School Board Meeting - Tuesday, July 23

The Richland 2 School Board will hold its one July meeting on Tuesday, July 23, at 6:30PM for the public and preceded by a 90-minute Executive Session that will begin at 5:00PM. The Board meets at R2i2.

This meeting will the first in the new school year, which started July 1. The Board Chair is James Manning, who has been a trustee since 2010 and is the longest-serving trustee.

Eleven Board Policies are up for decision, and FOURTEEN (14) Policies are being submitted for review but no action. How did the District ever survive with all the policies in place before so many came up for attention, review and vote?

Too many times last year decisions were avoided by the throw-away phrase "will of the Board". Rather than determining what the "will of the Board" was, business just moved on. Board members failed to demand a vote by making a Motion of the topic that had just been discussed or learning the consensus of the Board.

The Board should probably consider a Parliamentarian, which Richland School District One has. That person could help the Board Chair keep meetings moving along. When Board members ramble or are slow to consolidate their comments, the Parliamentarian could prompt them to speak directly and to complete their remarks.

Hopefully, meetings will no longer run two hours, three hours, or more than three hours.

The next Board meeting will be Tuesday, August 13, 2019. There will be two meetings in August, September and October. Then the Board will meet once in November and once in December.

Parents: tell the kids they are on their own for dinner and start showing up for these meetings.

McKie Files Report 8 Days Late

Amelia McKie is sitting on $4,265.01 in her political campaign fund. This means she must file quarterly campaign disclosure reports. The reports are due for Calendar Year quarters. Reports are to be filed by the 10th day of the month after the end of the quarter. For those who have a hard time calculating this, the reports are due by January 10, April 10, July 10, October 10.

By that calendar the Campaign Disclosure Report for the second quarter of 2019 (April 10-June 30) was due July 10.

Since July 8th I've been monitoring the Ethics Commission's public information found behind the Online Reporting link on a daily basis. Each day I have checked; each day there was no report for the second quarter. This morning there was no report for the second quarter. Today is July 18; the report was due July 10.

And finally, today, July 18, 2019 her report for the second quarter was filed.

Riddle me this...

McKie was fined for numerous filing violations and now owes the S.C. Ethics Commission $51.750 under a Decision & Order No. C2017-023, dated July 3, 2018. As of July 9, 2019 she had not paid. The Ethics Commission will file a Judgment in that amount to be entered on the Judgment Rolls of the Richland Court Clerk of Court's Office.

One would think that McKie would have begun paying close attention to filing all required reports on time. By January 9, 2019 she had filed numerous past-due reports. All are of public record and can be found on the website for the S.C. Ethics Commission at ethics.sc.gov

For the 4th Quarter 2018 McKie filed her Campaign Disclosure Report on time (1/9/19).

The next quarterly report was due April 10, 2019. When did she file it? MAY 8, 2019. LATE!

The next quarterly report was due July 10, 2019. When did she file it? JULY 18, 2019. LATE!

The School Board counts her as one of seven Board members. I do not. She is a Trustee-elect, not a Trustee, for reason I have written about extensively.

What possible valid reason could she have for missing two filing deadliness this year?

There is are procedures for removing her from the Board.

One is S.C. Code of Law Section 59-19-60.

Board Policy BCA - Board Member Code of Ethics. It reads, in part, "School board members are under the jurisdiction of the 'Ethics, Government Accountability, and Campaign Reform Act,' S.C. Code Section 8-13-100 et seq. School board members are expected to comply with the act." [emphasis added] I am not aware of any record of discipline by the School Board for McKie's repeated violations of Board Policy BCA.

A second way is that Governor McMaster could remove her, if he found her failures to file the required returns in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 to be acts of moral turpitude.

Being a Trustee of a billion-dollar school district is an incredible responsibility. Can this district tolerate any longer a Board member is so inattentive to such a very basic obligation? Oh, wait; she's not really a Board member.

School Board still minus two legal Members and now minus one legal Officer

Reporter Michael Smith of The Independent Voice of Blythewood & Fairfield County contacted me for a comment after the Richland 2 School Board elected its officers for 2019-2020.

In his July 3, 2019 article on www.blythewoodonline.com  he correctly reported my position, when he wrote "Philpott maintains that McKie and Holmes aren’t legally allowed to serve because neither filed Statements of Economic interest forms until after taking the oath of office. State law prohibits elected officials from taking the oath when SEI forms haven’t been filed."

