specialty Chemicals (the company responsible for the polluting) surfaced stating Ciba continues to believe that constructing an elementary school on property adjacent to a Superfund site undergoing active groundwater remediation is ill-advised, regardless of what protective measures are taken in its construction and operation. The letter was dated October 19, 2007. Ciba's Stockton Evaluation report says there may actually be another still unidentified source of contamination at the school site!
Okay you ask, what about all the testing and reassurances we've heard about? Yes, there was testing and an expert wrote a report. The EPA reviewed the report and said vapor intrusion �appears unlikely. The EPA document also states the evaluation of the Stockton formation in not complete and additional investigations may be required. The expert writes the chemical compounds are not expected to have an adverse impact on indoor air quality, and the levels are unlikely to impact human health. His report states that by default there is no pathway for harmful vapors to enter the building. There is NO statement in the report that absolutely denies the possibility of toxic gases entering the elementary school.
Here is something worth noting; this is a science of predictions based on data. It is much like meteorology and weather forecasting where Doppler Radar generates data and then predications are made. Certainly Doppler Radar is much more advanced in comparison to our older technology, yet still how many times have our weather forecasters been wrong? How many times did we wake up (after stopping at the store for bread and milk) to discover there was no snow because the storm took another track, one that our science and technology had not anticipated? How many times have we learned we can't predict Mother Nature? And as for science, well there was a time when hundreds of scientists told us the world was flat, and entire nations of people believed them, simply because they did not know any other truth at the time. And as for experts, well there was a day that an expert told us Agent Orange was perfectly safe. There was a day an expert told us nicotine was not addicting. There was a day that an expert told us asbestos was a safe, fire retardant building material. There was a day that an expert told us cigarettes would not cause cancer. There was a day that an expert said the Titanic was an unsinkable ship.
We all know that then the day came when someone, probably just like you or me, discovered those experts were very wrong.
"Not expected to," "unlikely to," "by default," "predictions" and "ill-advised" are not the stuff that puts to rest fears of toxic chemicals and their vapors in anxious parent's minds.
The question remains is it really safe to build the Kimberton Elementary School on the proposed site?
We strongly believe the red flags (superfund site, air-stripping, toxic chemicals, contaminated groundwater, unidentified sources of contamination, a municipal dump, and weak reassurances) are there for all who are willing to open their eyes and see.
Our common sense tells us this doesn't make sense, and we will not put blind faith in any expert or any science, because we well know that as a human race we are still continuing to learn. A parent at the June 5th school board meeting stated "sometimes we just don't know how much we don't know." Let's not learn the hard way. Let's err on the side of caution, and let's not err on the side of inestimable human tragedy.
We hope readers care enough to get informed for themselves, and we urge parents and community members to come out to the East Pikeland township meeting on June 18th at 6:00 p.m. at the EP township building, and we especially hope people will attend the school board meeting on June 19th at 7:00 p.m. in the HS auditorium. You don't need to make a public statement, but you need to be there to show you care.
Sincerely,
Donna Jackson
Phoenixville Coalition of Concerned Citizens
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/06/15/past stories/19964386.prt
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PASD tax hikes bring pain with no apparent gain
Thursday, June 12, 2008 3:00 AM EDT
Once again, the giant albatross known as the Phoenixville Area School District became bigger and the noose around the necks of property owners will be tighter because they approved another tax increase. In the past 5 years, the school tax on my home has increased by 37%.
Has anyone ever asked the school administration and/or School Board why PASD spends the most per student in Chester County yet consistently produces one of the lowest SAT scores?
I asked that question of the outgoing Superintendent of Schools and received a typical bureaucratic answer which did not address the topic. Seeing as there are many taxpayers on fixed incomes and the cost of living is increasing at a rapid rate, throwing more money at the current education system is obviously not the answer. Thank goodness, the current Superintendent of Schools is leaving that post. Of course, the taxpayers will have to support him for the rest of his life with very generous pension and benefit packages.
