{"id":7791,"date":"2013-09-25T08:40:41","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T12:40:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7791"},"modified":"2013-09-25T13:23:52","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T17:23:52","slug":"casd-school-board-allows-como-donato-to-resign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/?p=7791","title":{"rendered":"CASD School Board allows Como, Donato to resign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite 3-hours of public comment asking for firings, board votes 6-1 to accept resignations
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Kyle Carrozza<\/strong>, Staff Writer, The Times<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Acting<\/a>

Acting Coatesville Area School District Superintendent Dr. Angelo Romaniello reads a statement. Many of his words were met with jeers and boos.<\/p><\/div>\n

CALN \u2013 The Coatesville Area School District Board of Education voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to allow the resignations of former Superintendent Richard Como and former Athletic Director James Donato.<\/p>\n

After three hours of public comment from taxpayers, parents, students, administrators, and former staff calling for the resignation of school board members, demanding the firing of Como and Donato, and asking questions about the DA\u2019s ongoing investigation, School Board President Neil Campbell said that he never reconsidered his decision to vote in favor of allowing Como and Donato to resign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you right now, if I felt I did something wrong, I\u2019d step down immediately,\u201d he said. \u201cI know that I\u2019m doing the best for this community. They may not know it right now, but they will down the road, and that is part of the healing process.<\/p>\n

The lone dissenting vote was Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor \u2014 who is also the president of the Coatesville NAACP \u2014 who spent much of the night under fire for her conduct in the matter.<\/p>\n

Reading a prepared statement, Campbell said that termination would require legal action, an expense that the school board did not want to incur.<\/p>\n

Campbell also said that the board was acting in the community\u2019s best interest by not explaining the details of the DA\u2019s investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was basically\u2014and this entire board\u2014was upholding what the DA (Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan), we felt, needed in order to do this investigation properly,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what we did, and we still to this day feel that feel we did the best that we had to do for this community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Campbell\u2019s response comes in the wake of Hogan\u2019s comments that he never told the board that they could not discuss the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did not put constraints on them,\u201d Hogan said. \u201cThey were free to discuss the text messages.\u201d<\/p>\n

During his statement, Campbell said that Como and Donato would not receive \u201cone red cent\u201d from the district. He said that whether or not Como receives a pension is not up to the school board but is decided by the Pennsylvania State Retirement System.<\/p>\n

Campbell also mentioned that the DA will be looking into alleged kickbacks involving the football team, which was met with cheers by the standing room-only audience.<\/p>\n

Tuesday night\u2019s meeting heard impassioned opinions from many members of the community. While many speakers called the resignations of the entire board, much of the public\u2019s anger was directed at acting Superintendent Dr. Angelo Romaniello, Board Solicitor James Ellison, and School Board Member Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor.<\/p>\n

\"CASDBoardAnger\"<\/a>

The audience packs in to Tuesday night’s meeting. Many public comments and board statements were met with boisterous reactions.<\/p><\/div>\n

Many residents felt that Taylor, who is also president of the Coatesville NAACP, was acting under a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s wearing two hats, and she should be out here with us [the members of the NAACP],\u201d said NAACP member Jimmy Jackson.<\/p>\n

Tuesday night\u2019s meeting also revealed that acting Assistant Superintendent Dr. Teresa Powell worked with District IT Specialist Abdullah Hawa to reveal the racist text messages.<\/p>\n

\u201cI absolutely love my job, but I love being a person with integrity even more,\u201d she said to applause from the audience.<\/p>\n

Even in the agitated atmosphere of the meeting, some people focused on positives. Former Pastor John Carlson offered prayer, while others called for unity from residents and praised the district\u2019s students and teachers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat doesn\u2019t define our student body,\u201d Student School Board Representative Paul Draper said of the text messages. \u201cThey [the students] succeed in life not in spite of the education they receive here but because of the education they receive here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite 3-hours of public comment asking for firings, board votes 6-1 to accept resignations By Kyle Carrozza, Staff Writer, The Times CALN \u2013 The Coatesville Area School District Board of Education voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to allow the resignations of former Superintendent Richard Como and former Athletic Director James Donato. After three hours of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[166,476,29,2797,2853,362],"class_list":["post-7791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-featured","tag-board-of-education","tag-chester-county-district-attorney-tom-hogan","tag-coatesville-area-school-district","tag-james-donato","tag-neil-campbell","tag-richard-como"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coatesvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}