Further Smith quoted me correctly, when he wrote, “They are, in my opinion, not legal board members,” Philpott said. “Teresa Holmes was nominated for the position of vice chair and was elected. My contention is since she is not a board member, she cannot serve as an officer.”

Smith also contacted Trustee-elect Teresa Holmes, and Smith wrote, "Holmes said she doesn’t plan to step down, and disputes that she’s not legally qualified to serve on the board.": 

Smith quoted Holmes: “There is no reason that he should continue to say that,” Holmes said. “He knows that that’s not true."

So, basically, Holmes is calling me a liar.

Teresa Holmes has a Ph.D. She should be able to understand the law and that the order of the words in the law in important.

Why do I continue to say she is not a legal member of the Board? It's as simple as 1-2-3. While she is legally “qualified”, she is not legally “entitled” to serve on the Board.

1.     At the time Holmes took the oath of office on November 13, 2018, she was "qualified" to be a member of the Board, because she had been elected.

2.     However, when she took the oath of office on November 13, 2018, she was not eligible to take it, because she had not filed the required Statement of Economic Interests Report with the South Carolina Ethics Commission. Therefore, it is as if she never took the oath of office. The oath that she did take has no force or effect.

3.     She filed the required Statement on December 4, 2018, but she has never taken the oath of office legally; i.e., after she filed the Statement.

Because Holmes hasn't taken the oath of office, she is NOT a legal Board member. And, because she is not a legal Board member, she cannot serve as Board Vice Chair. She is only a Trustee-elect, not a Trustee. She is NOT entitled to sit at the Board or to vote or to attend Executive Sessions or to serve as Board Vice Chair. She is not entitled to receive Trustee compensation or have any expenses paid or reimbursed for meetings, conferences, out-of-town Association meetings, etc. Nor should Amelia McKie, for the same reasons. All monies paid to or for McKie and Holmes should be returned to Richland 2 School District.

Richland 2 School District has never provided me with any response or statement regarding my allegations. It has informed me that "The District’s legal counsel continues to advise us that actions taken by the Board are valid under these circumstances." That statement is NOT a response to my allegations. And it’s only true if a quorum of legal Board members was in attendance.

As early as mid-March I suggested to the Board that there was a simple "fix" to this problem. Holmes and McKie need to raise their right hands and take the oath of office. Then, and only then, will they become legal board members.

As soon as they do, then the Board will have to re-examine every vote on or since November 13, 2018 that was affected by votes by McKie and Holmes. Many decisions will change.

Could it happen here? A gender-less student body?

Could the insanity happening in NYC schools be foisted on students and parents of Richland 2 School District?

Read this article carefully.

Maybe this article is just a big joke. Maybe LifeSiteNews.com is just a branch of The Onion. And maybe it's not. Maybe this is true.

This is why, Parents, you must attend school board meetings and be involved! Don't just ship your kids off to school and think that the schools, teachers and administration will do what's best for your kids.

YOU decide what is best for them. YOU are the governors of the school district. YOU elect school board members, and YOU must watch them carefully.

The only way to know what is going on is to view the agenda before each meeting and to understand it. Read the proposed revisions to Board Policies. These are not just policies that apply to the board. Many of these are policies of the Board that will be applied to your children and to staff.

If you don't agree with something, you must speak out - effectively.

One way to do that is to gather your friends, family and neighbors and speak up at Board meetings. Don't fall for the "one speaker on a topic is enough". Every one of you should speak. If the Board calls "Time's up", tell them "No, the time is not up."

Remembering Operation Lost Trust

Were you in South Carolina when Operation Lost Trust broke open the issues of corruption and lobbyists' vote-buying in South Carolina government almost 30 years ago?

Recently I began reading the 600-page book titled Operation Lost Trust, by John V. Crangle. Crangle was the Executive Director of Common Cause/South Carolina from 1986 to 2016.

As I work my way through this tale of intrigue, I find myself thinking of the unresolved questions at the Richland 2 School District about the legitimacy of the School Board.

Operation Lost Trust quotes former S.C. House Speaker Bob Sheheen: "When you've got people involved in leadership who are under scrutiny, that reflects not only on them but on the institution." In the same paragraph on Page 43, Sheheen is further quoted: "you don't know what's coming next."

Sheheen's words ring true in 2019, not about the S.C. House, but about Richland 2 School District.

I have found myself at times becoming impatient with the wheels of justice and, at the same time, admiring the investigation and preparation skills of others who prepare such cases.

Thorough preparation often means that charges are announced and very quickly guilty pleas are entered. How does this happen? Defendants know that prosecutors have them "dead to rights".In other words, there is no way out of it for them.

