LOWER MERION \u2014 During its meeting last week, the Lower Merion School Board voted down a board member\u2019s request to add an agenda item that could have led to a vote on merging the district\u2019s two high school football programs.<\/p>\n
During the meeting, board member Sarah Thomas asked to add an item to the board\u2019s meeting agenda. The addition would be to discuss a plan to merge the Lower Merion and Harriton high schools football programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s an issue that\u2019s been brought to the attention of the board over the last few months concerning the safety of our football players. Based on the information on this topic that\u2019s been provided to the board, I believe that we\u2019re putting student safety in jeopardy if we do not take a vote on this issue,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
She then asked the board to add an agenda item to vote on merging the Lower Merion and Harriton football programs. Under her proposal, the merger would take place as soon as possible, in accordance with PIAA rules.<\/p>\n
Over the past few months, the board has discussed merging the two programs after some parents expressed support for it.<\/p>\n
According to board President Kerry Sautner, Frank Ranelli, the district superintendent, is already working with the coaches, the football teams, and community members on the issue.<\/p>\n
In November, Ranelli recommended the district not move forward with merging the two teams.<\/p>\n
Among the reasons for not moving forward was surveys. According to the district\u2019s surveys, many players did not favor a merger as much as the parents did.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost 95 percent of the LM players rate having their own team as important; 74 percent of the Harriton players want to maintain the program at their school,\u201d Ranelli said. \u201cThis merger would eliminate the football program at one school, which would not be well received by players, students, and many parents of the school losing the program.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sautner said there are issues to be considered, including inequalities in equity, civil rights, athletic governance, labor issues and policy risks.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of these things started to unpack the more we looked into this,\u201d Sautner said.<\/p>\n
The consensus among many board members who responded to the question of adding the item to the board\u2019s agenda was to oppose it, saying it was being rushed through.<\/p>\n
Board member Todd Ridky said he isn\u2019t necessarily opposed to merging the two programs, but he said he doesn\u2019t believe pushing it through during a Zoom board meeting is the way to do it.<\/p>\n
In response to other board members\u2019 opposition to her plan, Thomas said that although the issue has been raised, the board has yet to discuss it at a public meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve asked for this for the past two months to be added to the agenda, and it was not added to the agenda,\u201d Thomas said.<\/p>\n
Following the discussion, the board voted 7 to 2 not to add it to the night\u2019s agenda, although it could be added to a future meeting agenda.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is continuing as an investigation, as a safety audit, and in committee conversations,\u201d Sautner said.<\/p>\n
She went on to recommend that members of the public could submit comments through the district\u2019s community comment portal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOWER MERION \u2014 During its meeting last week, the Lower Merion School Board voted down a board member\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[182,183,185,184,186,200,139,28,210],"class_list":["post-106298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-local-news","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-montgomery-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-top-stories-dtd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}