School board declares vacancy
COEUR d'ALENE - Nearly three weeks after a district court judge ruled Wanda Quinn's appointment to the Coeur d'Alene School District Board of Trustees to be "null and void," the four remaining trustees have officially declared a vacancy in the board's Zone 1 seat.
At a special board meeting held Monday, trustees also elected to hire outside counsel, other than longtime school district attorney, Charles Dodson, to review and advise them on the process of selecting another appointee.
"I think the conflict there is a little too close," said Trustee Tom Hamilton, who made the motion to seek alternate representation.
The vote was 3-1 in favor of removing Dodson from handling school board business that falls under Idaho Code 33-504, the section of state education law specifically related to school board vacancies. Diane Zipperer cast the lone dissenting vote.
Dodson will continue as school district legal counsel on all other business.
Trustees Hamilton and Terri Seymour, who were elected in May, objected to the process school board members followed last spring when they selected Quinn.
Quinn was appointed to the board in June, after longtime school board chair Edie (Brooks) McLachlan, announced her resignation.
Hamilton and Seymour did not participate in the appointment process. The resignation and appointment occurred after Hamilton and Seymour won their seats in the May election, and prior to July 1, when Hamilton and Seymour officially took office.
Brooks remained on the board after announcing her upcoming resignation and participated in the selection process. She made her resignation official on June 6, after casting one of the votes to appoint Quinn as her successor.
Last summer, Hamilton and Seymour filed a court complaint against the school board they sit on, alleging the appointment process followed was illegal.
Hamilton and Seymour hired their own legal team to handle the matter, and Dodson represented the school board.
District Court Judge Michael J. Griffin agreed with Hamilton and Seymour and invalidated Quinn's appointment on Feb. 8.
Idaho Code 33-504 requires that a school board must declare a vacancy within 30 days when any trustee is "recalled and discharged from office as provided in law."
The law further requires the school board members to appoint a new trustee from Zone 1 within 90 days of declaring the vacancy.
Zone 1 covers the eastern section of the school district, encompassing the entire area east of 15th Street from the school district's northern to southern boundaries.
At Monday's meeting, the trustees set March 30 as the tentative deadline, pending legal review, for potential appointees to submit letters of interest and resumes for consideration.
When the trustees meet again on Monday, Superintendent Hazel Bauman is expected to provide the names of several attorneys for the board to consider hiring to review the appointment process.
"I would like to see it be local, if possible. I'm not real hung up on school district experience in this particular case, because I don't believe that's necessarily relevant in this one, but civic experience of some sort would be quite beneficial, some sort of government law experience," Hamilton said.