Methacton School Board President Drawing Scrutiny Over DUI Arrest

The February arrest of Methacton school board President Joyce Petrauskas on a DUI charge did not make immediate ripples in the community. Perhaps that’s because she was arrested 1,000 miles away, in Clearwater, Fla.

But now, Petrauskas faces public scrutiny after a former board member called her to task for allegedly driving drunk. 

At at Oct. 22 meeting of the Methacton School District board of school directors, a man in the audience took to the lectern and asked Petrauskas about rumors circulating regarding her DUI arrest.

Petrauskas looked surprised. She said that she was not arrested for a DUI and that she was the victim of an “internet crime” against her.

The man at the lectern was Grant T. Schanbacher, a former school board member who had once served with Petrauskas.

According to Schanbacher, an email with a link to a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office  site with Petrauskas’s mugshot had been circulating. “I’ve been approached by several people in the community about this,” he told Patch.com.

He said he felt a responsibility to raise the issue primarily because prom will be held in a few months and drugs and alcohol will not be tolerated there.

“If any of the kids at prom are caught with alcohol, they can be suspended from school. We’ve got to put the right foot forward.”

Petrauskas, 59, declined to be interviewed for this story.

“As this is an ongoing investigation, I have been advised by my attorney to comment nothing further than what I explained at last Tuesday night's meeting,” she replied via email on Oct. 29, referring to the meeting at which Schanbacher publicly questioned her.

Details of the arrest

According to records obtained from the Clearwater Police Department, police arrested Petrauskas on suspicion of DUI on Feb. 28, 2013, around 12:46 a.m., after a traffic stop of the red Ford Mustang she was driving near Gulf to Bay Boulevard and South Duncan Avenue.

According to the report, Clearwater police were responding to a report of an erratic driver, from a call from a concerned citizen who reported that the Mustang’s speed ranged from 25 mph to 80 mph on Florida State Road 60, driving from Tampa.

The caller also told police that the Mustang almost veered into his lane and hit his vehicle, that it nearly hit guardrails more than once, and that at one point, the vehicle veered onto a grass shoulder. The caller later verified that the Mustang driven by Petrauskas was the vehicle he had seen.

A responding officer located the Mustang, and wrote in a report that he saw the vehicle weave across traffic lanes.

The officer stopped Petrauskas, who, according to the report, told him that another officer had stopped her in Tampa for weaving in traffic but let her go. She also said that the Mustang was a rental.

Petrauskas told him that she had had a mixed drink; when the officer told her that there was strong alcohol odor present, Petrauskas told him she had consumed two mixed drinks.

He asked Petrauskas to exit the vehicle. He then told her that she seemed to be impaired and asked if someone could come get her. According to the officer’s report, “(Petrauskas) then told me that was my opinion, she was fine to drive and then became argumentative with me.”

The officer then requested another officer’s assistance.

Another officer responded to help the first officer in his traffic stop around 12:20 a.m. The second officer conducted a DUI investigation with Standard Field Sobriety Tests. His report indicates that he could smell the alcohol from Petrauskas from 3-5 feet away. The officer administered the tests, and turned on one of the police vehicles’ video systems.

When asked, Petrauskas told police that she had consumed alcohol within the past 24 hours. After police observed Petrauskas perform the variety of sobriety tests, they took her into custody under suspicion of DUI. Petrauskas agreed to submit to a breath test.

Records indicate that she was taken to the Clearwater police station and participated in a breath test, with the first reading for a blood alcohol level at .141 percent and the next, .143 percent, nearly twice the legal limit of .08 percent.

After completing paperwork, Petrauskas was transported to the Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, where she was later released.

She was charged with a misdemeanor DUI. Court records indicate that she pleaded not guilty in March of this year. A pretrial hearing has been scheduled for Nov. 19.

The penalty for drivers convicted of DUI on a first offense in Florida includes a fine of up to $500; 50 hours of community service; and a minimum six-month license suspension.

A move to change board disciplinary policy

At the Methacton school board October meeting, one of the board’s items included a resolution to delete a section from school board procedures regarding the censure of school board members.

The policy’s stated purpose is “to provide the mechanism by which the Methacton School District Board of School Directors, acting as a whole, can discipline any of its members who violate local, state or federal laws and regulations, or Methacton School District policies.”

Petrauskas voted to keep the section and the motion did not garner sufficient votes to delete the disciplinary policy.

According to Tim Eller, press secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a school board has the ability to discipline its members, but the board and the Department of Education do not have the ability to remove school board members, who are elected by voters.

“If a school board member does not discharge the duties of their office as they are required to under school code requirements, they can be called out on that or held accountable at the ballot box,” said Eller.

In 2011, Petrauskas, an incumbent, was re-elected to the board for a term that expires in 2015.

In an email to Patch, Petrauskas indicated that the information regarding her arrest was “manipulated” online and there was an attempt to extort money from her. She did not provide additional details about her allegations.