Month: August 2023

Another day and another School Committee resignation. Peter Demling notified the School Committee of his resignation this morning. In his note, he said:

“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to serve our schools and to have served with you. Take care of yourself, and take care of each other, no matter what happens.
I wish you, the committees and our school districts nothing but the best as you face the road ahead.”

You may be wondering, who is left??

The answers are:

• Irv Rhodes and I are the remaining two members of the Amherst School Committee. With only two members of a five-member body, the School Committee does not have quorum and therefore can not meet or take any votes. I talked to staff in the central office today to make sure payments (including payroll) can still be made, without a committee meeting to approve warrants. After consulting with the school district’s attorney, it was established that either Rhodes or I can sign warrants, and they would need to be approved at the next meeting with quorum. So, payments and payroll will not be held up.
• There are now three vacancies to be filled. See my previous blog post about the process to fill School Committee vacancies. The Town Council will be holding a meeting on Monday August 28, which Rhodes and I will also attend, to discuss the process and timeline for filling the vacancies.
• With these three resignations (Herrington, McDonald, Demling), the Regional School Committee* is also down three members, how ever that nine-member body still has a quorum and is still operating. The Union 26 committee is down two members, but that body also still has a quorum and is still operating. In fact, the Regional and Union 26 committees (including Rhodes and me) are hard at work determining who will be our interim superintendent. More will be shared on that soon.

*See my blog post Amherst has two School Committees? for an explanation on the multiple School Committees.

Happy Thursday! It seems like it’s been ages since my last post and yet it’s only been three days! Let’s jump right in.

Allison McDonald has submitted her resignation from the Amherst School Committee (and thus also the Regional School Committee). In her resignation notice, which she forwarded to both School Committees, she said:

“While I’ve endured the challenging and at times toxic climate of Amherst public life, I am no longer able to do so. 
I hope that Amherst will move forward and commit to dynamic civic dialogue without the vitriol that’s characterized this past year, and I look forward to contributing to our community in other capacities.”

The Town Council will need to meet to determine a timeline for filling this vacancy. I can only presume that they will fill both this vacancy and the vacancy left when Ben Herrington resigned, simultaneously.

Next, why did the School Committees need over 2.5 hours last night to approve the meeting minutes from the August 17 meeting?

• Taking accurate minutes is not easy. The APRS staff member who took minutes for the August 17 meeting (at which we discussed the separation agreement of Superintendent Michael Morris) did a great job at capturing the discussion and debate, but it’s inevitable that in a discussion as complex as this, details will get missed.
• The purpose of minutes is to have an accurate record of what transpired. SC members were sent the draft minutes on Tuesday, and I reviewed them and made suggested changes on my own before last night’s meeting. While going through the minutes, what I kept in mind is that one, two, 10 years from now, when someone reads these minutes, they need to be able to have an accurate understanding of what transpired.
• When the SCs went into Executive Session, Peter Demling opened up the document and we edited it on the fly. My suggested changes and Demling’s suggested changes were already incorporated. (I had sent my suggested changes to Demling and RSC Vice Chair Sarahbess Kenney on Tuesday).
• We went through paragraph by paragraph, to make sure the minutes accurately reflected what we said. We suggested edits, discussed the edits, and came to consensus on each edit.
• We were notified by Marc Terry, the attorney for the school district and the school committee, that we had the option of redacting only those portions of the minutes that reflected his advice to us, and claim attorney-client privilege. After some discussion, and after reviewing the entire document, the committees agreed not to redact anything that could be covered under attorney-client privilege. To be clear, NOTHING HAS BEEN REDACTED FROM THE MINUTES. I think this was a good and right decision, and I’m glad we all came to consensus about it.
• After we made edits to the full document, Demling created a final “clean” version which he emailed to us, then we took a break so that we could review the clean document.
• When we came back, we decided that we wanted to get the minutes out to the public as soon as possible, and therefore we would not worry about things like inconsistently naming individuals (first name, last name, first last), small typos, extra spaces, etc.
• We voted unanimously to approve the minutes and publish them. It was a very collaborative effort, and it seemed to me that all members took seriously the task of making sure the minutes accurately reflected what transpired.
• It was a slow process, but it definitely kept moving. We took exactly the amount of time we needed to make sure that the discussion of Morris’s separation agreement would be accurately reflected.

Happy Monday! Let’s get right to it.

First of all, the August 22 meeting has to be postponed one day to August 23. As of this writing, the meeting has not been changed on Boarddocs (the online platform for School Committee meetings and info), but it should be changed/posted today.

The reason the meeting had to be pushed one day is due to Open Meeting Law requirements when posting meetings. Because this is a meeting of the Union 26 Committee, in addition to the Regional School Committee, it has to be posted on the town websites of Amherst and Pelham (Union 26) 48 hours prior to the meeting date (not counting weekends). Unfortunately, due to human error it was not posted in time, so it needs to be pushed one day so that it can be posted today and have the required 48 hours’ notice.

It will be a virtual meeting. Check the Boarddocs website to confirm the start time (probably 5:30) and get the meeting link (click on the Video button).

