Central Bucks board resignation letters shed light on why two quit
Two Republican members of the Central Bucks school board volleyed a barrage of ethical and legal violations against the Democrat majority, the district solicitor and its acting superintendent in now-public resignation letters.
Many of the claims spelled out in the letters expand on claims Lisa Sciscio and Debra Cannon, who represented Central Bucks regions 4 and 7, respectively, broached during the school board meeting on Feb. 13.
The two abruptly resigned that night. Their written resignations include a lengthy list of at-times vague accusations and of fraud and unethical practices.
School board President Karen Smith, in an email statement Thursday, said the letters contain false accusations and misleading statements.
“There are allegations about corruption and liability in these letters. I want to reassure our community that we take our responsibility to our students and our community extremely seriously and these allegations are false,” Smith wrote.
Special meeting scheduled: Central Bucks board to vote Friday on Sciscio, Cannon resignations
Smith had confirmed earlier this week that the two handed in their resignation letters and those documents were published Thursday morning in an agenda for a special meeting on Friday, where the board will vote to accept Sciscio’s and Cannon’s departures.
Here is what we know now about some of the claims the former board members made.
Sunshine Act violations and conflicts of interests
In their letters, both Sciscio and Cannon echo recent public comments and claims from a civil lawsuit filed against the district in January that the board violated the Sunshine Act multiple times, including when it hired attorney David Conn, of Sweet, Stevens, Katz & Williams, LLP, as district solicitor at a Dec. 4 meeting.
During the Feb. 13 meeting, Sciscio referenced a Nov. 29 letter that she said included Smith telling the board minority that “the transitional board” intended to hire Conn.
At the meeting, she argued that decision was a Sunshine Act violation.
In a different email, also dated Nov. 29, filed as an exhibit in the district's response to that civil Sunshine Act lawsuit, Smith wrote that the incoming board majority "plan to retain" Conn. The email also referenced an attachment that Smith wrote was the proposed contract with Conn.
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The email was sent to then-Acting Superintendent Charles Malone requesting several items, including Conn's nomination, be added to the Dec. 4 agenda. The board's former leadership denied the request.
The message from Smith doesn't appear to be a Sunshine Act violation, said Melissa Melewsky, a recognized expert in the Pennsylvania Open Records law and staff counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association.
“The Sunshine Act only applies if there’s a quorum deliberating agency business,” Melewsky said earlier this week. “It doesn’t appear that a quorum of board members was involved because at least a few of them were elected, but not yet sworn into office.”
Melewsky added that unsworn officials deliberating on business in private, while not a violation of the law, “is ill-advised for newly elected officials to make their first steps into office by skirting transparency laws.”
Sciscio also said there was a “conflict of interest” between Smith and board members Dana Foley and Heather Reynolds because they hired Conn to represent them in an election recount that occurred in November.
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Cannon added that the three should have recused themselves from voting to hire Conn at the Dec. 4 meeting and alleged that Conn's hiring as solicitor was a "quid pro quo" for his representing three Democrats in the recount challenge.
An email to the Pennsylvania Attorney Disciplinary Board with questions about the issues Cannon raised was not immediately answered Thursday evening.
The board’s code of professional conduct describes a conflict arising when an attorney takes on a client in a matter that could have an adverse affect on another client.
“There is no evidence of a quid pro quo with Mr. Conn,” Smith said Thursday. “A lawyer can previously have performed pro bono work for an individual before they become a client. Additionally, the district is the client here, not any individual board member.”
Legal liabilities and obstructionism
Cannon and Sciscio say the reasons for their resignations revolve around “highbinding, corruption, and ethical violations” that could create “personal liability against each individual board director.”
The letters reference discussions of executive sessions, which are meetings officials are allowed to hold behind closed doors for limited reasons. Information discussed in those sessions is generally not accessible through records requests.
In her statement responding to the allegations, Smith stated that she was legally limited to providing responses to much of what was in the letters. But she did push back at blanket statements that the board is inviting lawsuits or excluding the three minority members from some discussions.
“During their tenure in the board majority, Mrs. Sciscio and Mrs. Cannon routinely withheld information from the board minority. They ignored legal warnings on their intended votes from the ACLU, Education Law Center, NAACP, American Library Association and other organizations. Their actions resulted in a federal investigation by the Office of Civil Rights and multiple lawsuits. Their actions caused these lawsuits they are now accusing us of mishandling,” Smith said.
The board will meet to vote on accepting their resignations Friday in the meeting room at 16 Welden Drive, Doylestown.
This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Central Bucks publishes scathing resignation letters from GOP members
