EDUCATION CENTER 1516 Sycamore Street Bethlehem, PA 18017-6099 610-861-0500 Saucon Valley School District Board of School Directors, December 16, 2019 On December 10, 2019, there was a public meeting of the SVSD Board of School Directors. During the comments portion of the meeting, Board President Pakzad used his position to attempt to influence the governance of another school district. It is completely inappropriate and unethical for an elected member of a school district board to call on the superintendent of another district to resign over a clearly personal grievance. President Pakzad has every right to a personal opinion and has every right to disagree with the comments made by Dr. Roy, but he has no right to use his access to the dias to attack another superintendent. The comments made by Dr. Roy, one of the most well respected superintendents in Pennsylvania, were reported on and publically available on social media. Rather than review the entire transcript of those comments, President Pakzad focused on a single portion of a statement and chose to use his public position to spin Dr. Roy’s comments. He then announced that “This is a new low: throwing out personal assaults, accusing hundreds of thousands of families in the Commonwealth of being racist or elitist for the choice of public school they see best for their kids” before calling on Dr. Roy to resign. Suggesting that Dr. Roy accused “hundreds of thousands” of parents of being racist is untrue and slanderous, not to mention reckless and irresponsible as an elected official. Denying that poverty and race are one of the many reasons parents choose charter schools helps no one. As elected officials we owe our citizens better than that. Our statements as board members must be rooted in fact, not the talking points of special interest groups. The press conference where the comments were made was held in the Bethlehem Area School District. Neither the SVSD district or SVSD board were mentioned. The comments the SVSD Board President made were clearly a personal statement and not “for the good of the district” he is sworn to serve. President Pakzad’s comments and use of the dais to air personal grievances are troubling and frankly unacceptable from an elected official. We, as the Board of Directors of the Bethlehem Area School District, hope his fellow school directors will see fit to publicly censure Director Pakzad, as we find his actions to be unethical and the result of a personal agenda. Furthermore, due to a clear conflict of interest, we feel he should abstain from any votes that involve operations or funding of Lehigh Valley Regional Academy Charter School. We, as publicly elected school directors, only reaffirm our commitment to our own students, teachers and taxpayers - to have hard conversations about race and class and address disparities and bias where we find them; and to be fiscally responsible with taxpayers' dollars. Bethlehem Area School District Board of School Directors ___________________________ Michael E. Faccinetto School Board President ___________________________ Shannon L. Patrick School Board Vice President ___________________________ Dean Donaher School Board Director ___________________________ Karen Beck Pooley School Board Director ___________________________ Craig D. Neiman School Board Director ___________________________ Rogelio Ortiz School Board Director ___________________________ Emily R. Schenkel School Board Director ___________________________ Kim L. Shively School Board Director ___________________________ Angela T. Sinkler School Board Director