Anyone attending the Tuesday, Sept. 20, School Board meeting must have walked away bewildered. Those watching the live webcast must have felt the same.
The board has been without a fifth member to represent Zone 3 for over 90 days, since Carol Freund was forced to resign due to health concerns. For reasons unknown, the board chose to delay opening up Carol’s position for more than 30 days following her resignation and then wait (as Idaho Statute 33-504 allows) until the 90-day maximum time permitted to appoint a replacement, nearly expired.
During that 90-day period, I attended several board meetings and listened to presentations by a myriad of Irene Healy supporters, the then only applicant for the job. These presentations were concise and informative and over and over discussed Irene’s uncanny knowledge and understanding of not only the problems facing our School District, but her solutions able to be implemented immediately upon her appointment. The general theme in all cases was Irene’s integrity and her 30-plus years of working in the School District as a chemistry teacher as well as in various positions in decision-making capacities for the district, which made her an ideal, if not perfect, candidate for the trustee position.
In observing what took place at the board level during this 90-day period, it was instinctively obvious to me – and to many others, I might add – that two very astute members of the board, Rob Clayton and Shawn Bennion, understood this about Irene and appeared to cherish the idea of her joining them on the board. The remaining two, on the other hand, obviously feared the intelligence and decision-making ability of Irene as well as the sense of order that she would bring to the board. Their divisive attitude and overwhelming desire to collaboratively stonewall ideas and decisions that Rob Clayton and Shawn Bennion had so desperately attempted to implement was, and still is, despicable. With Irene’s addition to the team, their ability to disrupt and stonewall could now be diminished, if not eliminated altogether.
While Shawn and Rob consistently exuded professionalism and a true desire to get things done, the dismissive, divisive and disruptive display of personal power plays by the remaining two trustees permeated every meeting that I attended and created an extreme feeling of dysfunctionality not only among constituents but among Board members as well.
All this being said, what gave me hope was my knowing that in a little over three weeks, over 500 petition signatures had been gathered and delivered to the board members requesting that Irene be appointed at Tuesday’s meeting. With the knowledge of Irene Healy being able to add an intelligent and forward-thinking voice and spirit to the board, I so looked forward to last Tuesday’s board meeting. I felt confident that intelligence and a feeling of what is good for our children, teachers, administrators and constituents would prevail and Irene Healy would be appointed to the board so we could move forward. Never in my wildest imagination could I envision this sense of personal power and stonewall tactics to perpetuate between the two divisive board trustees at the expense of their constituents, our children and our entire community.
Unfortunately, and to my wild bewilderment, I was mistaken. Not only was Irene Healy (in my opinion the most qualified candidate) not appointed, but none of the candidates were. Both Shawn Bennion and Rob Clayton, prior to nominating Irene, spoke endlessly about her attributes and their desire to have her as a new board trustee, while at the same time cautioning the other two board members of the major consequences of not appointing a replacement trustee at this meeting. Again, it didn’t seem possible to me that any of the trustees would desire to perpetuate this situation and, hence, turn the appointment decision over to the County Commissioners.
Yet that is exactly what transpired. So now we wait for another 30-90 days before an outside agency takes it out of the hands of our School Board and decides who will become our new trustee. I can only hope that both Shawn Bennion and Rob Clayton can weather the storm until our County Commissioners make the right decision and appoint Irene Healy to that position. As Rob Clayton voiced, as he expressed his frustration at the end of the meeting, “we as board members have failed a pretty big test in the eyes of the public.”
Please hang in there, Shawn and Rob, as we wade through this dilemma together. I feel certain that the County Commissioners, after reviewing the list of over 500 petition signatures, will see the light, as you did, and appoint Irene Healy to join you in your tireless and selfless efforts to support our academic community. In that way we can collectively move on with intelligent decisions on behalf of those already mentioned… in spite of the negative faction you must, for the time being, endure.
For those interested in viewing the entire webcast of the meeting (or portions thereof) go to: blaineschools.org/page/1794 and click on Board Webcasts on the left of the page. I think you will be astonished at what transpired.
Rick Flickinger
Ketchum resident