Board: Library Will Remain Part of District, For Now

While the option was taken off the table late in the meeting, members of Phoenixville Area School Board found they could “completely divest” themselves of the district-owned Phoenixville Public Library.

School board members gathered as a committee of the whole for the second time Thursday night to discuss the future of the Phoenixville Public Library. At its first meeting back in January, the group came up with questions for the district’s solicitor, and he answered them with a brief that board members paged through during the meeting.

Solicitor Ron Williams was also on hand to answer questions. One of those questions answered something David Ziev, chairman of the committee, had previously thought couldn’t happen. The school district would be able to completely “divest” itself of the public library, despite the Carnegie agreement and all other agreements. One requirement would be that the library would have to remain “sustainable and viable,” a phrase used many times throughout Thursday’s meeting.

Ziev said the way he sees it, the district had two options: completely get rid of the library but don’t cut off funding or keep the library and decide how much power the school board and administrators want to have over it.

Board Member Betsy Ruch said even though Williams said it would be possible for the district to get rid of the library, she wondered why board members would consider that option.

“All the discussion we had was divest, divest, divest,” Ruch said.

She asked why the district would want to, and what the advantages would be.

Ziev said it was more about looking at all options. In the past, the board had always heard that because of agreements from the past, the district could never get rid of the library. He said the talk of getting rid of the library was more to get the facts out on the table so the board could decide how to proceed.

“Once we have all the facts on the table, it really comes down to a decision,” Ziev said.

Another discussion that came up was spinning the library off into its own not-for-profit entity, still under the school district’s umbrella. This would create a “wall of protection,” as one board member put it, between the school district and the library. Williams confirmed that doing that may help protect the district, or would at least make it more difficult for a plaintiff filing a suit.

While the meeting was not allowed to be a voting meeting, members took a “consensus” near the end. One member, Kevin Pattinson, was absent, but most of the others agreed that the library shouldn’t be completely spun off.

Paul Slaninka, who serves as school board president, said he wouldn’t support spinning off the library. Treasurer Josh Gould agreed, and said that if the library is let go and the district just cuts a check to it every year, he wouldn’t feel like he’s doing his duty to his constituents. Dan Cushing said he’d go even further—not only does he not want to spin off the library, but he feels things should stay as they are.

Ruch agreed with Slaninka and Gould, and Board Vice President Jan Potts said she couldn’t make a decision yet. Board Member Ken Butera said he’d like to have a “buffer organization” in place as a layer of protection, and Board Member Irfan Khan agreed with that, saying he would hope the district could protect itself from liability.

Ziev said the district should keep the library “but definitely not the way we do today.”

The next step for the discussion will be committees, and then the group will gather again as a whole to discuss the issues at a board workshop meeting.

Phoenixville Patch will have more on this meeting, including the possible effects on the $1 million in planned library renovations.