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The Willow Run Board of Education cancelled its emergency meeting scheduled for 8 p.m. Wednesday.
A closed session, the acceptance of a resignation and the appointment of an acting superintendent were the only three items on the agenda posted Tuesday night.
Before dismissing members of the audience Wednesday, Board President Sheri Washington said a new meeting will be posted, which may be in addition to the regular meeting scheduled for Nov. 5.
Washington told the audience the meeting had been “erroneously” posted as an emergency meeting. She said the meeting did not qualify as an emergency meeting, and thus the posting was void and the board should not be meeting.
“We definitely want to make sure we are in accordance with our policy and the law,” Washington said. “We want to get this business correct.”
Board Vice President Harold Wimberly was the only board member who was not present Wednesday night. Superintendent Doris Hope-Jackson was also not present.
After dismissing the audience, composed of roughly a dozen people including two members of the press, Washington said if the meeting had been posted a special meeting, and not an emergency meeting, then the meeting could have likely taken place.
When asked to explain why the meeting was called in the first place, Board Secretary Mark Wilde said Jackson had been “absent quite a bit.”
Wilde said the board had recently been made aware the absences, intermittently at first since the beginning of the school year, would likely become more continuous and last longer. This is coupled with the district’s chief financial officer, David Houle, accepting a position at Ypsilanti Public Schools this week.
Both Washington and Wilde explained the district needs a top administrator at the helm. They said with Jackson’s expected absence and Houle, who usually serves as number two for the district, leaving shortly, someone needed to be named as the district’s leader.
Neither board member knew when Houle would be officially leaving the district. He was not present Wednesday night, though Washington said he had been invited.
“He should have been here,” she said.
Wilde said Houle was not the resignation the board had planned to consider Wednesday. When asked if the resignation was Jackson’s, Washington said she would not entertain any more questions pertaining to the identity of the resignation.
Washington said the closed session was scheduled to discuss attorney-client privilege.
Wilde said the meeting was not held to be disciplinary in nature, and Jackson's employment status with the district has not changed. He said there is someone in mind to appoint as acting superintendent, but said the matter had not been discussed by the board.
As board members and the audience were filtering in before the meeting was scheduled to begin, three board members – Washington, Clifford Smith and Joi Jenson – stepped into the hallway for a conversation. Shortly thereafter, Board Treasurer Dorothy Stewart walked into the room and began talking with Wilde and Anglesia Brown, who were seated at the table.
Stewart said she was “protesting” the meeting. She questioned what the emergency the board would be considering.
“What’s the emergency?” she said.
She then left the room. A while later, the board was seated and Washington announced the meeting’s cancellation.
The Michigan Open Meetings Act requires public bodies to post a schedule of meetings within ten days after the start of a calendar or fiscal year. If a change is made to the schedule, then the change must be posted at least three days after the change is made.
The act allows special meetings to be held if a posting is made at least 18 hours before the meeting is scheduled to take place. Additionally, an emergency meeting can be held without notice when two-thirds of the body agrees to hold the meeting.
The law states an emergency meeting may only be held “if the public health, safety or
welfare is severely threatened.”
An e-mail was distributed to district officials, staff and members of the press of Wednesday night’s meeting at 7:43 p.m. Tuesday.
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