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By JENNIFER LEARN; Times Leader Hazleton Bureau
Sunday, August 20, 1995 Page: 4
HAZLETON — A cousin of a Hazleton Area School Board member’s wife was
hired for a teaching job at the regular school board meeting Thursday night.
The announcement sparked a debate about nepotism.
School board members told the audience that Beth Barletta, a cousin of
board member Bob Schnee’s wife, Jamie, was the best applicant for the job.
But a few taxpayers told the board it looked like an example of a board
member showing favoritism toward a relative. Schnee was on the committee that
interviewed applicants.
Who’s right?
Only the school board knows because the public is not permitted to attend
the interviews or discussions about hirings. The district also has refused to
provide a list of those interviewed for the post Barletta won.
The district also refused to provide a list of applicants who were
interviewed for seven other teaching posts that were filled Thursday.
Schnee, school board member Bill McCann and district Elementary Director
Dan Cassarella interviewed 102 applicants to fill the position Barletta was
given as well as the other full-time positions that pay a starting salary of
$29,000.
Some of the teacher hopefuls who did not land jobs attended the board
meeting.
None of the applicants spoke at the meeting, but they applauded when two
taxpayers asked the board about nepotism.
Schnee said 10 other applicants with proper certification vied for
Barletta’s job.
Tri-County United Taxpayers spokesman Mark Johnson, who is also a school
board candidate, said Schnee should have abstained from the interviews,
recommendations and voting to hire his wife’s relative.
Schnee said he based his teacher choices on interviews, input from teachers
and substitutes and by applicants’ records as substitutes.
Superintendent Geraldine Shepperson said all the people who landed jobs
demonstrated strong teaching skills.
Concerns about nepotism grew in recent weeks as names of applicants who
were allegedly promised jobs floated through the area.
An anonymous source provided a list of several relatives of district
employees, a candidate and school board members. The Times Leader also
received a tip from a source close to the district that certain candidates
were in line to be hired and a story about the information appeared last week.
Barletta was the only relative who ended up being hired.
Linda DeCosmo, the wife of school board candidate Mike DeCosmo, also
appeared on the anonymous source’s list and in The Times Leader article. She
did not get the job.
DeCosmo said he believes the article suggesting his wife would get
preferential treatment hurt her chances of getting a job in the district.
“My wife had more experience than everyone hired, except one,” DeCosmo
said.
He acknowledged asking school board members to hire his wife, and said he
believes The Times Leader article created public pressure on the board to
overlook his wife as an applicant.
“My wife lost a paying position for my running” for an unpaid position,
DeCosmo said.
The district hired:
Full-time elementary teachers: Michele Planutis, West Hazleton; Deborah
Shemany, Beaver Meadows; and Michele Lee, Anna Rose Matweecha, Karla Turnbach,
Ann Kennedy and Beth Barletta, all of Hazleton.
Elementary long-term substitutes (for two semesters): Lee Carsia,
Conyngham; Patricia Jenkins and Nancy Barber, both of Hazleton.
Elementary long-term substitute (for one semester): Michael Latoof,
Hazleton.
Special education teacher: Randi Sugerman, Hazleton.
The Times Leader pressed the district to release names of applicants for
all the teaching posts. The newspaper said the list is a public record that
must be released under the state’s public record law because it is a document
created by the public board and used in making a decision affecting the
public.
District solicitor David Glassberg said he does not think applicants’ names
are public record, although he is still reviewing the matter.
Glassberg said releasing the names of applicants would violate their
privacy, if, for example, they worked somewhere else and sought employment in
the district.
However, the district in past years has published names of applicants for
district jobs by printing them on the superintendent’s meeting agendas that
were distributed to the public and the media.
Thursday’s meeting was the first in years that names of such applicants
were not printed on the agendas.
Shepperson said she stopped printing the names because she realized it
could violate the privacy of applicants.