YATESVILLE \u2014 The uncertainty at the Pittston Area School District continued Tuesday as school leaders withheld comment on the status of Superintendent Kevin Booth, who was arrested 44 days prior on domestic-violence related charges and whose preliminary hearing in the case was recently postponed until December.<\/p>\n
Assistant Superintendent John Haas said after the school board meeting that he had no comment to offer beyond his comments after the school board meeting Oct. 21. At that October meeting, Haas declined comment, citing what he said was a district policy barring public discussion of personnel matters, especially those potentially involving termination or discipline.<\/p>\n
When asked what criteria needed to be met before the school district could divulge any information on Booth\u2019s status, Haas deferred comment to school board solicitor Sam Falcone. A request for comment left with Falcone\u2019s law firm Wednesday was not returned by press time.<\/p>\n
Pittston City Police arrested Booth, 54, on Oct. 5 after he arrived at home and allegedly choked his wife. Police said Booth denied the allegation of domestic violence after having initially told law enforcement he had \u201cno idea\u201d what had happened. Booth was subsequently arraigned on simple assault and harassment charges and released on $2,500 unsecured bail.<\/p>\n
Since his arrest and release, Booth has sought and secured admission into an inpatient treatment facility. School officials have declined to say whether a district health insurance policy is covering this rehabilitation treatment.\u00a0Booth\u2019s wife, Jessica Booth, has petitioned for a protection-from-abuse order against the superintendent.<\/p>\n
The preliminary hearing for Kevin Booth at magisterial district court had been scheduled for Tuesday morning after having been continued from a previous Oct. 21 court date. The court continued the preliminary hearing again Tuesday and it is now scheduled for Dec. 2 at 11 a.m.<\/p>\n
At the Oct. 21 meeting, the school board did vote to place an anonymous employee on leave retroactive to Oct. 14, with salary and benefits of that employee would be continued per the employee\u2019s contract, pending further school board action.<\/p>\n
School board member reelected<\/p>\n
According to Luzerne County election results last updated Tuesday afternoon, Pittston Area Board of Education member Tim Cotter will return to the school board after winning a special election for a two-year term. Cotter received 1,130 votes, or 71.7% of the total votes cast in the race. (\u201cTimothy Cotter\u201d received one additional vote, \u201cTimmy Cotter\u201d received three, and \u201cJoseph Timothy Cotter,\u201d a name the Luzerne County Democrats used to refer to Cotter, received one.)<\/p>\n
\u201cMy kids are in the district and I just want to make sure that the district continues on its path of success,\u201d Cotter said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
The school board first appointed Cotter to fill the seat that had been held by the late Frank Lawler. Cotter\u2019s victory in the special election means he will serve for what would have been the remainder of Lawler\u2019s term.<\/p>\n
Because a panel of county judges rejected the Luzerne County Democratic Committee\u2019s attempt to nominate a candidate, there were no candidates running on any major-party ticket in the race. Cotter, along with challenger Art Bobbouine, ran write-in campaigns for the role. Bobbouine received 138 votes. (Arthur Bobbouine received an additional 11 votes and Artie Bobbouine received one.)<\/p>\n
The race seemed to have been slightly affected by spelling errors. \u201cTom Cotter,\u201d \u201cTim Cotton,\u201d \u201cTim Cotten,\u201d \u201cTim Cotterr,\u201d and \u201cTim Kotter\u201d all received votes. Nineteen people whose names were apparently distinct misspellings of \u201cArt Bobbouine\u201d also received votes. Given Cotter\u2019s margin of victory, any curing of these typo-ballots would not change the results. Several other school board candidates received votes in the write-in race and Kevin Booth received one vote.<\/p>\n
The Pittston Area Visionary Team, a political organization that supported the reelection campaigns of Board of Education members John Adonizio, Matt Marriggi, and Marty Quinn, also supported the write-in campaign for Cotter.<\/p>\n
In a post on its Facebook page, the Pittston Area Visionary Team said Cotter is an attorney and certified public accountant and a Pittston Area alumnus. He attended college at Brown University and received his J.D. from Villanova Law School. After graduation, Cotter worked at Deloitte Tax LLP in Philadelphia before relocating back to Northeastern Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
The post said Cotter works with several local nonprofits, including the Brian Cashmere Memorial Scholarship, the Dupont Youth Baseball Association, and the Pittston Arts Council.<\/p>\n
Of the Pittston Area Visionary candidates, only Marriggi lost his reelection bid. Several school officials thanked Marriggi for his service Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a pleasure working with you and I hope to see you back,\u201d Board of Education President Frank Serino said.<\/p>\n
Marriggi responded saying \u201cI\u2019ll be back soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
In other business, the school board rescheduled its reorganization meeting to Dec. 2 at 6 p.m. to Dec. 3 at 6 p.m.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"YATESVILLE \u2014 The uncertainty at the Pittston Area School District continued Tuesday as school leaders withheld comment on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[227,182,803,139,28,178,180,179,802,4490],"class_list":["post-39730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-education","tag-local-news","tag-luzerne-county","tag-news","tag-pennsylvania","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news","tag-top-stories-cvc","tag-yatesville"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39730","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=39730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}