Standard-Speaker from Hazleton, Pennsylvania • Page 5

Hazleton Standard-Speaker, Friday, March 18, 1994 5 School district wants out of QBE's first wave i 7 4.. 1 Hazleton as it looks today, where, St i "Jk- "If you have the opportunity to volunteer into a program, you should have the opportunity to volunteer out," Marnell stated. Board member Deidre Jago countered that, to her understanding, the district did not volunteer to be placed in Phase 1, but was included at the Education Department's request. Director Edward Nowak, who joined Jago in casting the negative votes, took a position that submitting a request would be redundant since Skok already has said a reassignment will not granted. The board meeting was held in the auditorium at Hazleton Area High School, where several classes of students were given an opportunity to watch the school board deliberate.

In other business during the lengthy session, the board unanimously accepted a compromise plan for new student grouping patterns in the secondary schools. The "mastery organization pattern" provides for students to be grouped, according to their abilities, into accelerated, developmental or support levels. However, the plan provides flexibility to allow students ho demonstrate the necessary competency to move to a higher level, and also offers a full gamut of options for the placement of special education students. Principals of the individual schools also will have latitude in interpreting the plan, so long as they remain within the guidelines and intent of the school board. Also adopted on a unanimous vote was an adjusted school calendar that provides for the makeup of 13 days of instruction that were lost to snowstorms and severe weather.

According to Marnell, the new calendar pushes the term closing to June 23, but will not require students to attend class on any previously established holidays. The district's solicitors were directed to file appropriate legal action to test the validity of personnel contracts awarded by the former school board in November, shortly before three "lame duck" directors left office. As amended, the resolution specifically names only the contract of Edward Lyba, director of pupil services, but also will apply to any other administrative personnel who received contracts at the time. Eliminated from the directive because they received contracts in August, prior to the fall general election, were director of transportation Fred Mariano, superintendent of buildings and grounds By BOB SALJTZA Standard-Speaker Staff Writer The state Department of Education says it will not allow Hazleton Area School District to move to the end of the line on Outcome-Based Education, but the school board decided Thursday to try anyhow. At a rare morning meeting, the board voted to submit a written request to the Education Department asking that the district be placed into Phase 3 of the Strategic Planning Program.

The district is included in Phase 1 of the statewide changeover, which means the local planning process must be completed and submitted to Harrisburg by next September. District personnel who have been planning for almost a year to implement OBE say they are on target to meet the deadline and an extension of time likely will not be needed. But a majority of the board's nine members believe Hazleton Area would benefit in a number of ways by getting out of the first wave of districts required to implement the controversial plan. For one thing, many parents have expressed deep concerns about OBE that could be addressed more fully if the district were in the final phase, which would not require a completed plan until 1996. At the recommendation of director William McCann, the board voted 7-2 to file a written request with the Education Department.

Prior to the vote, however, superintendent of schools Dr. Geraldine Shepperson said she had been in contact with the Education Department and was informed reassignment to the final phase will not be permitted. "We will not approve a phase change," Dr. Joseph A. Skok, chief of the Division of School-Based Improvement in the Education Department's Bureau of Curriculum Academic Services, wrote to Shepperson in a letter dated Wednesday.

"The cadre of districts presently assigned to Phase 1 must be maintained in order to avoid an inordinate number of districts from being lumped in any one of the three phases," Skok stated. Board president Thomas Marnell suggested that, despite Skok's assertion, the district should submit a written request to determine if the Education Department has absolute authority in the matter, or if state law prevails. Andrew Benyo and his assistant, Joseph Cortese, and HAHS custodial supervisor William An-tolick. Voting against the move were Jago, Nowak and director Edward Pane. Established on split votes were two new administrative positions, chief of security and staff assistant to the business manager and to the assistant business manager.

Nowak, Jago and Pane argued that the actions violated a district policy established in 1980 because Shepperson had not been consulted on the need for the positions. Nowak tried unsuccessfully to postpone a vote on the chief of security measure until Shepperson, the school principals and other administrative personnel had been consulted. Director Thomas Cipriano joined the opponents on the security chief vote. In other business, the board authorized solicitation of bids for the sale of three former junior high school buildings: D.A. Har-man, H.F.

Grebey and Rock Glen. Bids are to be opened April 21. The directors gave Robert Nemeth, of West Hazleton, who previously was awarded a contract to purchase the Harman building, until April 20 to close the transaction. According to Marnell, Nemeth failed to follow through on the purchase because of a board stipulation that limited use of the building. The restriction since has been removed.

Also to be solicited are bids on all supplies and materials for the 1994-95 school year, and on school buses for the transportation department. In personnel matters, the board agreed to enter into an agreement with Al Parrell, a teacher who was injured on the job at the Hazleton Area Career Center. The agreement will provide full pay and benefits to Parrell for one year beginning last Sept. 1. In return, Parrell will turn his workers' compensation checks over to the district.

Four athletic coaches were appointed. Brian Kachurak was named assistant girls' soccer coach; Lou Gunderman, temporary head boys' track coach, and Paul Junas and Richard McGettingan, both temporary assistant boys' track coaches. Joseph Rush was hired as a full-time maintenance employee; Danielle Swirble, as a part-time teacher aide, and Corine D'Orta, as a two-hour cafeteria worker at Drums Elementary School. The status of Thomas T. Fox was changed from part-time to substitute driver.

