Commentary: Special board meeting scheduled with lack of quorum

As a reporter who watches many boards, it is very rare to receive a notice that a board cannot muster a quorum. Don’t get me wrong, meetings do get canceled. Sometimes there isn’t any businesses to discuss. But after a decade of doing this work, I’ve never been notified that a board would not have a quorum.

Let me set this up for you a little more. There was one time that three members of a seven-member board sat in the commons of Mahomet-Seymour High School to hear about the playground layout at Middletown Prairie Elementary prior to the renovation and addition of the building. Three members of a seven-member board does not constitute a quorum, so they had to find one additional member, making phone call after phone call, so that one member could call into the meeting in order to proceed.

In that moment, they did everything they could to make their regularly scheduled meeting happen in the middle of the summer. Everything.

At that time, all votes taken by the board were unanimous without any dissent.

But on Thursday, the Mahomet-Seymour School Board notified the public that they would not have a quorum for their regularly scheduled board meeting on Feb. 16; a meeting that had been on the schedule since May 4, 2020.

The email said that the Board President was calling a Special Meeting for Feb. 22 to conduct the regular monthly business.

When asked to identify the board members who cannot make the Feb. 16 meeting, Board President Max McComb identified himself, Lori Larson, Merle Giles, and Jeremy Henrichs as the ones who could not make it.

“In a couple of cases the reasons are work related, in a couple of cases they are private/family reasons. I do not feel comfortable going into specific details,” he wrote in an email to the Mahomet Daily. 

Of course, things come up. It seems hard to imagine, though, that all four board members, who generally vote together as a majority of the board, all had something come up on the same night that there had been a board meeting scheduled for nearly nine months.

We did see, though, what happens when one board member in the group of four is absent during the January 19 meeting. There was no majority; a few votes were split 3-3, and in order to get the Memorandum of Understanding passed, the board President essentially called for a revote a few days later when Henrichs could rejoin the group. It’s a numbers game.

Whether or not one board member, two board members or three board members could not attend on Feb. 16, there is not one additional board member who could join Meghan Hennesy, Colleen Schultz and Ken Keefe? Not even in a pandemic where many, many boards (including the majority of the boards in Mahomet) continue to meet virtually; a method that was encouraged by this board to achieve a quorum just a few years ago.

But, it’s not only a game about who has the votes, but also who has a voice.

What is devastating about this is that it shows the deep divide of the community, and it shows a willingness to flex power.

Hennesy, Schultz and Keefe won their seats in the same fashion that McComb, Larson, Giles and Henrichs did. They received the most votes; votes that are representative of some, the majority of the community who cast them.

When any board member speaks or when any board member brings an item to the table, they are speaking for a viewpoint, a concern, or a need within the community. This community is divided, there is no doubt in that. But that does not mean that one viewpoint is more valid than another. The cancellation of this meeting, though, the unwillingness to do everything within the board’s power to make the meeting happen, means one viewpoint is more important than another.

In a few meetings, it has been noted that there was a “plan” to ensure that board members who were elected in 2019 would not be able to get anything done. And yet, they have. 

The three board members who were elected in 2019 brought a measure to the board to allow former school board members the opportunity to be on the stage while their child graduates from Mahomet-Seymour; they championed homeschool students who wanted the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities; they worked with the high school administration to help students long-term by doing away with class rank, and they helped pass a policy that requires a same-sex chaperone to be with students on field trips.

They have also questioned and been very vocal about an increase in lawyer fees since 2017, land deals, diversity and equality and finances. 

It hasn’t been pretty, but they’ve provided an opportunity for groups of people who did not have a voice prior to 2019 to have a seat at the table.

Additionally, a regular board meeting is in place to do the work of the people: they pay vendors; they are tasked with developing a comprehensive plan for student achievement; they are the stewards of taxpayer money; they, collectively, make decisions about how our community can best meet the needs of students on a month-to-month basis.

Of course, the email included a date that the regularly scheduled business could be completed. But, it is important to note that per the Mahomet-Seymour Board policy, the meeting could have just been rescheduled as a regular board meeting.

