Long-time observers in CCSD and the minority of non-McGinley sycophants on the Board of Trustees see matters coming to a crisis next Monday, March 12. Used to agenda sleight-of-hand, they have recoiled at the illegal subterfuges now underway to subvert the governing structure of the district. What follow are remarks from one such observer.
For a public school district as large and as diverse as this one, concentrating absolute power and decision making authority in the hands of one person, with few checks and balances in place, isn't healthy. In this case it isn't legal, either.
Board Chairman Chris Fraser and Superintendent McGinley are attempting to intervene in the the Policy Committee's selection of chairman and vice-chairman, currently Elizabeth Moffly and Chris Fraser. In spite of board policies and applicable parliamentary rules to the contrary, Fraser and McGinley have engaged McGinley's own attorney, John Emerson, to outline the case for having the full board select new Policy Committee officers.
In a separate matter, Emerson has also drafted an agenda item purported to come from the Policy Committee meeting that authorizes the Board to delegate its statutory responsibilities to hear certain appeals to the Superintendent. For example, the county school board would no longer hear certain student disciplinary hearings . Appeals will end with the Superintendent.
The plot thickens.Mr. Emerson's report on Monday's agenda implies that the Policy Committee has approved an amendment to the Student Code of Conduct doing exactly the opposite of what its chairman, Ms. Moffly, proposed.
In discussions involving a pending disciplinary appeal first presented last month , Ms. Moffly and others on the board moved to repeal the offending statement in the Code of Conduct which barred lawful appeals to the Board. The statement conflicts with state laws guaranteeing due process and appeal rights. McGinley was against the repeal. Emerson's report to the Board from the Policy Committee appears as a complete fabrication designed to advance McGinley's
In this tug of war, McGinley is using Fraser to further isolate elected Board members who most often vote with the minority. Through her legal counsel, McGinley is grabbing the power to set Board policy and select Board officers. She plans to set the organization on its head: the Board will serve her; she will not serve the Board.
The Post and Courier, although it has been warned, probably doesn't want to understand the ramifications of McGinley's plans. Just as it is a violation for Board members to interfere with the superintendent's job, she is required to respect limits that separate her from being involved in the Board's governing and oversight functions. By ignoring this line, she is in breach of contract. With an independent Board, she could be found insubordinate and subject to termination for cause.
A few years ago, we witnessed a systematic dismantling of the statutory responsibilities reserved to the constituent boards that have been part of CCSD's structure since its inception. Those boards are emasculated with not even the power to express an opinion in the selection of principals or the quality of teachers in their constituent jurisdictions. Even their role in the establishment of attendence zones has been taken over by--you guessed it--the Superintendent.
Centralization of power began shortly after McGinley became CCSD's chief academic officer. Erosion of the constituent boards' legal authority accelerated rapidly and aggressively when she became superintendent. Now the same process is spreading to the county board. To whom will the Superintendent be responsible in the future?
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Please note this correction. It's easy to confuse the board members' names with two Elizabeth's and two Chris's. The current propertly elected officers of the Policy Committee are Elizabeth Moffly (Chairman) and Chris Collins (Vice-Chairman). Superintendent Nancy McGinley and School Board Chairman Chris Fraser are trying to replace the Policy Committee's present officers with Toya Green and Ann Oplinger, two rubberstamps who can be counted on to give the superintendent a free hand at rewriting policies as she sees fit.
Cindy Coats said the following in an e-mail she sent out on Friday, March 9:
"So, here we are. The board is faced with an unprecedented situation that is created by a policy we passed in June 2011. Thus, the board should address where to go from here. We created this dilemma. The responsibility for this dilemma rests squarely on our shoulders-it is cowardly and immature to try to pass this off on someone else."
The School Board Chairman, Chris Fraser, may have shown his hand, but it's not a dilemma, as Cindy Coats puts it. It's certainly not a situation that requires any action by the full board.
This is what Coats isn't saying. Mr. Fraser attempted to stack the committee by moving Ms. Oplinger and Ms. Green to its roster giving the committee an even number of members. It formerly had 3 with Mr. Collins, Ms. Moffly and Ms. Taylor, before the latter's resignation. Changing the committee to 4 members was a poor choice for the school board chairman if it was his intent to replace the committee's current officers which was overtly implied. The Policy Committee's vote on the motion to change officers was 2 to 2. A tie vote meant the motion failed to oust the current officers. In other words the result of the vote was to have "no change".
Cindy Coats is getting tangled up in her own arguments. The rules aren't really that hard to follow. In the absence of a specific policy, Robert's Rules aren't silent at all. Parliamentary rules that apply to the school board and its standing committees speak very clearly here.
Ms. Coats is correct about one thing. The school board changed its policies last year to give standing committees the authority to select their own officers from their membership without interference from the outside. As Ms. Moffly also pointed out two weeks ago to the consternation of Mr. Fraser and the superintendent, another long established board policy says whenever a new board member is seated (as in the case of Brian Thomas), the board is required to "reorganize" and re-elect officers immediately, presumably so the new member(s) can participate in choosing the leadership.
At the main board meeting last month and at subsequent meetings of the two standing board committees held after Brian Thomas assumed the formerly vacant 9th seat, an opportunity to select new officers was included on all three agendas. The main board with 9 members voted to reaffirm the existing leadership. The Audit and Finance Committee with 4 board members did the same thing with the same results. Mr. Thomas incidentally was seated as a member of that committee.
The Policy Committee also held a vote, but it split (2 for and 2 against) on the motion to change committee officers. Given that the motions to change officers failed with a tie vote, the current Policy Committee officers (Ms. Moffly as Chair and Mr. Collins as Vice-Chair) simply remain in place.
When board policies appear incomplete, the alternative set of guidelines, Robert's Rules of Order, aren't silent at all. When a vacancy among committee officers doesn't exist, but an election is called for anyway, and the election fails to provide a replacement with support of more than 50% of the vote, the current officers continue to serve. What else do the rules need to say? Only that Mr. Fraser's overt and crude attempt to overturn the committee's leadership failed with a tie vote. The Policy Committee can bring the motion up again, but as long as it remains a tie vote, the motion fails. The full board has no obligation or right to assume responsibility for a purely committee function.
Ms. Coats resorts to hyperbole but her argument says more about partisan politics than about political integrity. What's "unprecedented" here are the brazen and clumsy attempts by Chris Fraser and Nancy McGinley to run roughshod over the basic courtesies usually due other board members and the people who elected them.
Shame on both of them for staging such a cheap political stunt and claiming it is in response to an emergency. The only emergency is Ms. McGinley's need to control every aspect of the school board's business and to marginalize the opinions of individual board members.
They blinked. The attempt to send a warning to the opposition was pulled from the agenda. Even as a majority, they didn't have the votes (or the nerve) to pull this off. The superintendent didn't appear to be too happy with the way it turned out. Moffly is still standing firm on parental rights and she's against the board surrendering more of its duties to an unresponsive administrator.
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