At a recent meeting, the Bethlehem Area School District board of directors denied a charter amendment requested by the Lehigh Valley Dual Language Charter School for a second location. Currently, the school is located on 551 Thomas St., and the second location, to be known as Seton Academy, was at 714 W. Broad St.

According to the district's formal resolution, the charter school's request was denied primarily because it would be housed in a former Roman Catholic school beside SS. Simon and Jude Parish, a nonprofit religious organization. The district holds that the state's Charter School Law requires that a charter school must be nonsectarian in all operations and prohibits a charter school from "display[ing] religious objects and symbols on the premises of the charter school."

The building proposed for the charter school's second location has the Christian cross carved into the building structure.

The charter school had agreed in writing to remain nonsectarian.

According to the school district's resolution, the intent of the charter school law is "to avoid exposing students to items of a religious nature and to maintain the separation of church and state." It continued by saying the Charter Appeals Board, "has held that a charter school's display of religious symbols is likely to be associated with the charter school, even where there is no evidence that the charter school paid for the religious symbols, and so violates the CSL (Charter School Law)."

The school district said in the resolution that the cross clearly imbues religious symbolism and any passersby or visitors would likely associate the charter school with this symbol and Christianity, a direct contravention of state law.

"LVDLCS, as a public school, cannot be directed to adhere to the values of a Christian church in developing curricular offerings and pedagogy," the district said.

Since the matter had been discussed in a public meeting in September, the school board did not make further comment on the matter. Instead, they discussed busing issues due to conflicting school schedules between the public school system and the charter schools. The district is required to provide busing for the charter schools, but the conflicting schedules require the district to bus at times they would not be running the buses, which adds costs for fuel, staffing and maintenance.

Among the various suggested presented by the board members, one included creating a transportation fee to cover these costs if busing is needed on days that the school district is not open. Nothing was decided.

In other business, the school board approved placing the Monocacy School building and grounds for sale. The asking price is $395,000, but still needs to be approved by the Court of Common Pleas of Northampton County. The building is located at 1816 Main St. and is not being used. The district said in its agenda that the funds would be used for other projects and the sale would eliminate the cost of maintaining the building.

The district also announced the hiring of Nicholas Takacs and Julie Bailey.

Takacs will start Dec. 1 as the district's chief technology officer. He will be responsible for the development, implementation and operation of the district's technology system. Rick Wilson, a senior consultant with Weidenhammer, has been filling in as interim chief technology officer.

Takacs has been a senior information technology executive for 10 years and is the founder of ConservaTech LLC, an information technology consulting company. He also works as an adjunct professor of computer science at DeSales University and writes for industry conferences, the district said in a press release.

The district has also hired Julie Bailey as executive director of the Bethlehem Area Education Foundation. The position is part-time. She said her position involves working with the district to raise awareness about all that they are doing and to help raise funds for special projects. At the meeting, Shannon Patrick, vice president of the board, said of the appointment, "What a huge find. We are very, very fortunate to have you."

Bailey has been active in the school district and as a community advocate for four years. Some of her work has been with the Hanover Parent Teacher Association, Cub Scouts, chairperson of the Book Fair and the Hanover Community Center.

Having only begun the position in November, Bailey said she is still getting acclimated to the job, but her short term goal is to increase awareness of all that is going on in the school district.