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Under the terms of section 9.2 of The Town Charter:
At least every five (5) years, the Selectmen shall appoint a Charter Review Committee to be composed of seven (7) members for a period not longer than six (6) months, who shall submit their recommendations to the Board of Selectmen and shall file proceedings of their deliberations.
I am sure there will be many ideas discussed -- some of the proposed changes may even be realistic. But here's one for the list:
Section 4.3.3 of the current Charter requires that School Committee vacancies be filled by a Special Election if there are more than 8 months to the next regular election. On at least one occaision, the Town was required to incur the expense of holding a special election to fill a single vacant seat. On several other occaisions, the Committee limped along with only 6 members.
As an alternative, most Towns in the Commonwealth follow Mass. General Law Chapter 41 (section 11) which allows the vacancy to be filled until the next scheduled election by a joint appointment of the remaining School Committee Members and the Board of Selectmen. (Ironically, the current School Committee Procedures manual actually lists the state law as the procedure for filling mid-term vacancies -- despite the Charter contradiction.)
I hope the new Charter Review Commission will give serious consideration to adopting this change. It might encourage members with other obligations (or who may have found themselves completely unqualified for their positions) to resign. This would save the cost of a Special Election, and help ensure the public was fully represented by a qualified and professional committee.
Sounds like a win for everybody!
5 comments:
The Truth Maker, would add that a new proposal that the School Committee be required to meet at least 3 times a month while school is in session and at least twice a month when school is not in session. As it stands they do not have any requirement under our charter.
I would also add that the sitting superintendant rent or buy a home here in Sandwich, during there stay.
Another change would include the wording that the Community School must be self sustaining and every program that is presented to the public must show a profit or break even. Any program that is losing any money must be eliminated from the schedual.
Excellent idea Bob. TM, the charter clearly needs to be changed an inform the SC that they need to meet at least twice a week like the BOS. There is only one a very short section in the Charter outlining the responsibilities of the SC to the town. This charter review needs to carefully research exactly what legal guidelines the town charter can provide to the SC.
I think the school committee should meet once a month to sign the warrants and discuss policy. They don't need to get involved in the nitty gritty, day to day operations of the schools. That's why we have a Superintendent. She/he has the expertise and skill to run the schools.
Individual school committee members need to back off and stop micromanaging the superintendent and administrators.
(Example: The copy machines that were due to arrive in August never arrived until April. Dr. Johnson was all set with that and the school committee made a major debacle out of it.)
Stop wasting time and energy.
I think the SC can meet more than once a month and still stay out of the day to day operation of the schools -- something they are not qualified to do -- and are prohibited by law from doing.
I would hate to see a residency requirement -- that just cuts down the pool of applicants. As we just saw, there's not a big line of qualified people looking to mud wrestle in Sandwich.
anon 3:24 pm, I agree with you. The need for twice a monthly required meeting I think was illustrated last year. If there is a critical decision, leadership needs to be encouraged to keep the discussion in public as well as deal in a transparent, timely, and consistent way with the issue. Even in the summer a bi-monthly meeting would serve the community as a whole, especially since trust is an issue and the budget for the SC is roughly 2/3 to 3/4 of the overall town budget!
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