Over 1,500 signed CMS resignation petitions. What if board members do step down?
The remaining members of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Board of Education largely control who joins their ranks if someone steps down from the board amid ongoing turmoil in the district.
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The CMS board voted 5-4 in late September to fire Superintendent Crystal Hill “for convenience” days after a memo Hill sent the board alleging attempted extortion and financial issues became public. Board member Stephanie Sneed stepped down as board chair at the same September meeting, where she was supposed to face a vote to remove her from her leadership position.
The district also faces federal and state investigations into alleged financial irregularities.
Together, more than 1,500 people have signed a pair of petitions calling for some board members to resign after voting for Hill’s firing.
State law and district policy lay out what would happen if a board member or members did step down mid-term, and whether a board member can be ousted from their position involuntarily.
A member would likely have to resign to create a vacancy on the CMS board as there are few options in North Carolina for removing an elected official from office.
An elected official becomes disqualified from holding their seat under the state constitution if they move away or are convicted of a felony, according to the UNC School of Government.
If either of those things happen and the official doesn’t resign, the remaining board members can try to prove the disqualification and vote to declare a vacancy, UNC’s analysis says. But a school board may have issues with that because the state statute that says an office “is ipso facto vacant” if the official elected to that no longer meets all qualifications for holding office only mentions “elected city officer(s).”
There’s also a state statute on the book that allows the North Carolina attorney general or someone with the permission of the attorney general to challenge “the title or right to any State, county or municipal office” if someone “usurps, intrudes into, or unlawfully holds or exercises any public office.” But, UNC’s analysis says, that process “has several disadvantages” because it is “time consuming and costly.”
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Absent those options, there are virtually no mechanisms for removing a school board to remove one of its own, according to UNC. There’s no state statute that lays out options for removing elected local board members, and North Carolina generally doesn’t allow recall elections.
The General Assembly could conceivably try to pass a “local act” ordering the removal of a local board member, the school’s analysis says. But, they add, the odds of that actually happening “would seem to be unlikely.”
There is a misdemeanor criminal statute in North Carolina, “misbehavior in office,” that says the punishment for such a crime “is removal from office by order of the court,” UNC adds. But that statute is “rarely used” and can only be prosecuted by a district attorney.
If a seat or seats on the school board are vacated in the mid-term, state law and board policy dictate how the vacancy is filled.
State law says the remaining members of the board have the authority to appoint someone to fill the vacancy until the next school board election.
CMS policy says that if that situation occurs, the board will open up applications for eligible Mecklenburg County residents for 20 days. All applicants will have an opportunity to speak before the board at a meeting. The board chair will have the power to decide the “format and length of time allotted” for those presentations.
Once applicants have had a chance to speak, the board will hold another meeting where members can nominate applicants they like for the opening. The board will then vote on the nominees until someone “receives a majority vote of the Board members present and voting.”
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