Delays in the approval of A.W. Beattie Career Center's renovation project prompted testy exchanges at a Beattie board meeting Tuesday, with a North Allegheny delegate offering to resign and the Beattie board president and project chairman challenging opponents to show more faith in the school's in-house experts.

After discussing four options and rejecting a fifth this year, the Beattie board is trying to gain consensus on a sixth plan that calls for about $22 million in improvements to the nearly 40-year-old building in McCandless. Earlier plans ranged in cost from $8 million to $24 million.

The project would provide more room for programs, including auto body, as mandated by a 2005 state Department of Education audit. If Beattie doesn't comply with the audit's findings, it risks state funding cuts, enrollment caps and staff furloughs. The new completion date is fall 2010, six months after the original date.

The Beattie board has 18 members, two from each of the nine participating school districts. Hampton and Shaler Area school boards are expected to decide on the sixth plan in August after tabling a vote in June when the other seven school boards voted.

The tally stands at 4-3, which means Hampton and Shaler Area would have to vote in favor of the plan for it to proceed. Hampton has opposed the plan in the past.

The bulk of the meeting was spent covering familiar ground. North Allegheny is concerned about cost overruns. North Allegheny and Hampton want to explore whether Beattie should offer more programs for "hot" job fields, such as lab technology or welding, and fewer in lower paying fields, such as culinary arts and child care technology.

Kathryn Ingram, Beattie executive director, said realigning programs is not easy. A welding program, for instance, would cost at least $1 million to start. Eliminating a program, she said, would require state approval.

"Low paying doesn't matter to the Department of Education," she told the board. "You can't cut them unless there's been a 20 percent cut [in enrollment] over three years." That's not the case at Beattie, she said.

Building committee Chairman Rich Herko, of Pine-Richland, said he saw no need to hire an outside consultant to study future jobs, saying a 2003 strategic plan covered the same ground.

"It comes to a point where there's no faith in the experts here," said Beattie President Lynn Evans.

Hampton's motion last month to hire Ron Painter, chief executive officer of the Three Rivers Workforce, was defeated, but Ms. Evans wants to see if he will do a "mini" study for perhaps $5,000, less than the $25,000 he originally sought.

At Beattie's urging, North Allegheny has crafted more counterproposals than other opponents.

When Ms. Evans challenged how North Allegheny leaders were portraying the standoff, North Allegheny's Linda Bishop bristled, and fellow delegate Beth Ludwig became visibly upset.

Ms. Ludwig said she felt Beattie peers were accusing her of giving misleading reports to her school board.

She repeatedly asked Beattie solicitor John Vogel for the audiotapes of a year's worth of meetings so that North Allegheny board members could listen to them.

"Get me that tape," she said, her voice faltering. "I don't care if it costs me $100. ... If I didn't do a good job, then I'll ask to be removed ... ."

Mrs. Bishop told Ms. Evans, "I think it's unfair that North Allegheny is being made out to be the obstacle to this project."

Fox Chapel Area's Joanne Gaus voiced frustration with her board, the only one to reject the project even though both of its Beattie delegates recommended its approval.

"Some people just have a different mindset. They just don't think vocational education is important, [that] everybody should go to college. ... It drives me crazy."