UPPER SAUCON TWP., Pa. — Southern Lehigh School Board ousted its president Monday night in a heated and chaotic meeting that the former leader said didn’t honor her due process rights.
In a 5-4 vote, school Director Emily Gehman was removed from her role as board president on charges of “neglect of duty, incompetence, intemperance and improper conduct.”
Gehman responded to some of the charges against her, calling them “false,” but said she would wait to fully defend herself until she had a proper hearing.
The former school board president's ousting came four months after the district’s superintendent was placed on administrative leave, following public critiques of his leadership by Gehman at a February meeting.
The board hasn't publicly given a reason for Superintendent Michael Mahon's leave.
But the discussion at Monday’s meeting shed some light on Mahon’s situation, including mention of a fraud complaint against the superintendent by a district employee.
“I’ve served this community with integrity through many unprecedented situations for the past decade."Emily Gehman, Southern Lehigh school director
In board meetings both before and since Mahon’s leave, it’s been clear there’s division among school directors over his hiatus and other matters.
At the June 9 board meeting, five school directors voted to have the district’s solicitor draft charges against Gehman, who was absent from that meeting due to an illness.
Gehman said at Monday’s meeting that some of her colleagues have privately discussed removing her from her leadership role multiple times before, too.
“I’ve served this community with integrity through many unprecedented situations for the past decade,” Gehman said.
“I’ve taken the time to understand policy and law that govern public education, and I've acted to the best of my ability … in the best interest of this community.”
“It has been exhausting during this board presidency tenure protecting this district from liability,” she added.
Removal proceeds
School directors Nicole King, Stephen Maund, Mary Joy Reinartz, Melissa Torba and Christopher Wayock voted to remove Gehman. The same school directors subsequently voted to install Maund as board president until the board’s December reorganization meeting.
Vice President Candi Kruse, as well as school directors Eric Boyer and Timothy Kearney voted against Gehman’s removal, along with Gehman herself. Those four school directors also voted against Maund’s appointment, citing their concerns with the removal and appointment process.
Kearney said school directors who’ve criticized Gehman in the past were using the district’s current precarious situation to their advantage as a way to nix Gehman as board leader.
“It seems like a two-year-long and multiple-attempt way to get something done that you wanted in the first place,” Kearney said.
Gehman, who was re-elected to the board in 2023, was chosen to serve a one-year term as board president in both December 2023 and again in December 2024.
Her second term as board leader was cut short with Monday’s removal vote, but she remains a school director.
Boyer, Kearney, Kruse and Gehman were not contacted or consulted in the process of drafting charges against Gehman.
Those charges accused Gehman of failing to properly communicate district issues to fellow school directors while attempting to manage them “unilaterally” herself.
Gehman was notified via the district’s solicitor last Wednesday of the charges brought against her and of her right to a hearing regarding them. She stated her intention to exercise that right while also maintaining her rights to legal counsel and witnesses, she said.
Hearing confusion
Attorney John Freund said Monday that the hearing would occur in the midst of the regular school board meeting that evening.
Gehman was shocked by the proposed hearing procedure, she said, citing that the charges were not made public, nor was a hearing advertised ahead of the meeting.
She also said the attorney's direction to her on the potential removal process did not directly mention a hearing scheduled for Monday.
Gehman thought a removal vote would take place Monday, and a hearing would occur at a later date if her colleagues voted to remove her from the leadership position at all, she said.
Freund said Gehman and the board were adequately notified of the hearing procedure.
But school directors Boyer, Kearney and Kruse said they were also surprised to learn the hearing would take place Monday.
“What does that even mean? ... How is anybody supposed to come prepared for this?”Eric Boyer, Southern Lehigh school director
Other school directors refused to consider holding the hearing next month instead so that Gehman could secure an attorney and prepare.
Gehman and others argued the board agenda didn’t properly advertise a hearing. Rather, the agenda only listed “Discussion/Action Board Leadership.”
“What does that even mean?” Boyer said. “How is anybody supposed to come prepared for this?”
Kruse said holding the hearing Monday without proper advertisement was against “the spirit” of open meetings laws.
“The idea is to have motions that are detailed enough that the public can read the motion and come comment specifically on the motion,” she said.
Despite those objections, the board moved forward with a discussion and vote on Gehman’s removal that some directors said they considered a hearing.
However, Gehman did not consider Monday’s meeting a hearing, she said, and is waiting for an opportunity to defend herself.
"I don’t agree with any of this, and I think it’s wrong," she said.
About 10 residents spoke Monday during public comment in support of Gehman and against her removal.
“I have always known [Gehman] to follow the rules, policies and procedures to the letter of the law,” Kyle Gangewere, a resident and former school director, said during public comment.
Gangewere also criticized the board for using tax dollars to pay attorneys to spend time on the removal process instead of other district issues.
Some residents also criticized the lack of advertisement of a hearing.
Charges made public
The specific charges brought against Gehman include a claim that she didn’t notify fellow school directors about a fraud complaint brought against Superintendent Michael Mahon by the district’s human resources director Ethan Ake-Little.