Secondly, Ben Herrington has announced that he is resigning from his position on the Amherst School Committee (and thus also from the Regional School Committee*) as of today, Monday August 21. In an email to the School Committees sent this morning, he said:

“Recently, it has occurred to me that I no longer have the passion I once did for the work we do on the school committee. Impact on learning has been less of a focus than political rancor and that is not something I find to be fulfilling at all. There are other ways that I have found to be impactful in the lives of young folks and so I have chosen to explore other avenues and leave this work to you all.”

What happens next?

First, the Regional School Committee will need to elect a new RSC chair, which presumably will happen at the August 23 meeting (the agenda includes “RSC reorganization,” which is what it’s called when roles are determined.) The committee elects a chair by majority vote of members.

Second, the town of Amherst will need to vill the vacancy on the School Committee. The Amherst home rule charter states that when there is a vacancy on the School Committee, the position will be filled by vote of the Town Council and the remaining members of the School Committee. The last time this process was used, when Heather Lord was appointed in 2020, the process was something like this:

• Interested persons are asked to submit a letter of interest.
• Candidates are invited to a joint meeting of the Town Council and the School Committee at which they have the opportunity to speak and answer questions.
• The committees vote, and the winning candidate is the person who receives a majority of the votes on both committees.

Per the Amherst charter, this meeting at which the candidates speak and the Town Council and School Committee votes, must be called within 45 days of the vacancy. So, look for the meeting to take place before October 5. Also, the vacancy must be posted 21 days prior to the meeting, so look for that information by September 11.

This topic is on the agenda of today’s (August 21) Town Council meeting under “Topics Not Reasonably Anticipated by the Chair 48 Hours in Advance of the Meeting.” The Town Council will determine on the process and timeline for filling the vacancy (in accordance with the Amherst charter).

It bears mentioning that there will be an Amherst town election on November 7. The person appointed to fill the vacancy will serve in the role until December 31, 2023, NOT until election day. In Amherst, School Committee terms run for two calendar years. It is also worth mentioning that if the person who is appointed is also on the ballot for the election, they will not be listed as an incumbent, per the Amherst charter.

I’ll plan to post info about the process and timeline once it is determined.

*See my blog post Amherst has two School Committees? for an explanation on the multiple School Committees.

Two quick things:

1. The minutes from the August 17 Executive Session, at which the committees approved the separation agreement for Mike Morris, will be made public. The committees will need to meet in Executive Session to review and approve the minutes. Presumably, this will take place at the August 22 meeting. Once that happens, they will be posted for the public to view. Until then, members are prohibited from talking publicly about what happened during that meeting.
2. The August 22 meeting will begin at 5:30 and will be all virtual. It will include a Pubic Comment section, which is scheduled to take place after the Executive Session.

I was notified by Peter Demling, chair of the Union 26 School Committee, via email on August 15, that there will be a virtual joint meeting of the Union 26* and Regional School Committees on Thursday, August 17, starting at 5:45 PM. He indicated that the meeting would be posted as an Executive session “in accordance with MGL c 30A section 21(a), to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with nonunion personnel, Michael Morris, with no intention of returning to open session.”

The email further indicated that more information would be shared with SC members in the Executive Session, and was signed by Demling and Regional School Committee Chair Ben Herrington.

You may be wondering, “What is this all about?” I am wondering the same. I have not been given any other information by Chairs Demling or Herrington about what this last-minute meeting will be about. I was not contacted ahead of time as to whether I am available to attend. In fact, I have gone to considerable lengths to change my weekend travel plans (since March, my daughter and I have had an out-of-state trip planned for which we were supposed to leave Thursday evening; I was supposed to be on an airplane on Thursday evening).

Though the committees will vote on entering Executive Session, the meeting will open publicly, and the public may attend (virtually). You can access the Google Meet link in the meeting posting. (It is not very intuitive, but you click the Video button to enter the Google Meet.)

*See my blog post Amherst has two school committees? for a refresher on what the Union 26 School Committee is.

Here is a brief summary of what’s happening and where things stand right now.

• Despite many emailed requests, and despite my own public and private urging, Regional School Committee (RSC) Chair Ben Herrington has declined to call a RSC meeting to discuss the return of Superintendent Mike Morris.
• That said, the RSC has a scheduled meeting on Tuesday, August 22. This meeting has not been posted yet, but when it is you will be able to view the meeting information (start time, agenda, etc) here: go.boarddocs.com/ma/arps/Board.nsf/Public.
• By state law, public meetings must be posted two business days (48 hours) before the meeting takes place, so at the latest you should see it posted by this Friday evening, August 18.
• You can make public comment at that meeting by voicemail, text, email, or in-person. See my recent blog post about Public Comment Q&A.
• I don’t know what will be on the agenda for that meeting. The committee chair, in addition to being the sole member who can call a meeting, also decides what will be on the agenda. In an agenda planning document that I have access to, it does note “Subcommittee reorganization” as an agenda topic for August 22. (The RSC has various subcommittees that members are on, as well as commitments to have a representative with various external organizations, such as Amherst Media and The Collaborative. Since there are several new members on the RSC now, I assume we will be discussing the make-up of subcommittees and appointments to external orgs.)
• I don’t know if discussion of the superintendent’s status will be on the agenda, or if there is a plan to go into Executive Session. I don’t know if the reports from the Title IX and other investigations will be submitted before then.
• As you can see, there is a lot that I don’t know. What I do know is that I will continue to push for transparency, for listening to community voices, especially those most marginalized, and for accountability.