BY TED SHOCKLEY, Eastern Shore Post —
Should Rhonda Hall, Accomack County’s superintendent of schools, sit at the head table with school board members during meetings?
Should she sit with other school administrators in the audience? Or should she sit at a separate table facing the school board?
Where Hall seats herself is far from the biggest issue facing the Accomack School Board. But there was no bigger issue discussed during its Tuesday, Feb. 6, meeting.
Hall, who sits front and center at the head table, is not of a mind to sit anywhere else — not even at a nearby table or at the end of the head table, two options that were discussed.
Hall said Accomack’s school superintendent always sat beside school board members at the head table — an assertion she repeated twice.
Hall works for the nine-member school board but addressed her bosses bluntly.
“We need to have really good rationale for why this change would be made now,” she said of the movement to have her move.
“I really would need to know that information,” she said later.
Glenn Neal, one of three newly elected members on the nine-member board, said having Hall sit near the board, instead of with it, would create a “separation between the governing body and the administration.”
Neal said his constituents ask him what Hall’s role is.
“Some of the questions are, is Dr. Hall part of the board or not?” he said.
New school board member Stefanie Jackson said having Hall sit elsewhere would show the public “our willingness to govern without undue influence of any one person.”
“I think it’s appropriate to show a division there,” she said.
School board member Lisa Johnson wasn’t having it.
“My belief is that this item is targeting Dr. Rhonda Hall,” she said.
“It’s not broken,” she said of Hall’s seat at the head table. “I have no idea what we are attempting to fix.”
Still, the school board tried to fix the seating arrangement. Earlier in the meeting, it voted to arrange the head table in a “V” shape, so members could more easily see each other.
From there, motions on seating arrangements came at a furious pace:
— First, a motion by Johnson to keep the new seating arrangement in the “V” shape, with Hall among them, failed, with five votes against.
The failure of the odd motion likely has immediate unintended consequences.
By voting against the status quo, and not adopting a new seating arrangement, nobody really has a seat in the “V” head table, if the exact wording of the failed motion is followed.
— New school board member Jason Weippert then made a motion for Hall to sit at a separate table in the middle of the “V.”
(Weippert’s motion was made at the 1:27:33 mark of Connie Burford’s Facebook live video of the school board meeting, for those wanting proof.)
Proof would be needed, because Weippert’s motion was completely ignored by everyone — and was treated as if it never happened.
Board Chair Janet Martin-Turner never asked for a second to the Weippert motion when school board member Jesse Speidel asked to begin discussion. Weippert’s motion wasn’t revisited.
— Even with Weippert’s motion on the floor, Jackson made another motion for Hall to sit at the end of the “V” head table. It died, with six votes against.
— Along the way, Handy moved to table the matter, and Neal seemed to say he wanted the matter tabled, but both were ignored — the chair never asked for a second.
After the volleys of motions and emotions, Hall maintained her front-and-center seat. For now.
School board member Stefanie Jackson is a staff writer for the Eastern Shore Post. She has no input in the Post’s coverage of Accomack County Public Schools.