Why do I care about increasing SAT scores? The answer is obvious � at the rate the PASD administration and school board is going, many people will not be able to afford to stay in their homes. Potential buyers will want to know if they buy a home served by the PASD, will their children be able to get into the college of their choice? Considering the current SAT results, it does not appear this will be the case.
The article in The Phoenix which discussed the tax increase stated the budget could not be reduced except by reducing curriculum. Why is every sport conceivable supported by the school district? Is it necessary to have all the administrative employees? Why not do what many private sector companies are doing? Eliminate, reduce or delay salary increases. Reduce salaries. Increase the employee contribution to their health plans. No longer contribute to pension plans and encourage employees to contribute to their own IRA, 401k or equivalent plans.
Let's stop using the scare tactics of reducing curriculum as the only answer.
Now, the PASD wants to build a new school on a Super Fund Site. I only hope, after they stubbornly press forward with the plan to construct the school on that site, we will not learn after many millions of dollars are spent that it cannot be used due to toxicity that exceeds acceptable standards.
When an entity can increase taxes at their discretion, the desire to stay within a budget decreases. My only hope is that the incoming Superintendent of Schools has better business sense than the outgoing one. But I�m sure I will be disappointed seeing as one is the prot�g�e of the other.
Roy Hendl
Phoenixville
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/06/12/past stories/19964455.prt
© 2008 phoenixvillenews.com, a Journal Register Property
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The Phoenix (phoenixvillenews.com), Serving Phoenixville and the surrounding communities
Past Stories
Kimberton Elementary gets go-ahead
EAST PIKELAND SUPERVISORS OK PLAN FOR NEW SCHOOL BUILDING
Thursday, April 3, 2008 3:00 AM EDT
By Laurie Perini
EAST PIKELAND After some final questions from the Board of Supervisors, the Phoenixville Area School District's plan for Kimberton Elementary School was unanimously approved.
Supervisor Ron Graham had questions about the trail system and why there were no sidewalks along the frontage of the site.
PASD asked for a waiver for building sidewalks along the frontage of the property on Route 113 and will be paying a fee in lieu of the sidewalks.
PASD Director of Operations Ron Miller said sidewalks would not be used by children because of hazardous conditions along [Route] 113.
Instead, the children would be bussed to school and there are internal sidewalks on the plan. There is also a trail that will go through the property that will be open to the public.
The hours of operation and layout of the trail were major topics in the planning commission.
Originally, the school had proposed to close the trail during school hours, but the commission explained they accepted the trail in lieu of sidewalks because the local residents could still get through the site.
With this in mind, the school changed the shape of the trail and it is now open to the public during school hours.
The school has also agreed to maintain the portion of the trail that is on their land.
At the Tuesday night meeting, PASD asked for a waiver for the requirements for the trail grading so they could grade the trail using Americans with Disabilities Act requirements.
Graham also asked what the current East Pikeland Elementary School would be used for next.
We are planning on using it for education purposes, explained Miller. He said a pre-school and kindergarten program would move there and an alternative education program would be moved to the old Kindergarten Center.
Chair Rusty Strauss also asked if the closure plan for the site had been accepted by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
The site is near an existing SuperFund site. Because groundwater would not be used for drinking, the concern was with groundwater vapors.
After repeated testing, consultants found there were no pathways to the surface for the vapors. The school will also install a vapor barrier and vapor mitigation system, and consultants have said they feel the site is safe for a school.
The DEP wrote a letter accepting the closure plan and commending the school for their protection systems.
In other news, Chris Baker was appointed to the Environmental Advisory Council.
Planning Commission Member Steve Kelly's resignation was also approved. He is moving out of the township and will no longer be able to serve.
"I'd like to thank Steve ... for his service. He was an asset," said Strauss.
URL: http://www.phoenixvillenews.com/articles/2008/04/03/past stories/19966676.prt
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