In a contentious meeting, members of the Akron Board of Education agreed Wednesday to limit public participation in future redistricting discussions in order to move forward with and pass the district’s twice-delayed plan to close some schools and move students to others.
The redistricting plan will add full-day pre-Kindergarten in the fall for some students. In approving the policy change that allowed for the vote, board members said they intended to revisit the decision that eliminated some public notice requirements.
“That is not the will of this board to suppress public participation,” said Carla Jackson, the board’s vice president. “We understand the public has put us here to do the work.”
The school board has been discussing a redistricting plan since late last year, but in recent weeks, Board President Diana Autry said the group received legal advice that board policy had not been followed, requiring them to delay a planned vote.
The policy that board members voted 5-1 to change required that a first reading on a redistricting plan be held 30 days after a public notice was sent to the parents and guardians of every student in the district. The policy required two more readings of the plan before a final vote. It also allowed for public comment, essentially the public’s opportunity to provide feedback to the board at its meetings, at the time of each reading.
All of those requirements were eliminated. Some board members expressed hesitation at a Monday committee meeting when the idea was first presented. They asked that an attorney representing the school board attend Wednesday’s special meeting to clarify why the changes needed to be made. No attorney was present.
“It’s inappropriate for the attorney not to be here,” Board Member Barbara Sykes said, saying that a memo the board’s attorney had drafted was insufficient. She said the email sent by the attorney did not clarify why changing the rules, instead of suspending them, was the best action for the board to take.
Jackson said the recommendation came as a precautionary measure because the district is in a “litigious climate.” Discussions regarding redistricting had been ongoing for months, but Superintendent Michael Robinson did not send a notice to students and their families until Feb. 27.
Recent delays to the vote, he and others said, had hamstrung the district as it tried to open registration, determine transportation routes and make teachers’ classroom assignments.
“We have been prepared for weeks to proceed to redistricting,” Robinson said. “We cannot tell a parent where their child will be going to school.”
Robinson said the district had “really exceeded what the original policy said” by holding 10 meetings about the proposal. But Jackson said focusing those meetings on certain affected clusters might have run afoul of the policy as it was written.
As they passed the policy change, board members said they intended to send the new redistricting policy directly to a board committee in order to make changes that would reinstate public comment requirements. But Board Member Rene Molenaur, who was the lone no vote, said “anything can happen” on the path to putting the protections back in place.
She said she was hesitant to remove a measure that introduced “well-thought-out equity options” into the redistricting process, especially when there was no guarantee they would be reinstated by current board members.
“This is a permanent change,” Molenaur said. “This is not a resolution to pause.”
Sykes, who offered the amendment directing the approved policy be sent to the legal, contracts and board policy committee that she and Molenaur lead, said it was a priority for her to restore notice and comment requirements for future redistricting plans.
“I can assure you this will not go into No Man’s Land,” Sykes said. “It will not take all year to do this. It’ll be done posthaste.”
Pastor Gregory Harrison, with Antioch Baptist Church, said during public comment that there were less offensive, and less drastic measures, that the board could have taken other than removing the opportunity for people to speak. Often, he said, school closures most affect Black and poor Akron residents who would benefit from ensuring their voices can be heard.
“The vote probably should have happened sooner,” he said. “Because it didn’t, doesn’t mean you should get rid of a rule.”
Molenaur also questioned why emergency language needed to be used to move forward with the vote to change a policy, saying it had never been made clear what the issues with the existing policy were.
The district defines an emergency as “any situation or set of circumstances which the Board has reason to believe will close the schools or jeopardize the safety or welfare of the students or employees of the District.”
“We have lived recently through an emergency. COVID was an emergency,” Molenaur said. “This is an inconvenience of our own doing.”
