Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Chair Mishandles Consent Agenda Item

The opening of tonight's board meeting was a complete joke, and three speakers addressed the errors during the Public Participation segment.

When the meeting arrived at the Consent Agenda item, a motion was made and seconded to approve the Consent Agenda item.

Trustee Agostini then made a motion to split the agenda. What she meant was to separate the items and not approve them as a group.

Holmes wanted to approve the consent agenda and then address the items which Agostini wanted to separate.

It would have been clearer if Trustee Agostini had made a motion to remove Item 5.2 Approval of the Minutes from the Consent Agenda. After discussion and a vote, then a motion would have been made to remove Item 5.4 Request for an Innovative CTE Course from the Consent Agenda. And it would have been discussed and voted on. And only then would the original motion, as amended, have been voted on.

If both Items 5.2 and 5.4 were removed, then the board would have voted on the Consent Agenda, which would have contained only Item 5.3. After that each of the other two Items would have been discussed and voted on.

Holmes has a lot of trouble understanding secondary motions and generally objects to them because she doesn't know how to handle them, in spite of having been educated by Trustee Manning at several previous meetings. 

Trustee Agostini stated that her motion did not require a Second. After brief discussion between the superintendent and Holmes, the superintendent agreed with Agostini that a second was not required.

What did Holmes do? She wanted to move on to a vote on the original motion. Why didn't the superintendent step up and correct her? Isn't part of his job to assist her in not making a fool out of herself?

Trustee McFadden stated that, if the orginal motion was voted on, then it would not be possible to discuss removal of the two Items. And Mrs. McFadden was exactly right.

Holmes ran all over Trustees Agostini and McFadden and bullied her way through to vote on the original motion.

Three speakers tonight attacked what had happened.

I was the final speaker. I showed my notes and said I had written comments on two topics, but I said I was going to address what had just happened in the meeting. I got away with mentioning Trustee Agostini's name but, when I mentioned Trustee McFadden's very correct comment, Holmes woke up and came out of her shell, demanding that I not mention anyone's name.

Why not? Mrs. McFadden was sitting right there and had just said what I was repeating. I was complimenting Trustee McFadden.

I think the problem is that Teresa Holmes is just ignorant of organizational procedures. She's not a completely dumb person; after all, she did get an Ed.D. degree from an online school in California. The procedures have been explained to her in public in school board meetings many times, and she is either unwilling or unable to learn them. Or maybe she just wants things her way, even when she is wrong.

Any other board would removed Holmes from the position as Chair by now. Manning made a huge mistake last June 29 when he nominated Holmes for the office of Chair. Just as the board (the Core Four) elected her last June 29, they could hold a new election and elect someone else as Board Chair.

For the good of the District, that's exactly what the board should do.

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