ROARING SPRING — The Spring Cove School District board meeting’s public comment section on Monday began with one member being urged to resign and ended with recently elected members being ridiculed for lack of transparency.

Martinsburg resident Tom Kozminski addressed the board on behalf of the Concerned Citizens of the Cove, according to a hand-out he provided to audience members. He said that board member Kevin Smith, who was sworn-in in January, “engaged in actions that are unbecoming of an elected official.”

“Specifically on the Facebook page ‘Issues in the Spring Cove Area School District,’ Mr. Smith appears to collude with page administrators, including his wife, as well as anonymous accounts, to propagate misinformation,” Kozminski said. “This behavior extends to spreading false information about events within our district and making statements that perpetuate discrimination across various spectrums.”

Kozminski said the “dissemination of false information, promotion of bigoted ideologies and engagement in harassment” couldn’t be tolerated.

Kozminski asked the board to “take decisive action” and suspend Smith while an investigation is carried out “by the appropriate authorities.”

“Alternatively, should Mr. Smith wish to spare himself and the community the ordeal of an investigation and potential legal repercussions, we urge him to consider resigning from his position,” Kozminski said.

Former board member Brian Gahagan also spoke, saying it wasn’t too long ago that he was sitting in the board members’ seats and listening to the newly elected board members stand at the podium and “pontificate on the board’s lack of transparency, my own lack of transparency.”

“I was told repeatedly during the election that I needed to be replaced because I allow boys and girls to shower together, put kitty litter in bathrooms, allow teachers to indoctrinate students and turn them into transgenders and homosexuals and, my favorite, that some of the grants our district received during COVID had social experiment clauses,” Gahagan said.

He asked the new members why, in the six months that they have held their seats, he hasn’t “heard a single word about any of these horrible, terrible issues that have occurred?”

“So, my question is, now that these four board members have been elected, does no one care about these issues?” Gahagan asked rhetorically. “Or could it be that none of these situations actually ever occurred and were just untrue statements made on social media to upset scared voters into casting the ballots a certain way? That doesn’t seem very transparent to me.”

Gahagan also asked Kevin Smith why he voted against Beard Legal Group representing Spring Cove but voted for them at the Greater Altoona Career and Technical Center’s Joint Operating Committee meeting.

“I happily logged into YouTube to watch the JOC meeting fully expecting that one ‘no’ vote against Beard Legal, but it was a unanimous vote,” Gahagan said. “So is Beard Legal okay for the students at the GACTC, just not our own students? Doesn’t seem very transparent.”

Following the meeting, Kevin Smith stated that he had no plans to resign.

“There’s too much deception going on, and lies,” Smith said.

Board Solicitor Jennifer Dambeck said Smith couldn’t be suspended or disciplined by the board as he is an elected official.

“The board can ask him to resign, but cannot force his resignation,” Dambeck said, giving Penn Cambria as an example.

She said the most the board could do, if they decided to look into Kozminski’s claims and found them credible, would be to censor Smith through a resolution.

“The resolution would basically say that the board does not condone his actions,” Dambeck said.

Board President Troy Wright said that dealing with members of the public addressing you the way Gahagan and Kozminski did was part of the job.

“When you get a spot on the school board, you have to take the lumps,” Wright said.

Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458.