The alerts came in December, the weekend before the board meeting on the 19th, asking what I knew about whether a member had moved and should resign. I did not know, and I referred the callers to contacting the member himself or one of the officers of the board. As the calls continued, becoming more insistent, I did begin researching what the state statutes say about school board vacancies and elections. I looked up the specific statutes about elections and vacancies and even about ballot choices for different lengths of terms. I contacted election officials to see what were the duties of the Board, as well as to hear what options we would be able to pursue. I felt strongly that, as I had encouraged the board to include some version of the above draft* in the announcement about the application for appointment, our preference should be for the community to select their board representatives.
I was saddened to repeatedly hear that it appeared that the timing of this vacancy narrowly missed affording the community the opportunity to do so this time. As I understood it, like Amber reiterated a few times during that special meeting on January 9*, the circumstances were beyond our control – namely, the time requirements for notification of the public about filing to run as a candidate for election to fill this vacancy’s remaining one-year term – so the only option left was for the Board to appoint someone to fill that vacancy until April 2026. Our legal counsel advised us as a board that there were no other options, and our board president reminded us during the 12/19 meeting* that to disregard our attorney’s advice would be “legal suicide.” Because I had been very recently informed of some other possible avenues prescribed by the law which differed from that route, however, I advocated for doing our own research or at least obtaining a second opinion on the matter. Below is a letter I sent my fellow board members yesterday after conducting some of that independent research, sharing what I had learned and hoping to give them some time to consider it in advance of Monday’s meeting.
*video references are links from an area School District watchdog group which includes timestamps in the descriptions
of their video posts in order to more easily locate the desired clip
As always, I speak only for myself and do not at all intend to represent the Board to you.
I do, however, fully intend to do my job representing YOU to the Board!