Despite 3-hours of public comment asking for firings, board votes 6-1 to accept resignations
By Kyle Carrozza, Staff Writer, The Times
A packed and angry crowd overflowed the auditorium at Coatesville Area School, Tuesday, calling for the firing of former Superintendent of Schools Richard Como and former Athletic Director Jame Donato, after it was determined the two had exchanged numerous racially charged text messages.
CALN – The Coatesville Area School District Board of Education voted 6-1 on Tuesday night to allow the resignations of former Superintendent Richard Como and former Athletic Director James Donato.
After three hours of public comment from taxpayers, parents, students, administrators, and former staff calling for the resignation of school board members, demanding the firing of Como and Donato, and asking questions about the DA’s ongoing investigation, School Board President Neil Campbell said that he never reconsidered his decision to vote in favor of allowing Como and Donato to resign.
“I’ll tell you right now, if I felt I did something wrong, I’d step down immediately,” he said. “I know that I’m doing the best for this community. They may not know it right now, but they will down the road, and that is part of the healing process.
The lone dissenting vote was Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor — who is also the president of the Coatesville NAACP — who spent much of the night under fire for her conduct in the matter.
Reading a prepared statement, Campbell said that termination would require legal action, an expense that the school board did not want to incur.
Campbell also said that the board was acting in the community’s best interest by not explaining the details of the DA’s investigation.
“I was basically—and this entire board—was upholding what the DA (Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan), we felt, needed in order to do this investigation properly,” he said. “That’s exactly what we did, and we still to this day feel that feel we did the best that we had to do for this community.”
Campbell’s response comes in the wake of Hogan’s comments that he never told the board that they could not discuss the investigation.
Acting Coatesville Area School District Superintendent Dr. Angelo Romaniello reads a statement. Many of his words were met with jeers and boos.
“We did not put constraints on them,” Hogan said. “They were free to discuss the text messages.”
During his statement, Campbell said that Como and Donato would not receive “one red cent” from the district. He said that whether or not Como receives a pension is not up to the school board but is decided by the Pennsylvania State Retirement System.
Campbell also mentioned that the DA will be looking into alleged kickbacks involving the football team, which was met with cheers by the standing room-only audience.
Tuesday night’s meeting heard impassioned opinions from many members of the community. While many speakers called the resignations of the entire board, much of the public’s anger was directed at acting Superintendent Dr. Angelo Romaniello, Board Solicitor James Ellison, and School Board Member Dr. Tonya Thames Taylor.
“She’s wearing two hats, and she should be out here with us [the members of the NAACP],” said NAACP member Jimmy Jackson.
Tuesday night’s meeting also revealed that acting Assistant Superintendent Dr. Teresa Powell worked with District IT Specialist Abdullah Hawa to reveal the racist text messages.
“I absolutely love my job, but I love being a person with integrity even more,” she said to applause from the audience.
Even in the agitated atmosphere of the meeting, some people focused on positives. Former Pastor John Carlson offered prayer, while others called for unity from residents and praised the district’s students and teachers.
“That doesn’t define our student body,” Student School Board Representative Paul Draper said of the text messages. “They [the students] succeed in life not in spite of the education they receive here but because of the education they receive here.”
