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Timothy Glasspool, the superintendent of Plum School District, speaks during a school board meeting at Oblock Junior High School Tuesday night.
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Plum school official: Majority of board wants superintendent to take paid leave

Michael Henninger/Post-Gazette

Plum school official: Majority of board wants superintendent to take paid leave

The Plum school board appears ready to place superintendent Timothy Glasspool on involuntary paid leave if he doesn't choose to sideline himself, board president Kevin Dowdell said early this morning.

"It looks like he'll be on leave either way," Mr. Dowdell said after a confrontational board meeting that ran more than five hours Tuesday night. It was the board's first public gathering since a grand jury report last week alleged institutional failures in a sexual abuse scandal at Plum High School.

In an executive session halfway through the meeting, Mr. Glasspool "was given an opportunity to decide whether he would be agreeable with administrative leave," Plum solicitor Lee Price said. He said Mr. Glasspool has up to 48 hours to make a decision.

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Timothy Glasspool, right, the superintendent of the Plum School District, and school board president Kevin Dowdell at a school board meeting Tuesday night at Oblock Junior High School.
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A majority of board members would likely vote to force Mr. Glasspool into paid leave if he doesn't go that route voluntarily, Mr. Dowdell said. He declined to say which board members support that approach. More than a dozen local residents called for new leadership during the Tuesday meeting.

Asked whether he would vote to place Mr. Glasspool on leave, Mr. Dowdell said that he would "have to think about it." The school district put its high school principal, Ryan Kociela, on paid leave over the weekend, and Mr. Dowdell said short staffing "will make things difficult."

"We have to do the best we can to operate the school," he said.

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Mr. Glasspool's leave would be in effect while a law firm hired by the board conducts an internal investigation into the scandal, including how employees handled past allegations of inappropriate sexual relationships between high school teachers and students.

Two former teachers there -- Joseph Ruggieri and Jason Cooper -- have pleaded guilty in recent months to having such relationships. They are now in prison for institutional sexual assault.

Levin Legal Group of Huntingdon Valley, Montgomery County, will conduct the school district's review of the matter, the board agreed Tuesday. Its findings could lead to employee dismissals at Plum, although Mr. Price said public school workers are entitled to due process under the law.

Timothy Glasspool, the superintendent of Plum School District, speaks during a school board meeting at Oblock Junior High School Tuesday night.
Adam Smeltz
Plum board gives superintendent leave deadline in wake of grand jury report

The district-backed inquiry will be separate of the grand jury's work, which centered on whether other criminal activity might have occurred. The grand jury report alone is not enough to spark dismissals of public school employees, who are entitled to procedural hearings, Mr. Price has said.

Although grand jurors did not recommend any criminal charges, they indicated that, if current laws had been in place earlier, Mr. Kociela and Mr. Glasspool could have faced charges for failing to report allegations of abuse to the state's ChildLine.

Adam Smeltz: asmeltz@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2625 or on Twitter @asmeltz.

First Published: May 25, 2016, 9:55 a.m.

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