Even though voters recently went to the polls to cast their ballots and elect new school board members, the Marysville School District is in need of a replacement again.
Amy Powers recently announced she is stepping down. We applaud her efforts because 10 years is a long time for the service of any elected official, especially now in dealing with a pandemic.
Powers stated that she is leaving because she just finished building a new house outside the district and no longer qualifies for the position. (A board member is required to live in the district.)
All of that makes sense but the timing is what doesn’t pass the sniff test. The new house was not a secret and neither was the November election where voters just picked three candidates (two incumbents and a new person) to serve on the board for the next four years.
Questions are raised as to why Powers didn’t tell the board about her house plans this summer. Maybe she did and members discussed the best strategy on when to make the announcement because the clock was ticking on the existing board.
Our point is, if Powers had stepped down earlier there would have been time to let the taxpayers pick her replacement from those running in the election. We think that would have been the right thing to do.
What happens now is the four remaining members pick a new candidate from the 19 that submitted their name. Is there anything wrong with that? It’s the legal process that is in place, so not necessarily. But we still feel that the timing of the announcement gives rise to questions and it would have been better to let the district voters make the decision.
Even though the board knew Powers was leaving, existing members approved a new five-year contract for Supt. Diane Allen totaling more than $1M. Allen said that she isn’t going to be around forever so we understand her trying to get the best contract she can. But, again, the timing is suspect.
We think newly elected board members, who with current members have to plan future budgets, should have been part of the process of approving Allen’s contract. Keep in mind, a new agreement doesn’t just get worked out in a day or two, so board president Sue Devine would have started work on it well before the election, and maybe because of the election.
Why was the contract done so early? Was Devine unsure of who would win the election and wanted to hurry the process? Would new members vote for the same contract? We are left with more questions than answers and will likely never know what really occurred. But one thing that is certain is that new members will need to fit the additional money into the school district budget for the next five years.
Moving forward, we expect all elected official to handle themselves and their decisions with the people they represent in mind.