Whenever the Scranton School District needs a new superintendent, the school board vows an exhaustive national search that usually runs out of gas before it reaches the Interstate 81 on-ramp.
Charges dropped against former Scranton school officials in lead and asbestos investigation wnep.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from wnep.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Jun. 11—The case against three former Scranton School District employees, who state investigators last year said ignored lead and asbestos problems and put children at risk, will not head to a preliminary hearing next week. Attorneys for the former employees — Superintendent Alexis Kirijan, Ed.D., Chief Operating Officer Jeff Brazil and daytime maintenance foreman Joseph Slack — will appear in .
Charges filed against three current and former Scranton School District officials accused of endangering children and the public are based on a flawed investigation that is wholly unsupported by evidence, attorneys for the defendants said in court papers.
In a sharply worded legal brief, attorneys Frank Nocito and Brian McMonagle contend the state attorney generalâs officeâs filing of charges against their client, Alexis Kirijan, Ed.D., and her co-defendants, Jeff Brazil and Joseph Slack, is a âmiscarriage of justice.â
Facing the reality it has no case, the office now seeks to forgo a preliminary hearing because prosecutors fear the charges will be dismissed outright, the attorneys said.
New mayor takes Scrantonâs reins
This is not how Paige Gebhardt Cognetti envisioned her first year as Scrantonâs mayor.
Elected in November 2019 to fill the final two years of former Mayor Bill Courtrightâs term after his guilty plea to federal corruption charges, Cognetti took office Jan. 6 and had to start working almost immediately to put out figurative fires.
The first was dealing with the potentially devastating Lackawanna County Court decision in a tax lawsuit that threatened to drive the city into insolvency, followed in short order by the burgeoning COVID-19 crisis that prompted her to declare a public health emergency in mid-March.