We are in charge of a school district?

Somebody please buy seven dunce caps so they can be given to Connellsville Area School District board members Kevin Lape, Gary Wandel, Dr. P.J. Carte, Dr. Paul Means, Denise Martin, Tom Dolde and Jim Fabian.

They deserve them, not because they want cancel legal adertising in the Herald-Standard as retribution for editorials they don't like, as reported in Sunday's front-page story, "Attorney says board's action may be illegal."

No, this crew deserves to wear the crown of stupidity for failing to be smart about it. First up, director Lape, author of the motion to penalize the newspaper:

Lape cited the negative content of recent editorials published by HeraldStandard.com, including school board endorsements and support of a study tied to a proposal to consolidate Fayette County School Districts as his foundation for the action.

“The Herald-Standard should stick to selling newspapers, not be involved in what a school district should or shouldn’t be doing,” he said.

Way to go, Mr. Lape. You andthe others who didn't get the newspaper's endorsement in the May primary election now make it painfully clear that you're going to make them pay by, well, not paying them.

Then we have this public relations gem, also printed in Sunday's story:
Fabian, meanwhile, expressed pleasure at the opportunity to cast a favorable vote to Lape’s motion to halt advertising in HeraldStandard.com as he exited the meeting.

“I’ve been waiting for a month to do that,” he said.

It is hard for us to believe that seven people who are in charge of running a school board, and thus educating thousands of children, are themselves so stupid. It is no wonder that their school district faces a $7 million deficit and that socking property owners with tax increases is the only way they can balance the books.

Instead of picking a fight with the Herald-Standard, all they had to do was use logic. The law requires that school districts place their legal advertisements -- for things like when they are holding a meeting, or when they are soliciting bids for a project -- in a newspaper of general circulation within the political subdivision of the school district.

That is fancy wording for, "You have to advertise your meetings and such in a newspaper that circulates in your area."

The easy out for these disaffected Connellsville Area School District board members? You say, "Hey, we've been doing some nosing around, and one of us discovered that there is a newspaper of general circulation with here in our own back yard. It is called the Connellsville Daily Courier. And since we are the Connellsville Area School District, we think makes better sense to advertise in the Connellsville Daily Courier, instead of the Uniontown-based Herald-Standard."

And if these school board members were REALLY smart, they would have had the district's well-paid business manager provide some numbers to back up the decision. (We are pretty certain that the Herald-Standard's advertising rates are going to be higher than the Daily Courier's.)

All that Lape & Co. had to do was provide those numbers, and say, "Look, it's costing us $5,000 a year to advertise in the Herald-Standard, and we can fulfill that requirement for $3,000 a year by switching to the Daily Courier. Times are tough -- after all, we have a $7 million deficit to close, and we lost a ton of state subsidy this year -- so we have to save money wherever we can."

And if they were REALLY, REALLY smart, they would have thrown down the gauntlet in front of the Herald-Standard by saying, "Now if the Herald-Standard wants to match or beat the Daily Courier's rate, we will gladly consider keeping our advertising with them. Otherwise, the Herald-Standard is advocating that we pay MORE for a service than we actually have to. We don't consider that a prudent use of tax dollars. Do they?"

As for these board members being upset with the newspaper's support of state Rep. Tim Mahoney's effort to conduct a study to see if adminitrative consolidation of county school district would have money, that is a mere smokescreen issue. (And the behavior of The Connellsville Seven only serves to prove that Mahoney's vision cannot come to fruition soon enough. One side benefit would be that only one set of legal advertising would be needed, instead of six sets.)

Lastly, we remain a little unclear as to whether Lape's motion was just a proposal to do away with legal advertising in the Herald-Standard, or whether it is a done deal. The reporting in Sunday's story is a bit unclear on that count.