The whole story will end up here one of these days.

An important decision was made by the School Board when it elected James Manning as the Board Chair for the 2019-2020 School Year. Manning is the longest-serving member of the Board, and he has been on the Board since 2010. His term as trustee runs to 2022.

The Board and the public are likely to see a noticeable change in leadership style. It may take him a month or two to institute changes. Meetings should be much better organized, smoother and shorter.

2019-2020 Officers

At the June 25, 2019 Richland 2 School Board meeting the officers for the next school year were elected. Their terms-of-office are July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020. They are

James Manning, Chair
Teresa Holmes, Vice Chair
Cheryl Caution-Parker, Secretary

The length of last night's meeting, chaired for the last time by Amelia McKie, was not a record, but it was 2 hours 17 minutes. That was about 1 hour 17 minutes longer than it should have been.

Monica Elkins-Johnson was not present in person, but she did attend by telephone conference call.

You would think that Richland 2 would figure out how to conduct a meeting when one member so attends. Maybe it will learn from last night.

The volume was so low that most of what Dr. Elkins said could not be heard in the meeting room. I wondered whether even those at the board seats could hear what she was saying. The phone equipment appeared to be one of the high-quality and expensive Polycom desk models, which typically cost $200-$300.

Toward the end of the meeting the volume on the phone got turned down, and it appeared that Dr. Elkins telephoned Amelia McKie to say that she wasn't being heard.

Teleconferencing-in a board member creates a special set of legal circumstances.

A major problem at every board meeting is that attendance is not taken. The record shows up in the Minutes, but only because the note-taker puts it there.

McKie stated that Elkins-Johnson would be attending by telephone hook-up. Such attendance is apparently already anticipated and allowed under Board Policy. But proper procedure would have been to have a Motion to permit Elkins-Johnson to attend by telephone and a vote. Just one of those picky rules that the Board sometimes slides past so conveniently.

It was inexcusable that no procedure was set up to amplify Dr. Elkins' voice, so that she could be heard clearly by all Board members and the public. She brought up some excellent points during discussion of the Policy revisions, and her words were lost in the room. Her long comments also were ignored by several board members, who from time-to-time engaged in side conversations. McKie was observed scanning her cell phone and swiping through screens. This is clearly prohibited by Board policy.

The simplest arrangement would have been an additional microphone by the internal speaker of the Polycom. Another solution would have been to turn the microphone of either McKie or the Superintendent to be closer to the Polycom. But I'll bet that Polycom has a port for a direct connection. After all, why spend $300 for a top-of-the-line piece of electronic equipment and not use all its technology?

Too often during last night's meeting the speaker on the Board did not turn on his/her microphone before speaking. Hopefully, their comments will be audible on the YouTube recording.

The only person at the front of the room to lean forward and speak clearly into the microphone was Teresa Holmes. By doing so, she assures that her voice can be heard throughout the room.

I urge the Board to hire a voice coach,, who will explain that a low, soft monotone does not carry through the microphone into the room. When speakers run their words together or mumble downward or sit well back from the microphone and turn their heads away from the microphone, they cannot be heard in the room. The microphones pick up for the YouTube recording and not for amplification in the room during the meeting, unless the microphone is close to the speaker's mouth. It shouldn't be necessary to wait 2-3 days for the YouTube recording to know everything that was said.

Stay tuned for more on the election and the meeting.

Do You Even Care?

The Richland 2 School Board manages almost a billion dollars in assets, employs hundreds (thousands?) of teachers and staff, and has the responsibility for more than 27,000 students.

Voters elect Board members every two years. In some even-numbered years three are elected; in other elections, four are elected. There were four elected in 2018.

Every June the Board itself elects its officers for the following school year. This year's election will be this Tuesday, June 26, 2019.

Voters, taxpayers, parents and students are stuck with the current board until November 2020. But voters can insist on the best of the board for the Board officers.

How?

Contact Board members today, tomorrow and Tuesday, and insist on the highest caliber of officers from the choices available. Their email addresses and telephone numbers are on the District's website.

Should Richland 2 School Board tolerate a Board Chairman who owes $51,000 to the South Carolina Ethics Commission?

Will the Board nominate and elect a popular but inexperienced "freshman" to a position as an officer?

Will any Board member be willing to accept a nomination as Board Secretary, knowing that he or she might risk personal or civil liability by signing future bond documents, if they contain false and/or misleading information?

Will the Officers of the Richland 2 School Board for 2019-2020 have the backbone to demand that future bond documents be 100% true?