To understand this, it’s best to go directly to the board policy:

Mahomet-Seymour Board Policy 2:200

Regular Meetings

The Board announces the time and place for its regular meetings at the beginning of each fiscal year. The Superintendent shall prepare and make available the calendar of regular Board meetings. The regular meeting calendar may be changed with 10 days’ notice in accordance with State law.

Reconvened or Rescheduled Meetings

A meeting may be rescheduled or reconvened. Public notice of a rescheduled or reconvened meeting shall be given in the same manner as that for a special meeting, except that no public notice is required when the original meeting is open to the public and : (1) is recovened within 24 hours or (2) an announcement of the time and place of the reconvened meeting was made at the original meeting and there is not change in the agenda.

Special Meetings

Special meetings may be called by the President or by any three members of the Board by giving notice thereof, in writing, stating the time, place and purpose of the meeting to the remaining Board members by mail at least 48 hours before the meeting or by personal service at least 24 hours before the meeting.

Public notice of a special meeting is given by posting a notice at the District’s main office at least 48 hours before the meeting and by notifying the news media that have filed a written request for notice. A meeting agenda shall accompany the notice.

No matters will be discussed, considered, or brought before the Board at any special meeting other than such matters as were included in the stated purpose of the meeting.

McComb stated via email on Feb. 12, “The decision to put the meeting back on the calendar as a Special Meeting was guided by district legal counsel. At this point, I feel I need to rely heavily on our legal team for these type of decisions.  After the last couple of meetings you can expect to see a member of our legal team at all future board meetings to provide clarity and advice when necessary.”

As to why lawyers believe a special meeting is necessary to conduct the regularly scheduled business of a school board is curious. What we do know is that an agenda was not included with the notification of the special meeting. 

Professional Registered Parliamentarian, credentialed by the National Association of Parliamentarians, C. Alan Jennings writes, “Special meetings are, well, special. According to Robert’s Rules, they’re called only if 1) something important comes up that must be dealt with before the next regular meeting, or 2) some particular business matter(s) is important enough that it needs to be the exclusive reason for the entire meeting.”

The Open Meetings Act (5 ILCS 120/) says, “Public notice of any special meeting except a meeting held in the event of a bona fide emergency, or of any rescheduled regular meeting, or of any reconvened meeting, shall be given at least 48 hours before such meeting, which notice shall also include the agenda for the special, rescheduled, or reconvened meeting, but the validity of any action taken by the public body which is germane to a subject on the agenda shall not be affected by other errors or omissions in the agenda.”

In at least the last year, the advice of legal counsel has been brought up in nearly every meeting. The district has, at minimum, three different counsel they rely on for a variety of matters, and Mr. McComb seems to be the one board member with access to the attorneys.

At the Oct. 19 board meeting, during a discussion about how to proceed with school during the pandemic, Hennesy asked about having the lawyers weigh-in, in-person.

McComb went on to explain that, in the case of COVID-19 and schools, Mahomet-Seymour’s lawyer (Franzcek) would not weigh in publicly on what schools should do, but rather advise that school districts follow the guidelines as much as possible.

He ended his statement with, “having them here tonight to monitor this discussion would have been a blatant waste of taxpayer dollars. So I didn’t do it. Now, if that makes me a bad person. I’m sorry, but that was my decision.”

In any board meeting I’ve attended where a lawyer is consistently present, the attorney acts as a staff member of the board. They have a passive role, much like Administrators or Directors of any municipality. They observe and flag issues if any arise. They have never been a “babysitter” to the board in times of disagreements. 

The taxpayer foots the bill for their time at the meeting, and even before the meeting when they’ve reviewed the agenda and advised the taxing body. 

There is one thing that the special meeting does accomplish, though: it ensures that only the items on the agenda, the items that the board president decides upon, will be discussed during the meeting.

And it may not even matter whether Hennesy, Schultz and Keefe are there. Those three board members were not asked if they could make it to a Feb. 22 meeting. They knew that the Feb. 16 meeting was canceled, but they found out about the special meeting moments before the public did. 

Perhaps this was part of the plan that has been alluded to time and again.