In response to Dennis Roddy's May 28 Forum piece, "Civics Lesson":

Regarding Dennis Roddy's opinion piece related to the International Baccalaureate program in Upper St. Clair: I never cease to be amazed by the strength of opinions based on so little knowledge of the issues at hand.

Mr. Roddy intimates that our students were placed in an uncomfortable interrogative situation by the administrative staff of USC and that, in follow-up, a political activities policy denying students their free speech rights was "floated then abandoned" by the board. This is nothing more that inaccurate and misleading hogwash.

Had Mr. Roddy done his homework without bias, he would have found that the administration, not the board, asked for and developed the policy. In fact, no board member contributed to the development of this policy. Amy Billerbeck, a failed candidate in that election who has children in this program, is claimed by Mr. Roddy to have stated that she cannot recall a conversation with a district administrator admitting that he had directed students to campaign at the polls.

If Mr. Roddy's claimed quotes are accurate, Ms. Billerbeck sounds a bit like Hillary Clinton, famous for her memory deficits. In the end, however, an administrator was disciplined for inappropriate use of district resources done without board intervention.

Additionally, the policy was reviewed by Witold Walczak of the ACLU, who gave his approval. Following Mr. Walczak's "blessing" (pardon the pun), the ACLU and two large law firms sued us and specifically directed one of their many baseless counts toward this point. It is no shock that integrity and ACLU are antonyms.

Further Mr. Roddy claims that the reasons for the dissolution of the IB program were somehow shifted from social to financial, yet had he attended the Feb. 20 meeting when the vote occurred, he would have listened to the 18 reasons that I described, as well as the others given by my colleagues.

To summate the entire issue, the program was removed due to its lack of overall value following a well-researched cost-benefit analysis. The board was forced to reinstate the program due to excessive legal costs to our taxpayers from the nonsensical lawsuit, and the shameful harassment and threats by a very small component of malcontents as an attempt to overturn an election and the will of the vast majority of people demanding fiscal restraint.

This program will be reviewed again over the next nine months. The great majority of our community is behind our effort and this board will continue to bring fiscal sanity to our district while improving the educational quality by demanding accountability and tangible data-based results.