Pornographic passages get principal into a pickle

By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Messenger Reporter

It is difficult to fully understand the controversy swirling around Pleasant Valley High School teacher Bruce Smith without actually reading some of the material that shocked one set of parents.

The pornographic passages are crude and deeply disturbing to the parents, their federal law suit claims. Some passages are quoted below, but they have been cut to excise the dirtiest parts.

YOU ARE FORWARDED.

Make up your own mind as to whether the text is suitable for sharing with seniors by their teacher.

In his book

Memoirs of a Class President

the suits claims the following passages to be authentic and written by Smith. The parents say he showed the book to students.

• “I didn’t like the guy I caught my mom having sex with …”. (page 6
of Memoirs of a Class President)

• “I guess a blow job is out of the question?” (page 149 of Memoirs of a
Class President)

• “It all but happened. We started out on her couch and ended up in her
bed. The kissing evolved into the steady shedding of clothes until we
were naked beneath the blankets etc etc. Memoirs of a Class President)

• “It happened in the rec room downstairs. The very same room where
I caught that showy girl riding Bill Shearer at my first party … At first
it went like it always did: necking, kissing, touching, feeling. Clothes
were shed piece by piece. I didn’t rush. etc etc (page 729,

Memoirs of a
Class President)
ul>

Interestingly the suit is not against Smith but is against Defendant, John J. Gress, High School Principal, and Frank Pullo, Superintendent of Pleasant
Valley School District.

The Federal suit claims Gress and Pullo wrongly revealed the names of the complaining parents to Smith, who then contacted them.

Pazuhanich bankrupt, on welfare and disability

> By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Monroe Messenger

A petition denying re-instatement to the Pennsylvania Bar for former Monroe County District Attorney Mark Pazuhanich contains many details about his outrageous behavior never before made public.

A lengthy and thorough decision of the Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court in November, 2006, precedes its denial of re-instatement.
The decision reveals that Pazuhanich is bankrupt and on welfare and disability due to severe depression and bipolar disorder. Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to corruption of minors, and public drunkenness.

He was elected Monroe County Common Pleas Judge in November 2003, and was scheduled to assume the office of judge in January 2004.

The decision reads as follows: On November 29, 2003, Respondent attended a music concert at the F.M. Kirby Center in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
with his 10-year-old daughter. Shortly before arriving at the concert, while driving his car with his daughter present he drank approximately three to
five ounces of vodka, and took Flexoral, a muscle relaxant.
“While at the concert, in the presence of several adult witnesses,
Respondent fondled his daughter, touching intimate parts of her body.”

On July 12, 2004, (he) pleaded no contest to the several charges. For purposes of sentencing, a no contest plea is the same as a guilty plea yet, incredibly, Pazuhanich, who had prosecuted many sex offenders who were sent to
prison, got ten years probation and was placed on “Megan’s List” .

The D-Board cites the case of Tony S. Sangiamo, wh0 was disbarred for inappropriate behavior with a minor and was sentenced to jail for up to 23 months. The girl was a 16-year-old intern, not a ten-year-old, and D-Board noted “the record was clear that she initiated the touching although that did not justify it.”

The disciplinary board’s opinion revealed in public for the first time that Pazuhanich had “problem with alcohol abuse.” He sought and
received treatment in 1993, overcame those problems and was free of problems resulting from alcohol abuse for approximately seven years.

The D-Board report reveals Pazuhanich receives psychological counseling once a month and doctors have provided documentation that he is unable to work at this time due to severe depression and bipolar disorder.

At the time of the report, Pazuhanich was taking “Lexipro, an anti-depressant; Lamictal, a mood stabilizer; and Seroquel, which also stabilizes his thought process.”

The report continues, “His finances are in disarray, and he is not certain he can maintain his home. At the time of the hearing he was receiving public assistance from Pennsylvania and had applied for Social Security disability payments.”

Also in 2004, Pazuhanich filed for bankruptcy and his debts were discharged on March 21, 2005. The board said Pazuhanich believes no molestation occurred and his touching was “an accident.”

How PMC cured ER problems with technology

By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Monroe Messenger

A story in a national health magazine details the
serious problems faced by the Pocono Medical Center’s
emergency room and the successful steps taken to cure
the troubles.

The study, published in Health Management Technology,
in April of 2006 said, PMC “struggled with high bed
occupancy and surges in patient volume, six-hour wait
times in the emergency department (ED), as well as
other problems such as “lost” charts, poor
documentation and low patient satisfaction.

The study of PMC’s situation noted “Also, it was hard
to miss.. . . scores on patient satisfaction, which
averaged 20 percent, reflecting that 80 percent of
other hospitals did a better job pleasing ED
patients.”

After the emergency room completed automating, the
patient satisfaction scores reversed, with 80 percent
patient approval.

Before it was automated, the emergency department
treated 50,000 patients a year using mostly a paper
tracking and registration system. Now, more than 70,000 patients
a year visit the ER.

The story points out that the situation was so
serious that in 2001 hospital officials began to study
an automated information system for the ER.

“For starters, triage or patient screening took at
least an hour, which was too long, especially with
chest pain patients. Long wait times not only put
patients at risk, but also posed a public relations
problem for the hospital,” the magazine reports.

“The hospital needed information from patients to get
them registered and to track them, but this required a
lot of time and created the mistaken impression that
the hospital was focused more on insurance information
and medical record numbers than on patient care,” the
study found.
“The Waiting Room Is Closed” was the name of the new
policy of speeding patients through the admission
process and into the ER itself for treatment.

The results were amazing.

Data from the system supplied baseline numbers of how
to improve the operation, including:

* Improve patient length of stay; more than 50
percent of patients were in the ED more than four
hours.

