‘Threat days’ becoming a trend in Bethel Park School District
Bethel Park has seen a few school cancellations this year, but they aren’t snow days. Instead, they’re threat days.
School was canceled again Jan. 21 after someone wrote a threat on a bathroom wall at Neil Armstrong Middle School. Many schools in the region were closed as well, either due to Martin Luther King Day or the bitter cold, but it is Bethel Park’s third cancellation due to threats this year.
Several parents complained at the school board meeting Jan. 22 that the cancellations are overreactions. Some parents argued the district superintendent is doing the threat-makers’ bidding when he cancels school.
“We’re allowing ourselves to be bullied by teenagers,” Ken Crowley said. “There needs to be a better solution than simply canceling school.”
Other parents noted that threats are hardly a unique problem to Bethel Park. Other school districts have been dealing with the issue as well, but Bethel Park seems to cancel school more frequently due to the threats.
Lisa Price suggested that school officials employ other measures to address the threats without canceling school, such as asking police to perform sweeps of school buildings, performing random checks of students or issuing a no backpack policy. Director Jim Means said administrators regularly work with police, who use some of those tactics when they investigate and assess threats, but Superintendent Joseph Pasquerilla ultimately has to make the call whether holding school is worth the risk. Pasquerilla said he always errs on the side of caution in these instances.
“It’s a difficult decision to make,” he said. “But I try to treat each of your children as if they were my own.”
Shayna Willis said the school cancellations reward bad behavior and show that school officials do not trust the system that is already in place to protect students.
“Each cancellation is a failure of leadership,” she said.
She suggested that administrators undergo threat assessment training to make better decisions.
High school students missed another day of school Jan. 23 after a fire sprinkler broke and flooded several classrooms toward the end of the school day Jan. 22. School maintenance workers needed some time to clean the mess.
The school board also discussed issues with finding special education paraprofessionals and other aides. The board approved the hiring of eight part-time paraprofessionals and one part-time instructional aide at the meeting, but Director Ken Nagel opposed the move and brought up larger issues concerning high turnover in those positions.
Nagel questioned whether the practice of hiring only part-time paraprofessionals contributes to the high turnover. He said he will continue to oppose the hiring of part-time positions until he receives data that proves students are best served with part-time paraprofessionals.
Pasquerilla said that difficulty in finding paraprofessionals is a fairly common problem that many school districts are grappling with, even those that offer full-time positions with benefits. Paraprofessionals typically work with one-on-one with special education students and in Bethel Park, new paraprofessionals typically work less than 30 hours a week and are paid a starting rate of $11.69 an hour.
Director Pam Dobos said the high turnover for paraprofessionals might be a result of the lack of a contract with the union that represents those employees. Paraprofessionals and aides have been working without a contract since the last pact expired in 2016.
“I think a new contract will address a lot of these issues,” Dobos said.
Also during the meeting, the school board approved a contract with Trane Inc. to upgrade the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system at the high school. The project will cost up to $1,924,608 and the work will take place this summer.