Monday night's Upper St. Clair school board meeting began with a warm welcome for the district's new superintendent, Dr. Patrick O'Toole, who started his job last Thursday.

It ended with a statement by an attorney who had been hired by the five-member school board majority to respond to a citizens' petition calling for their resignations.

Robert O. Lampl, a Downtown attorney, said he represented school Directors Mark Trombetta, David Bluey, William Sulkowski, Carol Coliane and Daniel Iracki.

Reading from a prepared statement, Mr. Lampl said a petition signed by more than 60 residents who are calling for the resignations of the five board members is "a mixture of unsupported allegations and wrongful legal conclusions."

Despite controversies in the district, Mr. Lampl said, "there have been no findings of criminal or unethical behavior" against his clients.

Residents who signed the petition distributed it widely and called for the board members to resign for violations of the school district's ethics code for generating divisiveness, unnecessary spending and disruption.

Most are members of USC-WAVES, an organization that filed a lawsuit after the newly elected board majority tried to eliminate the International Baccalaureate program in February 2006.

The petition is based on court papers unsealed March 13 after Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick rejected a motion by the school district to keep the legal documents under a protective order.

The papers included the deposition of former school Superintendent James Lombardo who also filed a separate, internal harassment complaint against Dr. Trombetta, Dr. Sulkowski, Mrs. Coliane and Mr. Bluey. Dr. Lombardo apparently never pursued the complaint.