Penn Hills School District students to learn remotely Tuesday due to special election voting

Penn Hills School District students will learn remotely Tuesday as the school buildings can host voters of a special state election.

Clayton Walker, 59, a Republican from Verona, and Joe McAndrew, 32, a Democrat from Penn Hills, are running to replace state Rep. Tony DeLuca, a Penn Hills Democrat who represented the district for nearly 40 years.

The special election is necessary due to the passing of DeLuca, 85, who won reelection to the state House in November despite having died the previous month.

School board President Erin Vecchio said they received an Allegheny County Court order Thursday evening requiring the district to host the election.

Superintendent Nancy Hines said they made the call to go remote Friday.

“We were directed to host the voting,” Hines said. “We did not intend to do that. … We’re going to be completely flexible with our families and teaching staff. Staff are to report on site for their normal work shifts.”

The district’s transpiration services for nonpublic and charter school students are not affected.

All staff except for food service and recess paraprofessionals are to report for duty as usual.

Students also will be on a regular school schedule even though they will be learning remotely.

This is due in part because of the court order and to avoid the use of another Flexible Learning Day.

Hines said the district has five of those flexible days per school year to use, and it already used one in January due to bad weather.

Vecchio said the district asked county officials about a month ago to seek alternative voting sites, and is frustrated with the ruling.

“We’re putting over 3,000 kids out that day and staff so they can have an election that only a couple hundred people are going to even vote in,” she said. “We gave them ample amount of time to find other places, but they didn’t even look.”

County spokeswoman Amie Downs refuted Vecchio’s claim and said they received no such correspondence from the district.

The county’s petition states a letter was sent to the district from the Elections Division on Dec. 20 notifying the district that it intended to use its schools for the special election as well as the May 16 primary election.

A representative of the hauling company contracted by the elections division to deliver and pick up election equipment was informed by district personnel on Jan. 27 that the district would not be making their buildings available for voting, according to the county’s petition.

Vecchio said alternative locations could have been the old municipal building or library, which hosted all polling places a few years ago during the pandemic.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous, and it’s costing us money to have this happen,” Vecchio said.

District Solicitor Dayne Dice said Allegheny County Elections Division filed an emergency petition on Wednesday asking the court to mandate the district grant use of its three schools for polling places.

Dice said the district filed its response that day and had arguments Thursday.

The response read, in part, the displacement of students would be “creating a hardship for PHSD families” and “it is practicable to displace so many students on such short notice.”

Judge John McVay ruled in the elections division’s favor, but also issued a comment about the district’s actions.

McVay found “Penn Hills to be acting in good faith in the best interest of the school children and the court agreed to work with PHSD on their concerns,” according to a copy of the order obtained by the Tribune-Review.

“With an emergency petition like that, there really is no appeal,” Dice said. “The district did everything it could do.”

Primary election and general elections are scheduled on the district’s school calendar.

More information about the district’s Tuesday activities is available on its website, phsd.k12.pa.us.