Hearing continues in terminated Palmerton principal case

As her employment hangs in the balance, suspended Palmerton Area High School Principal Paula Husar heard favorable testimony Wednesday night from three parents during a continued termination hearing before the school board.

Palmerton Superintendent Scot Engler recommended her dismissal on over 20 charges handed down in September 2017, one of which involved allegations of a handful of students leaving the group during a class field trip to Maple Grove Raceway in the fall of 2016.

According to previous testimony, two Palmerton teachers reported back to the school that they believed the students could have been using drugs or alcohol because they were “acting differently.”

Jean Papay, the mother of one of the accused students, testified Tuesday that there was never any evidence presented against her son, yet his reputation was tarnished and an apology from the teachers never came.

“Mrs. Husar did not mishandle this,” Papay said in her testimony. “She did do her job. It comes to a point where it is no longer in the principal’s hands. She took time to understand what my concerns were.”

According to Papay, her son asked for permission to go to the bathroom when at Maple Grove. After using the restroom, he stopped to take pictures of race cars lined up on the track.

After returning, she added, teachers began screaming at him, with one allegedly later telling him he was a “disgrace to the school district.”

Papay said she drug tested her son when he returned home from school that day and he tested negative.

“He had no idea what he was being accused of,” Papay said. “He was falsely accused and nothing was ever done to the teachers. We paid an attorney to pull his file to make sure there was nothing in there about this incident because I didn’t trust the district.”

Earlier in the night, Stacey Pepitone backed Husar’s handling of a situation her daughter was having with high school math teacher Pam Wuest.

According to Pepitone, her daughter asked for help in the class on more than one occasion.

“Mrs. Wuest told her to figure it out on her own,” Pepitone said. “There was a point where she stopped trying and her grades started to go down. I was very upset.”

Pepitone said she contacted Husar, who met with her the next day.

“(Husar) was very accommodating with meeting me immediately,” Pepitone said. “She understood my concerns and seems genuinely concerned about the issue and my daughter.”

During additional testimony, Pepitone said Wuest never reached out to her except to tell her that her daughter had been disrespectful.

Asked by the district’s attorney why she didn’t try to contact Wuest before going straight to Husar, Pepitone said it was because of the way Wuest was allegedly talking to the students.

Another parent testified about Husar’s handling of an alleged grooming incident between a since-fired athletic coach and her daughter.

The coach, according to the testimony, was inappropriately communicating with several students by phone.

One of the charges against Husar is that she validated an apology from the student, who was the victim in the case and hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I did not think (Husar) was saying my daughter did anything wrong,” the parent said. “I don’t think she was told of the whole situation or that the coach had even been fired.”

Before Husar’s lawyer began calling witnesses, the district wrapped up its case with Special Education Director Suzanne Rentschler.

Rentschler testified regarding a charge that Husar removed a special education student from Tom Smelas’ classroom following a truancy hearing and put the student in a guidance office conference room, going against what was called for in the student’s individualized education program.

“I did not become aware of it until after the school year was complete,” Rentschler testified.

Rentschler also said the student’s IEP was never changed, calling for them to be removed from the classroom setting. The move, she said, was not consistent with the goal of educating special education students in the “least restrictive environment.”

The termination hearing is scheduled to continue Monday at 6 p.m. in the district’s boardroom.