The Substitute Motion passed 5-3 with Board Member Sam Anderson absent from the meeting. The 5 members taking a stand for the School district employees were Vice Chair Cindy Buttry, Thomas Deakins, Rex Stooksbury, Jim Williams and Robert Bratton. Those members voting against helping school district employees were the Board Chair, Dan Murphy and Indya Kincannon.
The Board Chair then out of order called for a roll call vote on an amended motion, there was NO substitute amendment. Vice Chair Buttry made a substitute motion, once passed there was no opportunity for the other three to pile on and go on record to pass it unanimous. With successful passage of a Substitute Motion there is no other business on the issue, you must move to the next item. So, to all Knox County School employees, three board members voted against helping you.
The most shocking portion of this is that Robert Bratton missed the Substitute Motion -vs- Substitute amendment, there have been so many parliamentary errors since September 6, 2006 that Robert has a hard time pointing out the most egregious ones. The Law Director did not stop the out of order vote because there are so many errors.
Brian Hornback of Brian’s Blog several years ago served for two years as parliamentarian of the A.L. Lotts Elementary School PTA while the current Board Chair was President of the A.L. Lotts PTA. He had to continually remind her to get a motion, a second and a vote. This is no surprise to individuals that have seen the Board Chair operate, unfortunately all of Knox County is forced to watch it every two weeks when the board meets. It reflects poorly on the operation of the Board of Education. When the board is evaluated by a panel of its peers as it is annually, the evaluation will be poor if the Board Chair continues operating out of order.
One of the nine board members needs to ensure that the minutes are correct and clean up the out of order vote when they vote on the minutes next month.
