15 vie for 5 seats on Hempfield Area school board

Fifteen candidates are competing in this spring’s primary for five open seats on the Hempfield Area school board.

Candidates said they are running for office for myriad reasons, including concerns over the ongoing high school expansion project, debate over appropriateness of library books and materials and a desire for more transparency in district communications.

Here is a look at the candidates running for the four-year term. All are cross-filed and will appear on both the Democratic and Republican ballots May 16. They are listed alphabetically.

Mike Alfery, 53, is a distributor sales consultant and current board member who hopes to be reelected to work with leaders to build on the district’s progress and strengthen educational opportunities for students.

Protecting student resources and making smart investments, such as with the high school renovation project, are priorities for Alfery, he said.

“It’s important that taxpayer funds are used efficiently to position Hempfield for the future, and that we have leadership who can effectively collaborate with state and federal leaders to ensure we receive the support our students need,” he said.

Paul J. Berginc Sr., 75, a retired airline mechanic, said he wants to remove inappropriate materials from the library and avoid what he called “wokeness and socialism” in schools as his reasons for running.

“There has got to be some changes on the administrative side,” Berginc said. “This country is in bad shape.”

Jennifer Bretz, 50, is a current member of the board who was elected in 2019. She works for the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County in customer service. Bretz hopes to keep her seat on the board to continue as a conservative in the community and make sure the high school building project is successful.

She identifies the debate over library materials as a major issue. A member of the district’s policy board, she cited the ongoing work of the policy board to create a “commonsense guideline for book and curriculum policies.”

“We are just trying to (have) commonsense on policy here that filters potentially objectionable material and provides an equitable review process for challenged material that will comply with state and federal statutes,” she said.

Kathy Charlton, former principal of Hempfield Area High School who retired in October, said she is running because she knows the high school well. She wants to stay on top of the renovation project and make sure the curriculum stays on track.

“I know all of the ins and outs of the high school, I am well versed in everything that goes on there and I feel a strong societal commitment to use the knowledge that I have gained in all of those years,” she said. “You have to have an intimate knowledge of the physical structure of the building, which I do, in order to make sense of what they are proposing for the renovation.”

Vince DeAugustine, 44, owner of Manor Valley Golf Course and current board member, is running for reelection because he feels the district is “trending in the right direction” and wants to make sure that continues. He cited the district’s hiring of five new full-time police officers, the removal of fees for school activities and driving and the lack of a tax increase in three years as accomplishments during his time.

Covid-related learning loss is a major issue, he said. He believes the district must focus on providing the necessary academic and mental health services to children after covid emergency funds are depleted.

“I believe the district is in a better place now than it was three years ago. I am proud of my relationship with the students and the employees of the district and honored to be endorsed by the teachers union,” he said. “My hope is the Hempfield Area community rallies around the progress we have made and we can all come together during this exciting time.”

Colleen M. Gallagher, 59, is a retired former Hempfield Area teacher. She sees changes to the curriculum and to the way the district addresses student discipline as a problem.

“I just don’t think we are meeting the needs of all the kids academically,” she said. “I am concerned with some of the remedial students not getting the support they need, and I am concerned that some of our special ed students are getting the support they deserve.”

Gallagher said she would reexamine the prerequisite policies for courses and talk with administrators to see data on curriculum changes if she is elected. She hopes to see staff, faculty and administration collaborate on student discipline and curriculum.

Lisa Glessner, 42, director of enrollment operations at Seton Hill University, is a Hempfield parent who wants to see more parents on the board. She wants to address a decline in preparedness of students for what comes after high school and support guidance counselors who might be overwhelmed.

“How do we look at all of our students and make sure everyone is being prepared and planning for those next steps?” she said. “I think at first (I would) assess what is there as a whole. I would talk to our guidance counselors and understand from their perspective, as well as teachers, what do the students need and what resources do they need from the board?”

Stacy Miller, 44, is a learning support teacher in the Greater Latrobe School District. She says she wants to advocate for students and promote finding common ground between the administration and the public. She hopes to bolster Hempfield’s education foundation to help find more funding and take some of the burden off of taxpayer funds.