According to the district’s policy, fraud concerns regarding the superintendent should be directed to the board president.
Ake-Little's complaint alleged Mahon engaged in fraud related to his “implementation and interpretation” of the district’s Act 93 agreement with administrators, according to the charges brought against Gehman.
Those charges were read publicly at Monday's board meeting by Wayock.
Act 93 provides administrators, such as principals, with discussion opportunities to negotiate their salaries and benefits with their districts as a group.
Following his complaint, Ake-Little was recently suspended and given a separation agreement for consideration, according to school directors.
Boyer, Kearney, Kruse and Gehman said they were not notified about the separation agreement being drafted by the district’s attorney, and only learned about it when a local news organization reached out last week.
LehighValleyNews.com reached out to Ake-Little before Monday’s board meeting to request comment on his situation with the district. He did not respond.
Additionally, when LehighValleyNews.com contacted Superintendent Mahon on Tuesday, he declined to comment on any topics regarding Southern Lehigh, including his leave and the fraud complaint.
Assistant Superintendent Karen Trinkle has been acting as substitute superintendent while Mahon is on leave.
Gehman’s public critique of Mahon's performance was among the reasons for her removal listed in the drafted charges.
Act 93 meetings, PSBA policies mentioned in claims
Additionally, the charges against Gehman include claims that she excluded fellow board members from Act 93 meetings called to investigate the fraud complaint against Mahon.
Further, the charges state Gehman created a panel to create a new Act 93 agreement that included herself, Vice President Kruse and Ake-Little, the administrator who filed the fraud complaint.
School Director Torba said that action created a conflict of interest. She also said Gehman has a “troubling pattern of unilateral decision-making.”
Torba, who ran on a slate with Gehman in the last election, claimed that Gehman deliberately delayed an Act 93 meeting until after Mahon was placed on leave, so she would be free to investigate the agreement and fraud complaint.
Gehman said those accusations were false. She said she was “following solicitor advice the entire time,” including during any time periods that included delays.
Gehman said she would further address those claims in a hearing.
“Ms. Gehman’s been put in some pretty tough situations, and I pray that if I were put in those situations, I would be able to have what I think is the poise that Emily Gehman provided the district,” Vice President Kruse said.
Additionally, Gehman said Torba and Wayock both violated whistleblower protection laws by publicly citing Ake-Little’s complaint against the superintendent at Monday's meeting.
The charges against Gehman also accused her of working with Ake-Little on the policy committee to revise policies by adjusting the templates provided by the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.
“While appearing routine on the surface, it reflects a deliberate and concerning effort to significantly shift operational oversight and decision-making authority away from district administration."Nicole King, Southern Lehigh school director
Those alleged revisions were to policies on the district’s employment, assignment and transfer of staff, as well as telework.
King said an attorney reviewed those policies and wrote up a 17-page memo outlining how the revisions were “flawed, noncompliant, duplicative and presented substantial legal and operational risk to the district.”
School director King also said those proposed revisions happened immediately after Mahon was placed on administrative leave.
“While appearing routine on the surface, it reflects a deliberate and concerning effort to significantly shift operational oversight and decision-making authority away from district administration,” King said.
Kearney, who also sat on the since-paused policy committee, said Gehman was not “a one-person decision-maker in that process.”
He also said the board has approved policies in the past without solicitor review, which isn’t required. Additionally, he said it’s not a requirement to stick exactly with PSBA’s template for district policies.
The charges against Gehman also accuse her of leaking documents and emails to local news organizations, including an email with Language Learning Network’s CEO Sean Kreyling.
Gehman denied that claim.
At Monday's meeting, district parent Kim Jaramillo said she was the one who shared the Language Learning Network email with local news organizations. She obtained it through a Right-to-Know request, she said.
Jaramillo, who is also a Democratic candidate for the Southern Lehigh School Board in the upcoming election, shared a copy of the email with LehighValleyNews.com.
It shows Kreyling telling Gehman that his company won’t be working with Southern Lehigh “because of the superintendent’s tone and attitude.”
The company provides language teachers and curriculums.
Calls for new counsel
Monday’s school board meeting ended with Boyer and three other school directors calling for the board to look for a new solicitor following the handling of recent issues by KingSpry attorneys, who the district has a contract with until November.
Specifically, they pointed to the law firm’s action in drawing up the charges against Gehman and drafting the separation agreement for Ake-Little without notifying all school directors.
Boyer, Kearney, Kruse and Gehman took issue with the solicitor allegedly acting on those items with direction from only a minority of school directors.
They wanted to develop a request for proposal to seek alternative solicitors.
“I have concern with how things are being handled,” Boyer said. "I have concern with the price the district is paying for some of these services that I don’t agree with.
“I’m not a lawyer but there’s things that don’t seem right, especially over the last two weeks with intentionally being left out of some of the conversations,” he said.
Despite his colleagues' concerns, Maund, the new board president, said the request for proposal process for a new solicitor can wait. The board didn’t decide to take any action on that item.
