The circumstances that led the Akron Board of Education to fast-track a redistricting vote, changing its policy and eliminating future public comment opportunities, remain a point of tension between board members and the administration.
Superintendent Michael Robinson sparred with board members at a Monday meeting of the board’s Legal, Contracts and Board Policy committee, saying he inherited an unclear redistricting policy that could have delayed necessary changes to the point of making them impossible to accomplish in a reasonable time frame.
“I’m just trying to get this redistricting done,” he said. “It took us from December all the way until last month. Really, I don’t think it should have taken us this long.”
‘You’re never going to finish’
In a March 20 meeting, school board members voted 5-1 to change a policy that governs which schools students are assigned to. The vote followed repeated delays on voting on a proposal that would close some schools and reassign students from those schools and others.
In approving the new policy, board members removed requirements that a first reading (or public introduction) for a redistricting plan be held 30 days after notice was sent to the public, including the parents and guardians of every student in the district; that two more readings be held before a vote; and that public comment be part of the first two readings.
Robinson said Monday that in holding a number of public meetings and allowing public comment and discussion at earlier school board meetings, he “did absolutely far more than the policy even required.” He said there was one board member who questioned whether the process should start over with a new first reading after the district’s redistricting and restructuring proposal was changed to move STEM High School students into Robinson Community Learning Center, displacing those students.
Robinson asked for an attorney’s advice, he said, to ensure there was no violation of the board’s policy. He said he could “clearly understand” why the attorney suggested the 30-day window be eliminated and other changes to the policy proposed.
“If you go back to square one, you’re never going to finish,” he said.
When the public should be notified
But committee members Rene Molenaur, Carla Jackson and Barbara Sykes continued to express concerns about why the change was made, as they started the process of again revising the policy to return public comment requirements to the plan. Molenaur, who co-chairs the committee with Sykes and who voted against the change in March, said she was “very uncomfortable” with the altered policy.
“At what level of change does the public need to be notified?” she asked.
Molenaur said she was not the board member who questioned the 30-day timeline but thought the matter could be resolved if the policy was simply made more specific and changed to say the first reading would be held 30 days after the first public notice.
“I disagree with the fact that eliminating it is the solution,” she said. “Clarifying it is the solution.”
Doing so would have allowed the board to move forward without starting over, Sykes agreed, since initial notice had gone out in December. But board members said it wasn’t clear what made a change “significant” and worthy of restarting the notice process.
“I’ve never seen a proposal where there have not been changes,” Robinson said. “If we go back and start over, we’re never going to finish anything we start to do.”
He said he thought the 30-day notice requirement was a “hindrance to getting the work done.”
As board members parsed the language, Robinson said some people “got caught up in words.”
“We can sit here and go over semantics over and over and over again,” Robinson said.
Sykes reminded him that doing so was the committee’s role.
Suspending the rules
At the time of the special March meeting, it had been 23 days since the revised redistricting and restructuring plan had been sent to the public, and a regular meeting was scheduled five days later. Molenaur and Sykes both said they thought the rules should have simply been suspended, instead of being changed. Jackson said she didn’t know they could be.
“Why was this the option selected?” Jackson asked, referring to the decision to change the redistricting policy. “At the time, I thought this was the only option.”
She went on to say that no recommendation to suspend the rule had ever been made, but that doing so would have been easier and more flexible.
“We could’ve done a suspension of the policy; that could’ve made more sense,” Jackson said.
With the policy change, board members said the need to redistrict constituted an emergency, defined 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.”
Children and families not knowing where they would be going to school or whether they would be provided transportation to get there constituted an emergency, Robinson said. But Molenaur pushed for a separate vote to be taken in the future to declare an emergency, something that did not happen in March. Committee members will continue to discuss that proposal.
‘I never trust a change in the middle of the process’
The board had also removed the redistricting and restructuring plan from the agenda multiple times before the March vote, something Sykes said should have been avoided to help meet the required meeting timeframe.
Robinson said he removed the measure on the advice of an attorney “to avoid litigation.”
Sykes proposed the board stop the practice, asking for a policy that would require the meeting agenda to be set two days ahead of a meeting.
“We are trying to make the public trust what we are doing,” she said. “We need a pattern, a routine, as few surprises as possible.”
Gregory Harrison, a pastor with Antioch Baptist Church who attended the committee meeting, said changing policies in the middle of the redistricting process marginalizes the public and is the reason that he and others in the community are upset.
“What that means to me is you don’t value me,” he said. “What that means to me is I can’t trust you.”
Suspending the policy would have been acceptable, he said, but, “I never trust a change in the middle of the process.”
Robinson said the district received and sought much more public comment than was required, something he would expect to do again regardless of any policy requirements.
“In no way, shape or fashion were we trying to do anything unjust, pull the wool over the community’s eyes,” he said. “I don’t operate that way.”
Sykes said the board needed to do a better job of sticking to its own rules in order to maintain residents’ support.
“When we violate our own policies, that is where the distrust comes from,” she said. “I apologize for where we found ourselves. … I hope you will trust us by the actions that we’re taking.”
