A Manitowoc School Board member is concerned with the language of meeting minutes as the district gets ready to pick a new superintendent.
During last week’s meeting, Board Member Matthew Phipps asked to look over the minutes of the Executive Committee meeting on November 18th.
Phipps said, to him, the minutes made it seem that the Executive Committee would be the only group in charge of picking the superintendent and not the full board.
“That, to me, doesn’t make common sense,” Phipps exclaimed. “I’ve heard a lot of public input that was great tonight. But I’m just coming from a commonsense perspective that that seems like hypocrisy to me. That seems like a tyrannical government that’s being ran by four people and not the full board. And it concerns me because I’m just trying to speak for the community members that elected me.”
The sentence that Phipps was concerned about in the minutes was, “A motion was made by Board member Trask that the executive committee of the board will assume the responsibility of conducting the Superintendent search process.”
The word processes seemed to be the keyword in the phrase that was causing the issue.
Board Member Kerry Trask, who’s on the executive committee, explained that wasn’t the way it was supposed to sound.
Trask told the board, “The Executive Committee, essentially, would handle the busy work. Not just handle the whole thing. I mean, honestly, I had no idea that that was implied or thought about or suggested.”
A motion to reject the minutes was made but struck down by the board, but they didn’t have enough votes to approve the Executive Committee minutes at the meeting.
Phipps also wanted to amend the minutes to make it clearer that the process would come to the full board.
Board President Chris Able said everything from the committee comes to the board since committees are only allowed to recommend things to the full board.
