BASD first eliminates then reinstates committee members with reduced power
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Editor
It took more than an hour Monday night for the Burlington Area School District School Board to reach a decision to eliminate citizen representatives on its various committees.
Five minutes later, those same representatives were voted back into existence – only without the voting rights they previously had, by a 4-3 vote.
Because School Board member Roger Koldeway believed the district had ignored its own rules in eliminating the representatives without going through a first and second reading of the citizen representative policy – 185.2 – he called for a second vote moments after David Thompson, Larry Anderson, Bill Campbell and Rosanne Hahn voted to eliminate the representatives.
The second vote eliminated voting rights for the citizen representatives, but kept them as part of all discussions at the committee level. After arguing the necessity of the second vote – in particular, School Board member Rosanne Hahn wondered why they were voting for something the board had just eliminated – Koldeway, Phil Ketterhagen, Larry Anderson and Jim Bousman voted yes to the motion.
The citizen representatives appointed include Karen Tolle and Norman Bryne to the Community Education Committee, Susan Kessler to the Policy Committee, Mark Sheldon to the Curriculum Committee, Dia Kleitsch to the Long-Range Planning Committee and Bob Lempken to the Buildings and Grounds Committee.
Citizen feedback
Objections to the elimination of citizen reps were voiced almost immediately Monday night, as three different people stood up and vented their displeasure over the Personnel Committee’s decision last week.
The first was Kessler – a former School Board member and now a citizen rep. Kessler stated that the board had let the positions become political, first when Koldeway and Ketterhagen’s wives applied last year, and then again when the rest of the board responded.
“They put you in this position, and you reacted with your own politics,” Kessler read off a prepared statement. She said that ad hoc committees – the recommendation by the Personnel Committee to replace the citizen reps – would not allow citizen representation on anything but hot-button topics.
“You are, in effect, telling the public that you don’t care about their feelings about what comes up at every day meetings.”
Ketterhagen’s wife, Bonnie, stood up to say that neither her husband nor Koldeway had manipulated anything last year when she and Julie Koldeway applied, and that eliminating the representatives smacked of impatience and arrogance.
“Unbelievable!” she yelled. “Government should be open to the people and transparent.”
Finally, Norma Miller – who ran unsuccessfully for School Board in the spring – said the board clearly had no interest in transparency, citing its lack of soliciting bids for a lighting project at the high school and also for its closed bus service contract.
“It seems like you are scared to check on the costs,” said Miller, who ran over her three-minute time limit, insisted on finishing and then threatened Thompson, Hahn and Campbell in the upcoming elections.
What the board wanted
The opinions of the School Board were less clear. After letting other members of the board speak both for and against citizen reps, Thompson clarified that he had been the one asking for the examination of citizen representatives – and for a number of reasons.
“We have had many, many good citizen reps over the years,” said Thompson, who added that politics have gotten involved, there is no vetting process, and the appointment process needed to be re-evaluated.
He also took umbrage with Bousman being called out for wanting to appoint people for the “desired outcome” at least week’s meeting, saying that it wasn’t an attempt to gerrymander the committee. Instead, it would be to get people involved with specific goals, hence the ad hoc committee suggestion.
After a large amount of debate – and Koldeway questioning whether any amendments to the motion of eliminating the reps would be a violation of the rules – the board voted to eliminate the reps.
However, before the School Board could move to Policy Committee discussion about purchasing policy, Koldeway called for a second vote to place the six applicants this year on committees – but this time without the voting rights.
This appeared to address concerns that were raised last week about citizen reps having such power without the benefit of election.
The swing vote on the second motion was Anderson, who had voted to eliminate the reps in their current incarnation but to bring them back without voting rights.
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