If you recall, the first East Sac County School board is to be composed of two people from the Sac school board and two people from the Wall Lake View Auburn school board with each individual board choosing those two from within the ranks their own boards.
The WLVA vote went off without a hitch; Chuck Brotherton and Lisa Drost, the two with the most experience were approved unanimously.
The Sac school board on the other hand, is composed of two different types of people, “Education First” (EF) people, and “Community First” (CF) people.
To help those of you just new to this discussion I will define these two groups simply.
The EF people say that in putting the education of the children first, they will create stronger communities for all of those that participate.
The CF people say that if they keep the school in the community then the community will grow, which will in turn grow the school thus giving the children a better education.
Its old news that Marty Huser and Brent Wilhelm are EF’s and Shirley Phillips, Dave Sands, and Melissa Bellcock are CF’s.
By roughly 2/3 to 1/3, the likely voters in what was known as the Sac Community School District are Education First people.
Though they represent a 1/3 minority of likely voters the Community First contingent, or more accurately, the people who worked behind the scenes to elect the Shirley, Dave and Melissa have in the past gotten around their lack of voter majority by taking advantage of a combination of political tricks including but not limited to:
1. Secret election campaigns of candidates who would not otherwise be elected if it were generally known that they were running.
2. The Goebbelian technique of painting the Superintendent as a monster, then equating a vote in favor of their candidate as a vote against the monster.
3. Utilizing off year, low turnout elections to place unpopular candidates.
It is therefore very unusual that the CFs, who had the majority on the board, were unable to retain power, but it certainly was not for lack of trying.
The first opportunity they blew to retain control was totally Melissa Bellcock’s fault. Without preamble, Dave Sands made a motion nominating Shirley Phillips and Melissa Bellcock just a few seconds into the March 3 2010 joint school board meeting. Had Ms. Bellcock taken the opportunity to second Mr. Sand’s motion, the board would have tied. Ms. Phillips would have cast the tie-breaking vote in favor of the motion and BLAMMO. This would have allowed Shirley and Melissa onto the merged East Sac County School board where they could have subtly continued to obstruct the process, making it appear harder than it needs to be and giving weight to the argument that we should not have merged our schools.
The second blown opportunity lies on the shoulders of President Shirley Phillips. Perhaps because of her lack of experience, Ms. Phillips failed to realize that as the president she could step down and second Mr. Sand’s motion herself. Had She, Dave, and Melissa not made such a naked power grab after the last election, Shirley Phillips would now be a mere board member and could have seconded the motion herself without having to have knowledge of this proceedure.
The third and most notable opportunity the Community First people blew was after Brent Wilhelm made the motion to appoint Marty Huser and himself.
In making the motion Mr. Wilhelm said, “I’m in the middle of my 9th year and [like Chuck Brotherton who had said the same thing in reference to himself during the nomination period of the WLVA board,] I also have more experience than the rest of the board put together. I’m the only one on this board right now, the Sac board that voted for whole grade sharing. I’ve always been in favor of this since the start, since the Odebolt meeting, which a lot of people may not know about… That’s when this all kind of started. I think it’s important that we move ahead. I think the [consolidation] vote shows that and I think that two people on this current board from Sac City represent that vote and I feel that I am one of them and that Marty Huser is the other, so I’ll make a motion that Marty Huser and I are elected from the Sac board.” Marty Huser seconded that and President Phillips opened the floor to discussion.
The next thing that happened, and I am not kidding, was that Melissa Bellcock made a motion to appoint Shirley Phillips to the board. (I guess that’s only funny to parliamentary procedure nerds)
When the vote eventually happened, the board split. Huser and Wilhelm voted to approve, Sands and Bellcock voted nay.
President Phillips threw her head back, slapped her hand down on the table, and then stroked her forehead as if massaging a headache. The room was utterly silent for a full 18 seconds while Shirley doodled on a piece of paper and everyone else waited for her to cast the tie-breaking vote.
Well…
Everyone but Dave Sands. Dave apparently did not realize that the president had to cast the tiebreaker. (He has only been on the board for about three years and is the vice president, so why would he be expected to know that?). Dave Sands attempted to make a motion appointing Shirley Phillips to the new board.
Shirley almost imperceptibly shook her head and looked at Mr. Sands. Her lip twitched. After a few seconds pause possibly choosing her words she informed Mr. Sands that she had yet to cast the tie-breaking vote, then went back to doodling.
Chuck Brotherton regarding the president’s ability to abstain from a tie-breaking vote raised a point of order. Dr. Kay Forsythe, Director, Prairie Lakes AEA whom was conducting the meeting tentatively ruled that a school board president probably could not abstain from a vote but said, “I don’t honestly know if a president has the right to abstain at this point.”
Rushing her words in that way that she seems to do when she is upset, Shirley Phillips said, “Well, probably not, so I guess I would vote in favor of Brent and Marty to serve on the board.”
10 more seconds of utter silence ensued. It was almost as if everyone was too afraid to let the breath they had been holding out too noisily for fear that it would make what they seemed to hear with their owns ears not true.
…and For the second time that night, Shirley Phillips blew the opportunity to stand for the ideals of those couple hundredish people that put her into office.
Why she did it, one can only guess. I imagine you will have to read her quote in the Sac Sun or one of the other lesser county papers since she never seems to want to talk to me for some reason.
There are those that have suggested to me that she perhaps saw the way the winds were blowing and realized that her 150 person (and shrinking) voting bloc was going to ultimately be no match for the unchecked anger that would wash over her should she choose to stand against the mandate of the voters. Others have suggested that her last second decision was based solely on her wanting to retaining her dignity beyond this process… that perhaps she decided that this was not the alter on which she wanted to sacrifice the little local power she has left. Still others have suggested that perhaps in those 18 seconds she figured out a way to use this to her advantage in future political maneuverings.
I would like to suggest to everybody the possibility that in the end, she saw that her tactics from the previous couple of years were harmful to the future education of our children. I’d like to suggest that she spontaneously decided to do everybody a favor and just step aside, and that the only reason she may have looked uncomfortable doing so is because doing the right thing without a possible political payoff is not a typical step for her.
...but what do I know.
At the March 3, 2010 East Sac County Joint school board meet and subsequent meeting of the East Sac County Community school board, the following results were attained.
The interim East Sac County Community School Board members are:
Chuck Brotherton, President
Brent Wilhelm, Vice President
Lisa Drost
Martha Huser
Chris Rodman
Barb Kruthoff was named the acting superintendent
John Kraft was named acting Board Secretary
There was the suggestion that Wilhelm and Drost head a committee to determined fair compensation for Kruthoff and Kraft, but no official action was taken in appointing them.
Copyright (c)2007-2010 Curtis Bloes
All Rights Reserved
Here is my speculation. Melissa did not want to serve on the new board. Dave makes a motion which includes both Shirley and Melisa. Melisa can't second the motion since she does not want to be elected. Dave should have made a motion to elect Shirley and it would have passed 3-2. You would have thought Dave would have had that figured out prior to the meeting. Thanks to Dave, ESC has the Board that the people wanted.
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