The Richland 2 school board will have all new officers after the election in November 2022.
The Core Four has maintained a stranglehold on officer positions for too long. On June 28, 2022 the following officers were elected: Chair - James Manning; Vice Chair - Amelia McKie (proud owner of a huge debt to the S.C. Ethics Commission for fines); Secretary - Teresa Holmes.
Manning and McKie did not file for re-election. Their terms-of-office end on November 8, 2022. Or maybe on November 17, 2022, one week after the election is certified.
State law S.C. Code of Laws reads,
"SECTION 59-19-70. Chairman and clerk of board.
"The trustees shall, as soon as practicable after the appointment of any new trustee, organize by the election of one of their members as chairman and another as clerk of the board. The chairman shall preside at meetings of the board and perform other duties imposed on him under the law, and the clerk shall keep a record of the proceedings of all meetings in a book provided for that purpose and perform all other duties required of him by law."
This is a law that Richland 2 has not followed, like the law regarding the beginning of a term-of-office (until their error was pointed out to them and corrected in November 2020).
When the board meets at the first meeting after the election, the new board members will be sworn in and will take their seats. They will join Trustees Agostini, Scott, and McFadden. Then the trustees will elect the officers for the remainder of the School Year. to June 30, 2023. So long, Teresa.
Since Holmes served for four years without ever being sworn in legally, I'd say she is ineligible to be an officer of the board. Hopefully, the new board will agree and will send her to a seat at the end of the row.
And I suspect the new board will waste no time in moving the superintendent away from the pivot point in board seating and put the Board Chair in that seat, where Robert's Rules of Road state the Chair is to sit.
