The North Little Rock School Board voted Friday to rescind the Oct. 12 appointment of R. Hannah Chambers to the board and will now leave it to the Pulaski County Quorum Court to fill the vacant Zone 5 seat.
The confusion surrounding Chambers' appointment to represent a school election zone in which she does not reside generated two special School Board meetings on Friday, an apology from an Arkansas School Boards Association attorney and a board redo of a vote to give $2,500 bonuses to all district employees.
The board voted 4-0 Friday evening in support of the bonus that will be distributed Nov. 22.
The newly appointed Chambers had participated in the board's Oct. 19 votes approving bonuses for state-licensed employees and support staff. While the vote for the support staff bonus was unanimous in its support, the first vote on the bonus for the certified staff was divided. It was recorded as 4-3 in favor of the bonus, including a no vote by board member Darrell Montgomery, who was actually out of the room at the time of the vote.
With Chambers' appointment rescinded and her yes vote now thrown out, the resulting vote from Oct. 19 was a 3-3 tie that defeated the $2,500 bonus to 713 teachers and other licensed employees. The board's vote Friday reverses that and ensures the payment of the one-time bonus.
Chambers read a statement after the board's unanimous vote to rescind her appointment to the nonpaid seat, expressing her frustration that the Arkansas School Boards Association did not provide accurate information on her eligibility for the spot.
"I'm disappointed I will not be able to serve the students, staff, and patrons of the North Little Rock district," she said. "I embraced and was excited to help affect change in the North Little Rock community."
Jay Bequette of the Bequette & Billingsley law firm told the board that it had the option of appointing someone else to fill the Zone 5 vacancy or referring the vacancy to the Pulaski County Quorum Court since the North Little Rock board had failed to fill the seat with a valid appointee within the 30 days allowed by law for the board to do so.
Friday marked the 35th day since former board member Scott Teague's resignation.
Bequette cited Arkansas Code Annotated 6-13-611(c) that says a vacancy shall be filled by the appointment of an individual who is a "qualified elector of the school district and who resides in the same zone, if applicable."
Since the district elects its board members by election zones --with one member per zone -- Arkansas law requires that the person appointed to fill the vacancy must reside in the same zone as the elected member who resigned, Bequette said.
The same section of the statute also says a vacancy shall be filled by a majority vote of the remaining school board members or by the county quorum court. The quorum court is called on to act if, as a result of several vacancies on the school board, only a minority of board members remain or if the school board fails to fill the vacancy within 30 days.
"The cleanest course of action would be to inform the Quorum Court of a need for an appointee," Bequette told the board.
While the state law describes the process, it has rarely if ever been exercised in Pulaski County. Bequette said in an interview that he did not recall it ever being used in his 30-year practice in the area of education law.
North Little Rock School Board member Tracy Steele asked during the noon meeting whether it would be appropriate to submit to the Quorum Court the names of people other than Chambers who applied. Bequette said that could be done but he told Steele it wouldn't be legal for the School Board to go into executive session to select a preferred applicant to recommend to the Quorum Court.
Board member Luke King made the motion to refer the vacancy to the Quorum Court. It was approved 5-0 with King, Steele, Sandi Campbell, Dorothy Williams and Taniesha Richardson-Wiley voting for it. Board member Darrell Montgomery was absent.
The initial Zone 5 board vacancy was created by the Sept. 22 resignation of 12-year School Board member Teague. Teague resigned after no one, including himself, filed as a candidate for election Sept. 19 to the seat.
As a result of no candidates for election, Teague would have continued to hold the seat for a full three-year term unless he formally resigned, which he did.
In the case of a school board resignation, state law authorizes the remaining board members to temporarily fill a vacancy with an appointee who can serve only until the next regular board election. The appointee at that point must run for election and win to be able to continue to serve.
The North Little Rock district advertised for applicants for the Zone 5 seat, generating four applications including that of Chambers who lives in election Zone 6 and not in Zone 5, which encompasses the north-central part of the city.
In a check with the School Boards Association, North Little Rock district leaders were assured that an out-of-zone appointee could legally serve on a temporary basis but would not be eligible to run for the seat, Superintendent Kelly Rodgers said Friday.
The board met with the applicants at a special meeting Oct. 12 and unanimously selected Chambers.
"She was the top of the hill," Campbell, the School Board president, said about Chambers at Friday's special noon meeting to rescind the appointment. "She was very well spoken. She knew what she was talking about and she was just the one who stood out."
Asked whether the out-of- zone residence was a concern in the selection: "Well, we were following legal counsel -- what they told us at the time," Campbell said.
Complaints by community members in the aftermath of Chambers' appointment prompted a media organization to call the School Boards Association earlier this week and was told that the out-of-zone appointment was not legal, Rodgers said. That caused Rodgers to consult with Bequette and Campbell and issue a call for the special meeting to rescind the appointment.
Kristen Garner, an attorney on the staff of the School Boards Association, apologized for the initial inaccurate information she gave about eligibility for board appointments, Rodgers said.
Bequette said the state law on eligibility changed in 2015 to require that an appointee not only be an eligible elector but also live in the zone the appointee would represent on a board.
Other applicants for the Zone 5 seat were Sheila Campbell, an attorney; Adam Burris, co-founder and chief technology officer for Raise the Money Inc., as well as founder and president of Burris Project Solutions LLC; and Cindy Temple, vice president of SP Environmental where she is responsible for managing finances and daily operations.
The board members discussed at the special noon meeting whether Montgomery's disappearance for the Oct. 19 vote on bonuses should be considered a vote against the raise or an absence with no vote cast or counted.
Bequette advised that unless Montgomery left the meeting and did not vote because of a conflict of interest, he was recorded as being in attendance and his nonvote should be recorded as a no on the motion, creating the 3-3 tie that jeopardized the bonus until the board's new vote for it on Friday evening.
Metro on 10/28/2017