The high school renovation and middle school redistricting are a major issue for Miller, along with the shifting of some electives as students move into new buildings in the district. She hopes to look for “creative scheduling” opportunities to help make those electives available in the future. Communication with parents also is a priority.

“I think if we do (the high school project) correctly and listen to what the parents are saying, they want to make sure their students’ programs aren’t being cut, they want to make sure this isn’t going to have an impact on their child’s education,” she said. “They keep hearing it’s not, but we’re not always seeing that.”

Tracy Miller, 46, works for a local tax collector and says her priorities for the district are improving the quality of education, safety, transparency and increasing parental involvement. She cited an interest in improving individualized education plans and special education at Hempfield, as well as reexamining the levels and prerequisites of courses offered to students.

Keeping books with “graphic sexual content” out of the district is one of her main concerns, she said. She also said she wanted security to monitor the district’s bathrooms.

“I would like to see more safety with regards to the schools as an entirety, not just the high school, but all of the schools, and more awareness about having security monitor our bathrooms, with the government allowing boys and girls to use each other’s bathrooms if they identify as a different gender,” Miller said. “I would like to have more security watching what is going on in those areas.”

Todd Slavin, 38, is an insurance agent who credits the ongoing middle school redistricting project and high school renovation as his reasons for running, along with concerns about curriculum changes and class sizes. He hopes to promote transparency and make sure the price and quality of the high school renovation stay under control.

“There is a lack of communication between board and administration, from the administration to teachers, and from the administration to parents. That all needs rectified,” he said. “Communication is the biggest thing I would look at. I would put it all out there. We are a taxpayer-funded entity, so everything should be out there for the parents to know.”

Jeanne Smith, 74, is a retired Hempfield Area teacher and administrator who works part time for the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg supervising student teachers. She is a current member of the board. Her goals to help the district where she and her family grew up include promoting fiscal responsibility and providing students with a good education.

Making the high school renovation and middle school reassignment process fair, equitable and smooth for students and families, while ensuring reasonable class sizes and considering covid learning loss and mental health struggles, is a priority for Smith.

“As a board, we tackle all of our issues by getting as much information as possible about the issue(s) and talking over the pros and cons before making a decision,” she said.

Erin Johns Speese, 39, is a teaching associate professor at Duquesne University. She wants to see more interaction between the community and the school board, especially with the middle school redistricting process and high school renovations.

“As a parent in the district, I see how administrative policies and other educational issues, like ballooning class sizes, are impacting students since I see the way it impacts my own kids,” she said. “If I were on the school board, I would like to find opportunities to better support the teachers and staff who work tirelessly for our students, especially after the educational lag as a result of the interruptions during covid-19.”

Jennifer Stape, 38, is a stay-at-home mom. She says some of the decisions around the high school renovation and middle school redistricting have a “narrow analytical approach” and wants to focus on aligning the district’s decisions with its mission statement.

“I would like Hempfield to move in a direction more towards bottom-up strategies — freedom for teachers to teach and for students to learn, and freedom for parents, as well,” she said, citing state requirements such as the PSSAs as an example of the opposite, a top-down state approach.

“I would like to see all decisions have the mission statement in mind,” she said. “If you have that mission statement in mind, you are really not going to steer the district in the wrong way.”

Lindsay Stevens, 43, owns and operates Tiny Town Early Learning Center. She wants to have more parents on the board and believes there is a lack of connection between the teaching staff and the board.

“I think one of the primary issues is school safety and security,” she said. “I feel like I have a lot to offer because I attend all the meetings, not just the controversial ones, and I have been actively speaking at the meetings on different topics. I understand the educational side of it as an educator myself, as well as a current parent.”

Cory Thoma, 33, a software engineer and a part-time adjunct professor at Washington and Jefferson College, says he is data-driven and wants to bring that approach to making decisions on the board.

As a parent, he wants to make sure the analyses done by the district on topics such as the middle school redistricting are accurate and thorough. He cited the current debate on restricting access to certain materials in school libraries as a place where data analysis could be helpful.

“It seems that the book-banning decisions are coming from a non-data-driven place — they are coming from ideological things,” he said. “I think that if you are going to remove resources from children, they should be resources that have a science- and evidence-based need to be removed.”

This story has been updated.