BVA sets date for town hall on future projects

It will be held Oct. 29 in the high school auditorium.

The Belle Vernon Area school district announced Monday that it will hold a town hall in late October.

The town hall will be for discussion of future school construction projects, renovations or anything else that might need updated.

“I hope that we get as much participation as possible,” Superintendent Timothy Glasspool said. “We’ll get a survey link. You know, people are busy and they can’t necessarily make a school board meeting, but want to share their thoughts and ideas. So we’ll make sure we aggregate all those results.”

The event will take place at 6 p.m. Oct. 29 at Belle Vernon Area High School. Glasspool said the district will release a memo outlining the details of the town hall and its topics.

“We’ll put a brief presentation together,” he said, “and want to hear what the thoughts and ideas of other citizens are, as far as building projects or renovations, or where we should put our time and energy in the next two to five years, as well as long term.”

The district will create a survey in which people from the community can share their thoughts and ideas.

“There’s some open-ended questions that we’ll have over there,” Glasspool said. “It’ll be brief, you know, hopefully keep it to about 10 questions, we hope to start the conversation, not necessarily have everything figured out by October 29. So it’s a beginning not an end.”

PAES program approved

Also Monday, the board approved its agreement with Life’sWork in Monessen for the district to use its Practical Assessment Exploration System lab.

The PAES program is designed to help students in the district improve their work skills through a simulated lab. The lab is located at Life’sWork location in Monessen, and the district will be responsible for providing transportation for the students who are participating.

The agreement is an extension of BVA’s long-standing contract with Life’sWork.

It will continue through June 6, 2025, and the district will pay $1,665 per student per nine weeks.

The board also:

• Approved a School Resource Officers addendum with Rostraver Township for the 2024-25 school year.

• Amended the district’s paving project from the original price of $130,422.25 to $138,677.13.

• Approved the purchase of a new oven at Marion Elementary from Ka-Tom Restaurant Supply for $22,886.37.

• Created and will aim to fill a new speech language pathologist position to go along with its two current SLPs.