West Side CTC passes tentative budget to keep school open

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JANINE UNGVARSKY Times Leader Correspondent

PRINGLE – The West Side Career & Technology Center will open for the school year with no sports, no recruitment program and no in-school suspension monitor, but it will at least open, if the latest version of the school’s final budget is approved.
The school’s joint operating committee voted 13-2 Tuesday to pass the $6.08 million spending plan that saves the school $191,598 by suspending the school’s sports programs, eliminating the 2-year-old recruiting program and redistributing the duties of the in-school suspension monitor to other staff. The sports and recruiting programs had been sticking points in previous attempts to pass a budget when the school’s entire operating board was convened last week for the first time in decades.
The budget will now be sent by ballot to the full operating board. The committee voted to send it by certified mail and require a reply by July 26.
The joint operating committee is composed of three members from each of the Dallas, Lake-Lehman, Wyoming Valley West, Northwest Area and Wyoming Area school boards. The joint operating board is made up of all nine directors from each of those districts, all of which send students to the tech school.
Joint operating committee members said the new budget represented an effort at compromise that was necessary because without it, the school can’t legally spend money and would be forced to close.
“I love sports also, but we’re in a situation here. We have to pass this budget,” said committee President Butch Rossi, adding that he thinks eliminating the recruiting program is a mistake. “But getting this budget passed so the kids are ready for the school year is the most important thing.”
Calling it a suspension of the sports program instead of an elimination of the five tech school sports means that the board will re-evaluate sports in February 2012 and consider adding them back if the funding situation permits, even as soon as the spring, Rossi said.
With sports at the school suspended, tech school students are eligible to go out for the teams in their sending districts, though committee members noted that not all would make the teams. Wyoming Valley West representative Gordon Dussinger urged his colleagues to ask their coaches and athletic directors to make every effort to include the tech athletes, while Dallas representative Karen Kile asked that the tech school’s athletic director work up a plan for intramural games for students who either don’t want to play for their home district or don’t make the team.
The change also has implications for the home districts, where the change in the population of student athletes could change the school’s Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association division. While the matter wasn’t discussed at the meeting, officials from at least one district said they anticipate their sports program will be affected.
Wyoming Area Superintendent Ray Bernardi and directors John Bolin, Dave Alberigi and John Marianacci said after the meeting that they expect their school will move from the AA to the AAA division after the PIAA checks the student population in the near future. They said there are pros and cons to that realignment.