* Eliminate lost charts; physicians estimated that 4
percent were “lost” and no bill was issued.

* Retain more nurses; they used an average of 23
percent agency nurses because of staffing shortages.

The emergency department at PMC now handles more than
70,000 visits a year.

News Analysis: Understanding education funding

By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Monroe Messenger

Monroe County residents, because of their deep
concern over soaring school populations and the
resulting property tax increases, need to understand
the broad context in which school funding occurs.
Peering back to the nation’s beginning, the Founding
Fathers, in their wisdom, understood that in this
large, new land one size would not fit all when it
came to education.
As a result the founders made no specific mention of
national control, or funding, of education even though
they understood education was absolutely necessary
in a democracy that needs an educated electorate.
These men who were educated at home or in tiny
schoolhouses down the lane left the running of schools to
the states.
The Tenth Amendment of the Bill of Rights states,
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are
reserved to the states respectively, or to the
people.”
That is the only guidance given to the citizens of
the United States about who is to run their schools.
In a backhanded manner, the Tenth Amendment reserves the
power and responsibility of public education systems
exclusively for the states, by not enumerating that
responsibility to the federal government.
But, you may exclaim, “My local school board runs the
schools.” That is true, but only at the sufferance of
the states, which have gingerly turned many functions
of school operations to local school boards.
Hawaii runs a single statewide school system. To
further prove the point that the states are, by law,
in charge, there have been several instances in the
past decade when the state took over entire school
systems, among them Philadelphia, Newark and Jersey
City.
Through the years, hard-pressed citizens have
complained that several state methods of distributing
so-called state aid to local districts is unfair
because affluent districts are able to draw more money
per student from property owners than poorer
districts. This is the downside of state control,
because many legislatures are unable to, or unwilling
to respond adequately to special situations such as
fast growth.
According to the state Department of Education,
“Pennsylvania’s school districts receive 57 percent of
their revenues from local sources and 38 percent from
the state. The state provides about 25 percent of
(local) general fund budget.”
This is one of the lowest rates in the United States,
a disgraceful performance, placing Pennsylvania on a
level with the poorest states in the union. If the
state provided 50 percent or more of the operating
budget of local schools, the school property taxes
might be mitigated According to a recent study by the
Pew Charitable Trusts, Pennsylvania placed 49th of the
50 states in the state contribution to local school
operating budgets.
Another misconception is that the federal government
plays a major role in funding education. Not so. The
federal government is a minor contributor to local
school education funding.
After all is said and done, state legislators are
completely responsible for educating our children,
even though the state has “loaned” some of that
responsibility to local school boards.
Examine their poor performance and ask yourselves why
these people care so little about your children’s education.

_________________________________

ESSA officials keep buying the bank’s stock

By WILLIAM DOOLITTLE
Monroe Messenger

It’s time to say a little bit about ESSA Bancorp, the
new name for East Stroudsburg Savings Association,
that went public last month. Customers and employees
of the bank were able to buy the initial offering of
stock at $10 a share. The offering shares were over-subscribed and the
bank had to cut back all customers who came after 2005.

Securities and Exchange documents also indicate that
the bank’s directors had to take a cut in their
desired shares so that all of the bank’s customers
could be accommodated. Even at that, the bank sold more
shares than it anticipated in its most optimistic
scenario.

Almost immediately after trading began in April, the
price jumped to $12 a share, a 20 percent increase,
but it has drifted off a little since.

Clearly, that did not deter two insiders — Director
Frederick Kutteroff, who bought $239,490 worth, and
Vice President Thomas Grayuski, who invested
$33,270. In several transactions, the pair were busy
buying ESSA (the over-the-counter stock symbol) shares
on the open market at around $12 a share.

Insider trading must be made public and is posted by
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The local bank is the second largest in our market
and plans to use the $159 million raised in the stock
sale for internal and external expansion.

In addition, the bank funded its ESSA Foundation with
common stock and cash. In 2005, the ESSA Foundation
gave away just under half a million dollars to local
organizations.

The bank intends to contribute up to 7 percent
of the shares of common stock of ESSA Bancorp, Inc.
“that will be sold in the offering, and up to $1.6
million in cash, to a charitable foundation
established by ESSA Bank & Trust.”
.
(disclosure: the author owns stock in ESSA Bancorp.)

Toby man dies having wart removed

Winding through the Monroe County courts is a unique case: Maldonado verses Dr. Michael A. Eufemio in which Carlos Maldonado‘s widow claims Dr. Eufemio mistakenly proceeded with a wart removal procedure using a general anesthetic despite the fact he had medical evidence that Maldonado was “not a suitable candidate for anesthesia.”
Maldonado and his widow, Janet Maldonado, live in Tobyhanna.
Other defendants in the case are Urology Associates of the Poconos; Dr. Nita Grover, J&C Holding ( a medical temp agency) and Pocono Medical Center.
The Maldonados have four grown children, three sons and a daughter. Maldonado, whose wart was on his penis, was on the operating table for 45 minutes before expiring, according the his widow’s law suit.
According to the complaint Maldonado had an abnormal EKG heart test, but the operating team went ahead with the operation anyway.

Med mal in Monroe County

Medical malpractice suits filed in Monroe County have dropped significantly in recent years according to statistics gathered by the State of Pennsylvania.

For instance there were only five filed in 2003, three in 2004 and seven in 2005. This is in comparison to 14 and 10 cases respective in 2001 and 2002.

So called med-mal suits are the bane of doctors, but the record over the past decades has shown that juries in Monroe County are loath the make big awards even when plaintiffs succeed.