To the Editor:

At the Nov. 13 Northampton Area School District Board of Education meeting, numerous residents were in attendance. They were there because the board majority was voting to award bids for the $73 million project on Seemsville Road/Route 329.

Doug Vaughn made a motion to table this important issue because a new board majority will be seated in December. The new board majority ran and won on the promise to “keep Moore open” and “no new Seemsville Road/Route 329 school.”

Board President James Chuss, who voted to close Moore Elementary School and build the “Taj Mahal” on Route 329 instead, said, “To be fair to the people, we will hold off on voting at this time until the public gets to speak their minds on this matter also.”

The audience was given 40 minutes total, allowing four minutes per person to speak. Under the board policy, only a small fraction of the people present could speak, but the vast majority wanted Moore Elementary to be kept open and to stop the building of the new school. Well, I guess what the majority of citizens favored fell on deaf ears. Most board members sat there poker faced, as usual, because they made up their minds a long time ago.

Despite all the pre-election promises by David Gogel, Vice President John Becker, Robert Mentzell and Michael Baird, they never voted to rescind their votes to close Moore. In documents to the state, they are still claiming savings by closing Moore. Gogel, NASD representative on the vo-tech board, in his befuddled wisdom, stated the vo-tech expansion, which will cost NASD taxpayers about $14 million, was tabled until the new vo-tech board was seated in December.

A few minutes later, Gogel voted with the other six lame duck members of the school board not to table this $73 million project that affects us all, so they voted to award the bids with a 7-2 vote. Kim Bretzik questioned Arif Fazil on a number of safety issues, and, again, all that information fell on deaf ears.

To sum it up, if the new board cannot stop the construction of a new school on Route 329 that is not needed, unsafe and beyond our means, blame Gogel and Mentzell, who were defeated, as well as Becker, Baird, Makary and Frantz, who remain on the board.

The enrollment shows 500 students less now than in 2007, and the projection is for even 400 fewer in 10 years.

Lehigh Township School was just knocked down, rebuilt and opened two years ago to accommodate an additional 200 students. Why can’t we redistrict, as Future Think outlined in their first option?

The old board majority voted without conscience to move forward with the $73 million Taj Mahal. Nov. 13 was a sad day in NASD.

Maggie Kemp

East Allen Township