WAYNESBORO – After over 20 hours of presenting evidence and hearing testimony over a four-day period, the Waynesboro Area School District board hearings for Summitview Elementary School Principal Steven Pappas has come to an end.
The decision now before the board of directors is whether to re-instate him as principal or demote him to a teaching position. The question on the minds of many in the community is what happens now?
The board Vice President, Lloyd Hamberger, who has been overseeing the hearings, made the announcement at the conclusion of the fourth hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 11, that the district’s attorney, Richard Galtman, and the defense attorney, Catherine Rowe, will summit their closing arguments in written form and any amendments to evidential documents to be considered to the board of directors.
They will then deliberate in executive session and announce their decision.
A direct timeline was not made clear, much to the dismay of the pro-Pappas audience, which was again over 200 in attendance, and to the, perhaps, hundreds watching the livestream on social media who are ready for the process to end.
Then there is the decision itself. While it is clear that Pappas has developed a strong following over the last few months with an active petition for re-instatement and a second petition of “no confidence” in the superintendent and assistant superintendent, along with yard signs, and T-shirts, that does not mean that he has earned a victory.
A retired teacher, who worked alongside then-teacher and now Supintendent Rita Sterner-Hine and whose children went to school in the district, noted, “What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular.”
As for the final night of the hearing, which took over six and half hours, one thing was clear, that everyone present, including the board of directors, was ready for the proceedings to end.
Pappas once again took the stand to face cross-examination from the district’s attorney. His testimony lasted just over an hour. The prosecution attempted to make him contradict himself with many questions and then questioned his previous performance evaluations. When questioned about any negative feedback in his previous evaluations, Pappas said he welcomed the feedback and used it as fuel to improve his performance and the performance of his faculty.
“A true leader is going to accept those things,” Pappas said, “and build on them and make things better, and I believe that is what I did.”
The district’s attorney then attempted to bring in seven additional witnesses, five new and three returning, including the two librarians who worked on the book reset, Lindsey Salmon and Jen Smith.
This seemed to aggravate not just the crowd, but the board as well, who sent one witness, Jason Piatt, home without testimony and limited the questioning of another, Michaelia Conn, as that witness had previously testified. The prosecution finally closed its case after nearly five hours of testimony, and the defense quickly followed.
No date for a decision has been announced.