The board accepted the resignations of Thomas M. Davidick, a custodian, and Roxanne Paladino, an aide at HAHS. This was the site, West Fourth Street, Hazleton, as it 30 years ago, when Marise Chiverella was last seen alive. I "1 This is West Fourth Street in was last seen alive. Murder (Continued from page 1) afternoon in an abandoned stripping in the Milnesville section of Hazle Township, her scarf stuffed into her throat, her hands and her feet bound with her own shoelaces.

This week a Hazleton relative who apparently saw Chiverella just minutes before her abduction that the morning was unusually windy and bitterly cold. Helen Slattery, of 212 W. Fourth said she had just gotten her own three school-age children out of the house and on their way 1o St. Joseph's School when she saw Chiverella hurrying by. "It was so windy," Slattery remembered.

"She (Chiverella) was hustling along. She was so cold." The woman is a cousin to Chiverella's mother and knew the girl well. The victim also was a classmate of Slattery's son. "I don't know why," Slattery said, "but for a moment I felt like going to the door and calling her in for a while to warm up." Chiverella was walking at the time on the sidewalk fronting the Slattery house, which is situated on the southwest corner of Fourth and Church streets, just two blocks from the school. "I'm so sorry I didn't," Slattery lamented.

Was Slattery the last person to see Chiverella before her fatal encounter with someone still unknown? "I think so," the woman said. According to Fleisher, the Vidocq Society is convinced that Chiverella was abducted and slain by the same individual who raped and murdered a Bristol, Bucks County, girl a year and a half earlier. The body of Carol Ann Dougherty was discovered by her father on the landing of the choir loft in St. Mark's Roman Catholic Church in Bristol on Oct. 22, 1962.

Dougherty, also 9, was on her way to the town library when she stopped at the church, presumably to pray. Several hours later the Catholic school girl was found raped and 'strangled, apparently with a belt. An article of clothing was stuffed into her mouth. An intensive investigation followed the discovery of Dougherty's body, but her killer never was found. The Vidocq Society was led into a search for Chiverella's murderer as a result of a police decision to mount a new hunt for Dougherty's slayer.

The Philadelphia-based society is an association of renowned criminal investigators, forensic specialists, prosecutors and other experts from around the world who pool their talents to assist police in the investigation of unsolved crimes. The society volunteered to help the Bristol Police Department when it reopened the so-called Loft Murder" case a year ago. The investigation was to in clude a review of similar crimes, a category into which the Chiverella case fell. When the Dougherty case was over to a Bucks County investigative grand jury last fall, however, the Vidocq Society was 30 years ago, Marise Chiverella Like Fleisher, however, some state police investigators continue to believe the murders are tied together. According to the Bucks County Courier Times newspaper, the state police Criminal Investigation Assessment Unit in Har-risburg is comparing details of the two slayings.

The newspaper quoted Cpl. Malcolm Murphy, who heads the special unit, as saying the unit reviews reports on unsolved murders, eventually working up a personality assessment of the killer. "It can give us his age, his race, where he could have lived or worked, the type of work he did," Murphy said. The Courier Times also reported that state police from the Bethlehem barracks are reinvestigating the Dougherty murder. Aside from the many similarities in crime detail, a haunting circumstance appears to support the possibility of a common killer in the Dougherty and Chiverella cases.

On the night before Chiverella was murdered, some 1,000 people from Bristol were in Hazleton watching a high school basketball playoff game in the St. Joseph's School gymnasium. Law enforcement authorities at the time were not able to establish that Dougherty's killer was among the Bristol High School fans, that he remained overnight in Hazleton, and that he abducted, raped and murdered Chiverella the following morning. of-state trash shipments continued to surge into Pennsylvania, many of them benefited from the political generosity of waste companies. Federal records show that Browning-Ferris Industries and Waste Management Inc.

two of the nation's largest trash-hauling and disposal companies have given current Pennsylvania House and Senate members more than $69,000 since 1985. More than $29,000 has gone to members supporting the new bill. removed from the investigation. According to Frank Peranteau, borough police chief in Bristol, the Dougherty case "still is in the hands of the grand jury. The special jury, which sits in Doylestown, the county seat, has been credited with solving at least a dozen murder cases over a 10-year-period.

After the grand jury took over the Bristol probe, Fleisher and his associates in the Vidocq Society turned their attention to the Hazleton murder. According to Fleisher, the review of the Chiverella case is being conducted in cooperation with the Pennsylvania State Police, who had led the original investigation. The Vidocq Society recently spoke with Chiverella's mother, according to a reliable source. The slain girl's parents now reside in Mountaintop. Although 1 Yi years and some 100 highway miles separate the Dougherty and Chiverella slay-ings, Fleisher said he is convinced that both girls died at the hands of the same individual.

