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Bill Spaulding recall, Watervliet School District, Michigan (2022)
| Watervliet School District recall |
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| Officeholders |
| Recall status |
| Signature requirement |
| See also |
| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2022 Recalls in Michigan Michigan recall laws School board recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall Bill Spaulding, one of the seven members of the Watervliet Public Schools Board of Education in Michigan, did not go to a vote in 2022. Recall supporters did not submit petitions by the deadline.[1]
The recall effort began in April 2022. Petition language for the recall was approved in a clarity hearing by the Berrien County Election Commission on April 12, 2022.[2][3] As of May 1, 2022, Spaulding was president of the board.[4]
Supporters of the recall cited Spaulding's position on the board during a motion for a mask mandate for all indoor academic activities in a November 8, 2021, meeting. Spaulding responded to the recall supporters by stating that the conditional mask mandate was not approved in the November 2021 meeting.[5]
To read about other recall efforts related to the coronavirus and government responses to the pandemic, click here.
Recall supporters
Supporters of the recall stated the following:[5]
| “ | Board of Education Minutes for meeting held 11/8/2021 indicate that President Spaulding was present and a motion including mandatory masking for all academic indoor activities carried 6-0. The minutes do not indicate the motion included a provision for parents to exclude their child(ren) from the required face masks for all indoor academic activity.[6] | ” |
Recall opponents
Spaulding argued for the denial of the recall petition language for inaccurately suggesting that the conditional mask mandate had been approved in the November 8, 2021, meeting.[5]
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in Michigan
Petition language for the recall of Bill Spaulding was approved in a clarity hearing by the Berrien County Election Commission on April 12, 2022.[2][3]
To get the recall on the ballot, supporters would have had to collect signatures equal in number to 25% of voters in the office's jurisdiction in the last gubernatorial election. The signatures would have had to have been collected within 60 days of each other.[7]
Ballotpedia covered 35 coronavirus-related recall efforts against 94 officials in 2022, accounting for 13% of recalls that year. This is a decrease from both 2020 and 2021. COVID-related recalls accounted for 37% of all recall efforts in both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, there were 87 COVID-related recalls against 89 officials, and in 2021, there were 131 against 214 officials.
The chart below compares coronavirus-related recalls to recalls for all other reasons in 2020, 2021, and 2022.
2022 recall efforts
- See also: School board recalls
Ballotpedia tracked 54 school board recall efforts against 123 board members in 2022. Recall elections against school board members were held on January 11, 2022, January 18, 2022, January 24, 2022, February 15, 2022, March 29, 2022, April 4, 2022, and November 8, 2022. The school board recall success rate was 7.3%.
The chart below details the status of 2022 recall efforts by individual school board member.
See also
- Watervliet School District, Michigan
- Berrien County, Michigan ballot measures
- Recall campaigns in Michigan
- Political recall efforts, 2022
- School board recalls
- States that allow school board recalls
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ Abbey Smith, “Email communication with Berrien County Chief Deputy Clerk Sheila Reitz," October 19, 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 abc57.com, "Recall petitions over classroom mask mandates approved," April 14, 2022
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Berrien County Election Commission, "04-12-2022 Recall Clarity Hearing Public-Notice - Niles, St. Joseph, and Watervliet School Districts," accessed May 1, 2022
- ↑ Watervliet Public Schools, "W.P.S. Board of Education," accessed May 1, 2022
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 The Herald-Palladium, "Recall petitions against St. Joseph, Watervliet school boards approved," April 12, 2022
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ National Conference of State Legislatures, "Recall of Local Officials," accessed July 27, 2021
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