The Board of Education took a first step to fix a legal snafu that would leave them with an illegal extra member for the year of 2016.
At Monday night’s board meeting, Chief Operating Officer Will Clark (pictured) presented a resolution to change the bylaws for 2016 to allow for eight voting members in 2016 instead of seven.
Thanks to a charter revision, New Haven this fall elected two members to what’s now a hybrid, rather than a fully mayorally appointed, Board of E. But thanks to a language-drafting glitch, that left the board with eight members, when only seven are allowed by law. So that needs to be fixed.
The proposed resolution would only change the bylaws for the Board of Ed; the Board of Alders would have to go through a separate process to revise the actual charter. The alders have yet to propose its solution.
Newly elected members Edward Joyner and Darnell Goldson will join the board in January to replace Susan Samuels and Alex Johnston, whose terms expire in December. Board members Michael Nast and Alicia Caraballo are set to leave the board at the end of 2016 — at which point the mayor will appoint one new member, resulting in a board of seven voting members as of January 2017.
For that transition year of 2016, any member who doesn’t attend a meeting or abstains from a vote would be considered a “non-voting member,” according to the resolution. If all eight members are present, a five-vote “supermajority” would be necessary to approval.
Clark said board members would have to figure out what to do in case of a tie. They could either put the proposal through the committees again or decide not to vote again.
Board members will vote on the resolution after its second reading at the next board meeting.