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KINGSTON — Wyoming Valley West School Board President Joe Mazur confirmed Thursday that he asked for and received Charles Coslett’s resignation as solicitor in the wake of controversy surrounding a letter threatening parents with possible loss of children to foster care if school lunch debts were not paid.

“He was congenial, he said he understood and said he will settle up with whatever we owe him,” Mazur said, adding the resignation is effective immediately. “I’ve already informed the district business manager and Superintendent Irv DeRemer.”

Mazur said the request for immediate resignation came because the letter in question was written by Coslett and sent out without running it by any board members.

“He wrote the letter, and the fact is that none of us had seen it and that the superintendent didn’t see it.”

The letter was officially sent by Federal Programs Director Joseph Muth, and after it drew media attention and mounting public criticism Muth took full responsibility for sending it out without showing it to DeRemer. Muth also said that, “in hindsight,” he would not have used such strong language in the letter.

Asked about his resignation, Coslett confirmed it and said he agreed to help put the issue to rest. “There’s been enough division surrounding this issue, where the focal point got skewed and the importance of parental responsibility got lost,” he said, “but enough is enough. I don’t want to be the cause of this division.’

Coslett has repeatedly defended the letter, noting parents had refused to respond to numerous efforts to collect payment or to come in to the district office and work out arrangements to resolve their debts.

The story drew recurring national attention, prompting numerous offers to help pay the bills, including one from La Colombe coffee roasters founder and CEO Todd Carmichael, who offered to pay the entire $22,400 in debts “no strings attached.” Mazur reportedly initially said no to that offer, though he has declined comment on it. The district did announce Wednesday in a letter of apology posted on its website that such donations will be accepted through the Wyoming Valley West Educational Foundation, an independent nonprofit set up in 2015 to raise money that could purchase supplies and otherwise assist in student education.

Coslett has been Wyoming Valley West solicitor since 2015, but he has served the post for other districts at different times for decades, including stints with Northwest Area, Greater Nanticoke Area and Lake-Lehman.

He has served as West Side Career and Technology Center solicitor since 1981. In fact, he was CTC director in 2008 when Wyoming Valley West — with a different solicitor at the time — got into a bitter dispute with the CTC regarding the district’s representation on the Joint Operating Committee that runs the CTC. As the JOC floundered in trying to draw up new articles of agreement to appease all five member districts, Coslett warned bluntly, “You are in no-man’s land.”

Coslett has long had a reputation as one who rarely flinches from a fight, most recently on display when he defended the controversial WVW letter while others in the district distanced themselves from it as the controversy grew.

At a 1998 Northwest Area meeting, he refused to answer some board members questions in public, saying that if the audience wanted to hear his opinion, they would have to pay for his time.

In 1999, when the Columbine school shootings in Littleton, Colo., spurred local district to discuss disaster response plans, Coslett cautioned Northwest Area against a written procedure. “I know how the nefarious element works,” he said. “They use any and all possible advantages.” He favored an unwritten policy familiar to faculty and staff, but not on paper.

His tenure at Lake-Lehman included serving as lead district negotiator in 2008 during one of the most bitter teacher contract talks in the area, when he accused the union of demanding “Rolls Royce” benefits even as district payments to the teacher retirement fund soared in response to the stock market crash. The teachers, he said, “can’t have it all.”

Coslett
https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/web1_han_meet2_faa.cmyk_-1.jpg.optimal.jpgCoslett

By Mark Guydish

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Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish