More than a month after North East Independent School District trustees voted to interview applicants for the District 2 trustee position — and weeks after halting the process in a deadlock — four finalists out of eight initial applicants will be invited to a second round of interviews on Oct. 2.
The four finalists include: Jacqueline Klein, Nan Richie, Rhonda Rowland and Tracie Shelton.
The decision to proceed with the finalists was made after debate at a special meeting called Monday.
“For me, the importance is giving a voice to this community,” said Trustee Sandy Hughey, who called for the discussion at Monday’s meeting. “I think that … Mr. [Steve] Hilliard made a motion to start an interview process and we haven’t finished that.”
Three trustees voted unsuccessfully September 11 to appoint Klein, one of the applicants who had run against the late District 2 trustee Terri Williams in the previous election, to the vacancy. Williams died last month after a long illness. The three trustees who voted to appoint Klein were Hilliard, Marsha Landry and Diane Sciba Villarreal.
But the other three trustees, Hughey, Shannon Grona and David Beyer, voted against the measure, asking instead for a second round of interviews.
The two subsequent 3-3 votes on both motions resulted in a deadlock.
At Monday’s meeting, Sciba Villarreal rehashed many of the same arguments she used in the previous meeting to support Klein’s appointment, including the idea that voters should be represented by someone they elected, not by other applicants selected by the board. Since Klein narrowly lost to Williams, she would be a logical candidate, Sciba Villarreal said.
“The people deserve their voice because let me tell you, it becomes taxation without representation if we go in and just appoint somebody willy-nilly and say we know better than they do,” she said. “The voters had the right to make that decision.”
Grona, the board president, pushed back, pointing out that Sciba Villarreal had voted for the initial interview process and now was changing course.
Sciba Villarreal said she had decided that “upon reflection, I started feeling a sense that it was not my decision to make.”
To move past the deadlock, Hilliard refocused the conversation with a process and timeline to narrow the initial pool of candidates for a second round of interviews next week, followed by a final round with two finalists.
“What we failed to do when we started this process was to put a very clear timeline [on it],” Hilliard said.
That final round could include a public forum with a question-and-answer session, but those decisions have not been finalized, according to a district spokeswoman.
While trustees disagreed over how many candidates to narrow this next round to, they deliberated in executive session and returned to vote on calling back four candidates.
Three of the four candidates spoke at Monday’s meeting, disagreeing on who would be the best successor to follow Williams.
“The board should take the next step and fill the vacancy with someone who embodies the characteristics and traits in order to fulfill Terri’s legacy of service to the district,” Richie said. “Requesting the public to apply for an appointment and then not making an appointment is not a good reflection upon the board.”
Shelton said the board should select someone who won’t run for reelection so they can fulfill the role of trustee without having an unfair advantage when running in May.
“Is there an opportunity of those eight to put somebody in there who’s not interested in this position as a long term? So that you guys can move forward?” she asked. “Because what’s clear to me, unless I read you wrong in the meeting that … this board is clearly divided, and is really struggling to come to see a way forward because one side is afraid that the other will get an advantage.”
Klein told trustees that the divided board needed a moderate to unite them.
“The logical step would be to appoint me the temporary trustee until an election which deserves to be on the ballot in May,” she said.
In the end, the board unanimously approved the measure to move forward with the four finalists.
