Months of heated debate over a bylaw change that restructures the Board of Education (BOE) committees came to a fiery conclusion at the board’s regular meeting on Aug. 28. Ultimately the bylaw change was approved by a vote split along party lines, but not before a testy debate that raised questions regarding board members’ intentions and political motivations.

The bylaw in question is board bylaw 9450, the bylaw governing board committees. The bylaw had included language governing four standing committees: Planning, Policy, Personnel, and Finance. Under the amended bylaw, the board now has five standing committees including Finance, Policy, Personnel, a newly created Communications Committee, and a Curriculum and Student Development Committee, which will replace Planning both in name and responsibility as some previously assigned planning committee responsibilities are now shifted to other standing committees.

The proposal to formally change the bylaw was first brought to the board on June 25. Over the past two months there have been various discussions that ranged in productivity (in one special meeting, board members ended up in an argument over if there are different variations of Robert’s Rules of Order). While concerns had been raised over the need for a communications committee and how the recently formed facilities committee would be assigned under the change, it was the attempts to change the Planning Committee that raised the most issues.

The Proposal

BOE member Greg DeSantis (D), who joined the board in February following the resignation of former board chair Alison Keating (D), formally brought a proposal forward to revise the bylaws in late June. Any board member is welcome to make such a suggestion and DeSantis had said many times that since the bylaw had been revised most recently for a fifth time in 2005, the bylaw “was ripe for review.” The bylaw on the district’s website lists a sixth revision on Jan. 23, 2018.

The proposal was taken under advisement by the Policy Committee, which is charged with, among other duties, reviewing bylaws on an annual basis. The bylaw change went through the necessary meetings and readings before coming before the full board on Aug. 28 for a final reading and vote.

“One of the policy committee charges is to review bylaws on an annual basis,” said Policy Committee Chair Emily Rosenthal (D). “The policy revision in front of you tonight includes three changes: to amend, expand, and re-title the charge of the Planning Committee to the Curriculum and Student Development Committee; to establish a new communications committee; to maintain the ad-hoc nature of the Facilities Committee;...and to establish a process for tasks not readily assigned to a particular committee to be assigned by the chair.”

The floor was then opened up to debate. Board member Happy Marino (R) read a statement into the record because she wanted to ensure her comments made it into the meeting minutes, adding, “this board no longer includes comments in the minutes unless a statement is submitted.”

“The reason for my ‘No’ vote is that this policy is based on arbitrary changes to the purview of the Planning Committee,” she said. “As one of our members said, this is a solution without a problem, and it’s being done, not for the sake of providing better direction or input on issues related to our children and staff, but in my opinion to serve the personal desires and political leanings of specific board members…The majority of the items being removed from the current Planning Committee will go to the Policy and Facilities Committees. Anyone who looks at the membership of these committees can clearly see that the Policy and Facilities Committee board members are the very same board members who are advocating most strongly for this change.”

Marino said she is also concerned by the partisan nature of the bylaw change. She pointed out that with the new committees, a majority would be under Democratic control, a deviation from past practice of trying to keep a party balance in terms of committee leadership.

BOE Chair Katie Stein said she finds the fact that board members kept bringing up partisanship very unfortunate. “This was a proposal by a board member for a policy that hasn’t been revised in 13 years when our charge as a board is to address policy every year,” she said. “It has been 13 years since this has been done. A board member saw that there was a missing link.”

Policy Committee meeting minutes available on the district website date back to 2015 and make no mention of reviewing this specific bylaw. The first time bylaw 9450 appears in Policy Committee meeting minutes is Dec. 19, 2017, the first meeting of the policy committee after the 2017 municipal elections.

Board member Jessica Bowler (R), who had been chair of the Planning Committee since 2015, said she had voted earlier this year to support the creation of a facilities committee and move some planning responsibilities over to that committee. In light of that, she said she couldn’t understand the rationale for further changes and found the move shortsighted.

