Nazareth Area School Board Seat Up for Grabs

Anyone interested in filling a temporary Nazareth Area School Board seat that represents Bushkill Township, Tatamy and a portion of Palmer Township has until June 11 to apply.

The vacant seat representing the district’s Region 1 was held by Chris Miller of Bushkill Township, who resigned May 21. Candidates must live in Region 1.

Miller’s resignation came a day after he left a school board meeting while it was still in progress.

At a special meeting Tuesday night, Superintendent Dennis Riker reviewed the procedure to fill Miller’s seat:

• Newspaper advertisements about the open seat will run Thursday.
• The application deadline is June 11.
• The board will hold a public interview and appointment process at its June 17 meeting.
• Riker also asked the board to decide which one of its own should replace Miller as a board representative to the Career Institute of Technology operating committee. CIT, the so-called “vo-tech,” is in Forks Township.

The person picked for Miller’s school board seat will serve at least through November. Earlier in November, voters will pick someone to serve out the remaining two years of Miller’s term.

The person picked to serve next month has the option to run in November.

At Tuesday’s meeting, six of the remaining eight board members were present and voted unanimously to accept Miller’s resignation. No one commented before voting.

Absent was Maurice Heller, who was defeated in his re-election bid in last Tuesday’s primary election, and board president Lorin Bradley.

Heller will continue to serve on the board through November.

In an interview with Patch after his resignation, Miller said he already had been thinking about resigning before walking out of the May 20 board meeting.

He cited his opposition to the state’s proposed Common Core standards and his feeling that taxpayers’ money is being wasted, mostly because of state intervention. He also said it wasn’t easy being what he called the board’s lone conservative voice.

He said the May 20 incident that put him over the edge was when the board broke from its meeting to watch several student presentations in the nearby gym. Miller was present for the part of the meeting before the gym presentations.

He said he has long felt the board “should stick to its business,” perhaps scheduling student presentations after agenda items are completed.

”Three or four presentations are wasting the time of taxpayers. I said ‘enough is enough’ and I left.” He called the incident "the last call."

In the interview, Miller also explained what happened when he spoke in a hallway with second-grade teacher April Silimperi, who led a presentation during the first part of the board meeting on a digital history project.

The second-graders did research on famous people and portrayed the people in individual videos. Two of the students—portraying Underground Railroad leader Harriet Tubman and Elvis Presley—made presentations at the board meeting.

Silimperi said the digital project reflected Common Core standards. One of them is having students use multimedia components in projects.

Miller said he told Silimperi that none of the nation’s Founding Fathers were on a list of people portrayed by the students. He said Silimperi told him she would include the Founding Fathers in future programs.

But board president Bradley, speaking after the meeting, described the conversation quite differently. He said he did not witness it but was told by several people who did that Miller confronted the teacher and criticized her for using taxpayers' money on the project.

Bradley reacted angrily about the “confrontation.” He said he was not against Miller expressing opposing views but that the proper forum for those views are board and committee meetings.