By Michael Howell
Florence-Carlton School District Trustee Colby Reynolds’ resignation is final following a unanimous vote to accept it at the October 13 school board meeting.
Reynolds first submitted notice of his resignation on August 25, effective the previous day, but then attempted to withdraw his resignation in an email sent to the Superintendent and a couple of board members on September 2. He never stated in his notice of resignation, or in his request to withdraw it, what his reasons were for resigning or why he changed his mind. A couple of the board members objected to his attempted withdrawal of the resignation, arguing that state law requires a resignation to be withdrawn within 72 hours of being submitted.
At last week’s school board meeting, Board Chair Tara Zeiler said she had talked to people at the Montana School Board Association, at the Office of Public Instruction and the County Attorney and gotten some conflicting information. She said there were some issues with his resignation due to the fact that the Clerk had left. She said there was some gray area in the law.
After visiting with Reynolds about the issue, Zeiler said that Reynolds told her that if it was going to be a gray area and create a division in the community, he would go ahead and ask the board to accept his resignation and step down. A motion was made and seconded to accept the resignation and the motion was approved unanimously.
Another motion was approved to open applications to fill the vacancy and a meeting was set to make some appointment to the position on October 23, at 7 p.m. Whomever is appointed would serve until the next election in May. Applications should be addressed to the Clerk of the School District and not the Superintendent.
The Board also passed a series of “ratifications” of motions and resolutions that were approved after Reynolds’ original resignation notice to ensure that the actions were considered valid. All the motions approved since the August 25 notice of resignation with Reynolds’ participation were “ratified” again by the four remaining members of the Board.
In another move fraught with a bit of controversy, the board appointed Duane Zeiler, husband of Board Chair Tara Zeiler, to serve as Head Coach of the girl’s basketball team. Chair Zeiler said that she would not be voting on the appointment nor would she vote on any issues related to her husband’s job performance in any future deliberations.
Trustee Pat Appleby said it was “not a decision I want to have to make.” She said that there would be a lot of people happy if Duane Zeiler was appointed coach but there would be a lot of unhappy people as well.
“I really don’t think a board member’s spouse should be a high school coach, period,” said Appleby. “I just don’t think that’s appropriate and I still have that as a bottom line in my heart. But we are here to do what is best for the kids. So again, maybe what adults think is not the best thing is not what the kids would want, but we have to make the best decision to have some sort of program for the girl’s basketball team. This is not an easy decision. I wish we had a bigger applicant pool.” There were only two applications submitted for consideration.
Trustee Jay Dixon said it was not an abnormal situation in the state and happened in many small schools. He said that nepotism laws did not apply because Duane Zeiler was already an employee and was simply changing positions.
Trustee Melvin Finlay said, “I don’t wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation of the hiring committee, but I do accept their findings.”
The vote to appoint Duane Zeiler as head coach was approved on a 3 to 0 vote.