The Salisbury Township school board held its regular meeting Sept. 15 in person and streamed live via the district’s YouTube page.

This month’s student representative’s report featured Salisbury High School students Nolan Grejda and Kaitlyn Macauley.

The middle school representatives were Gwyn DeFazio and Meredith Kelly. They described club sign ups including archery, ski club, chorus, blog and SMS live.

Eden Klocek, a student at Salisbury Elementary School, provided the student report saying students were “excited to return to a new school year.”

The retirement of Wayne Kucsan, utility maintenance technician at SHS for over 23 years, was recognized by Director of Facilities Bill Brackett in front of the board. When given a chance to say some words about his tenure with Salisbury, Kucsan provided a sour goodbye, citing distaste over perceived injustices to the utilities department.

Secretary of the Board Michael Taylor gave his report which included information on the anticipated timeline for the budget process for the 2022-2023 school year with the adoption of the final budget to occur June 5, 2022.

William Fitzpatrick, executive director of Arts Academy Charter Middle School was present to discuss a new amendment for the institution.

He mentioned that after a decade in existence, the school desires to become owners of their property. He reported finally reaching a promising stage with the landlord of the property they are currently leasing.

“We’re asking for a single amendment to the charter as it currently exists,” Fitzpatrick said. The building, however, has been deemed inadequate for their current needs and their acceptance of students is limited by the 100-year-old building. He informed the board Arts Academy Charter School is looking to purchase property on Susquehanna Street and to renovate structures into a building to house the school’s prospective digital arts, coding and perhaps ceramics program. The new facility could accommodate about 40 additional students. Additional students would allow the organization to complete debt service on their current building’s purchase, as well as appointing the new buildings.

Board member Joseph Gnall voiced concern over how it will affect the Salisbury School district’s budget, regarding taxes and board president George Gatanis inquired if all other options for additions and renovations at the current building’s site had been reviewed?

Fitzpatrick replied that yes, a review of the various options proved they all resulted in cost prohibitive measures.

The amendment was not up for approval at this meeting but hopefully would be at the next.

Director of Teaching and Learning Kelly Pauling and SES Principal Zach Brem discussed the addition of a kindergarten position due to a large increase in enrollments, largely in kindergarten, that came in late in August.

They proposed adding a fifth kindergarten class to lower the number of students in the existing four classrooms which allows the instructor to provide better support for the district’s youngest students. The next steps are to determine a location for the additional classroom and to identify a candidate and then meet to re-roster the students. The presenters were simply looking for a green light from the board to move this forward as soon as possible.

Questions about the reason for the spike in enrollment as well as the budgetary impacts were raised, but ultimately the board voted unanimously to approve the motion.

All personnel items were approved by the board.

Superintendent Lynn Fuini-Hetten brought up the lack of field trip specifications included in the health and safety plan. No formal decision was made to include or discount a policy for travel based on COVID-19 restrictions.

The school’s solicitor mentioned a lawsuit currently pending filed by congressmen, parents and parochial schools. Recently, there was supposed to be a hearing which was continued. Some schools are being vocal about their refusal to implement the universal school masking order and at least one district has been issued a letter from the secretary of education indicating potential ramifications to board members refusing to implement the policy including:

•Each board member subjected to penalty provisions

•Violations occur each day not enforced

•Board members may be fined for each student/staff member not wearing masks

•Can be viewed as willful misconduct under PA law subject to personal liability

•Can be faced with lawsuits by those who are affected by not complying

Insurance companies and workers comp firms may not issue policies if the order is not implemented.

In other business, Fuini-Hetten reported the district is still accepting alumni wall of honor nominees. More information can be found on the district website.

Fuini-Hetten also thanked Embassy Bank for their $10,000 donation to Salisbury’s EITC program, which just this past summer funded the district’s STEAM camp.

The meeting closed with more heated remarks from the public regarding the board’s policies and discussions.

The next regular board meeting will take place Oct. 6, directly following the operations committee meeting at the administration building.