"Oh, definitely," the commissioner said, explaining: "I don't believe in coincidence. The possibility of a common killer had been considered by police in 1964 because of similarities in the two slayings, but a connection never was made. In 1966 the FBI examined brown pubic hairs found on the bodies of the two girls in an attempt to find a match, but the results of the tests were W. Hazleton gets city truck traffic Legislators got cash for promoting trash State police stop defendant from escaping A Hazleton man who tried to escape state police following a hearing Wednesday before District Justice Thomas Sharkey is in the county correctional facility in Wilkes-Barre under $10,000 cash bail. The defendant, Dale R.

Kisthardt, 20, of East Diamond Avenue, charged with stalking, harassment and defiant criminal trespass, kicked his way through the door of Sharkey's courtroom at about 11 a.m. when Sharkey modified his bail by changing it from being free on his own recognizance to $1,000 cash bail. When the bail modification was announced, Kisthardt told Sharkey he wasn't going to jail," and bolted for and through the door, only to be stopped by three troopers, including the arresting officer, Brian Tobin, and Trooper Daniel Gentile, both criminal investigators assigned to Troop headquarters in West Hazleton. After being subdued, Kisthardt was returned to the courtroom, where Sharkey increased the bail and ordered him committed. Kisthardt appeared before Sharkey at 10:30 a.m.

to face charges stemming from the March 8 arrest for allegedly harassing Tiki Grady, 20, of Stockton No. 6, by making several telephone calls to her home earlier that day. Kisthardt was not represented by legal counsel and offered no testimony in his own defense. "As of now, it's too early to tell what might happen," borough council President Robert Fiume said. "I would think it would cause some problems.

We have to be a little careful and see what happens, see how frequently (the trucks) come through." Because of bridge construction, trucks coming up Route 924 orignally were supposed to make a right on Route 93 (Broad Street), through downtown Hazleton, all the way to the Heights Beltway and back over to Route 309, just south of Hazleton. A trucker's permit tells him which route to travel. "Their permits said to take Route 93 to 309," Quigley said. "All the trucks were doing, was taking 93 and making a right on Church Street. But none of them could make it under the overpass.

I guess they were taking the short cut. But it shouldn't be an issue any longer, at least in the city. Once the long-awaited Southwest Beltway becomes reality in the next couple years, Quigley hopes truck traffic could be eliminated from center-city. "I don't know if the beltway would have been the resolution in this particular instance," Quigley said. "One of the benefits of the beltway is that it's gonna get the truck traffic out of the downtown, which can't come a momemt too soon." J.P.

Mascaro and Sons in Hanover Township near the Nanticoke border charges less to accept a ton of recyclables than a landfill. The tipping fee at Mascara's is $25 compared to $49.05 at the Keystone Landfill, which has a contract to accept from all Luzerne's municipalities, Latinski said. Butler is thinking of starting a program even though state law doesn't require it to recycle. By DAVE SEAMON Standard-Speaker Staff Writer For Hazleton police officers, the scene became all too familiar. Sec an oversized truck head south on Church Street (Route 309), only to get stuck under a railroad overpass at Beech Street.

"We ended up backing trucks through," Mayor John Quigley said. "It was just tying up our police department for the whole day shift. All we were doing was escorting trucks through. But that apparently has been resolved." Indeed. Ronald Bonacci, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation's District 4-0 traffic engineer, on Thursday told city officials that trucks shouldn't have to travel south through the city on Route 309.

"We were advised by Penn-DOT that (after they get off Route 924) they are going to go west on Route 93, out to the Airport Beltway, over the beltway to (Route) 309 and take Route 309 north," Quigley said. Bonacci and Hazleton Police Chief James Joseph were unavailable for comment last night. While truck traffic should ease in the city, West Hazleton officials probably will see more rigs on Broad Street and Susquehanna Boulevard. ski said Thursday. Thirty-seven of the 76 municipalities in Luzerne offer some kind of recycling program, Latinski said.

State law requires 16 of those municipalities to recycle because of their total population or population density. The rest recycle to trim hauling costs and save resources. A recycling center operated by WASHINGTON (AP) Pennsylvania House members are talking tough about the garbage industry. But it hasn't always been a troublesome relationship. A bipartisan group of lawmakers Thursday introduced legislation intended to limit out-of-state waste from entering local landfills a bill certain to create friction with waste-exporting states like New Jersey as well as the industry.

What the lawmakers didn't say is that over the years, while out- James H. Patrick, the township's manager, said Butler will study the pluses and minuses of four ways to run a recycling program. Township workers could collect recyclables in township trucks. Butler could hire a company to collect recyclables throughout the township. Residents could bring recyclables to a drop-off.

Or the township could Butler Township to explore recycling program require all haulers that collect regular garbage to offer recycling to their customers. W. Edward Latinski said municipalities in Luzerne County, where he is the recycling coordinator, have considered all four of the options that Butler is weighing. "Not too many do it the same way. Each one has different variations to fit its own needs," Latin- i By KENT JACKSON Standard-Speaker Staff Writer The supervisors of Butler Township plan to talk with garbage haulers about starting a recycling program.

"Most haulers are into other programs in other municipalities. We'd like to find out what's Supervisor Tony 'Klinetop said when the supcr- visors met on Monday..