“Along the way I have repeatedly asked why we are making the changes. Was something not working? Was something broken?” she said. “I thought these were interesting and important questions to pose as the person who drafted the changes and submitted them to [the Policy Committee] has only been here on this board for a few months. The only straightforward answer I keep getting is about aligning with other schools.

“I have never seen us follow others before,” Bowler continued. “Typically we are the leaders and set the standard and that is part of what I love so much about our district—striving to be the best even if it’s not what everyone else is doing.”

The Why

BOE member Seth Klaskin (D) said that as someone who has been on the BOE for more than a decade, he knows there have been many suggestions to change some committees over the years.

“In particular the 800-pound gorilla in the room has been the fact that our Planning Committee is a juggernaut,” he said. “We have classically had tremendous difficulty getting anybody to serve and volunteer and step up to be planning chair. It has always required arm-twisting and you yourself Jessica had to be really begged to do it. I understand you enjoy it now...”

Bowler then cut him off, “I would never beg,” she said. “I took [former BOE member] Cindy [Mead]’s spot when she left and I did it with honor so…I never pushed back.”

Klaskin countered and said, “You did it with honor absolutely and I thank you for that, but I recall discussions that it was tense while to see if we could find anyone to replace Cindy,” he said. “I specifically remember that.”

At the BOE meeting on Nov. 10, 2015 following the recent municipal election, when a motion was made to nominate Mead as vice-chair of the board, Klaskin abstained from the vote.

“For the past eight months, Cindy has missed more meetings than she has attended, including committee meetings where she has been the chair of the important Planning Committee,” he said in a statement included in the minutes. “Jessica has had to take over and run meetings that could not wait any longer for Cindy to make herself available.”

In the minutes from the Nov. 10, 2015, Mead was listed as Planning Committee chair. In the meeting minutes for Dec. 1, 2015, Bowler was listed as chair.

Klaskin said the bylaw change would help re-align the Madison BOE with more typical organizational structures found throughout the state.

“The majority of the districts in our state operate with a facilities committee, a communications committee, [and] a separate curriculum committee, and we may be the only one in the state that has a committee called planning committee,” he said.

BOEs in neighboring towns do not list planning committees, but no BOE from Branford to Old Saybrook is uniform in the number of committees each BOE has or the roles, responsibilities, or titles assigned to those various committees. Only Branford lists a communication committee in its bylaws and only Old Saybrook lists a completely independent facilities committee.

The Partisan Point

Klaskin said he finds the bylaw changes to be “wise” and didn’t want to see politics pulled into it.

“I am very resentful of the fact that this is being attacked as a partisan move,” he said. “It is not. An idea must have its inception somewhere and if we are going to devolve as a board to the point where any time a Democrat comes up with an idea the Republicans are going to oppose it and any time a Republican comes up with an idea, the Democrats are going to oppose it, we are not going to get anything accomplished for our kids.”

Stein said she was displeased with the suggestion that DeSantis should not have proposed the bylaw revisions given his shorter tenure on the board. Having newer board members propose bylaw changes is not new; former BOE member Matt Parthasarthy (D), who was elected in November 2017, first proposed the formal creation of a facilities committee in January 2018. Parthasarthy resigned a few months later due to personal matters.

“The word ‘power’ has come up a lot and we are a group of nine,” Stein said. “Consensus is consensus and we are building consensus. There were meetings since June 25 to address this. The policy revision bylaw was followed to the letter to address this and there were meetings added to give people more time. There were conversations that were had and there were meetings in town and there were a ton of opportunities for people to provide feedback.”

Ultimately Klaskin said there are real concerns and reasons for changing the structure of the Planning Committee that go beyond politics.

“Look, believe me power is going to shift back and forth and history shows in this town it is going to be the other way [Republican] more than it’s this way [Democratic], so these changes are not short-sighted interventions to give Katie [Stein] more control over the board,” he said. “They are well-thought-out concepts to improve the way the board works and one issue that comes up when you have an overused planning committee structure is that the transparency of the board suffers.”

In the end, revisions to bylaw 9450 were approved by a 5-3 vote with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed. Republican member Galen Cawley was not present at the meeting.