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Whitefish School District recall, Montana (2021)
| Whitefish School District recall |
|---|
 |
| Officeholders |
Darcy Schellinger Nick Polumbus Jerrie Boksich Shannon Hanson Todd Lengacher Quincy Bennetts |
| Recall status |
| See also |
| Recall overview Political recall efforts, 2021 Recalls in Montana Montana recall laws School board recalls Recall reports |
An effort to recall all seven members of the Whitefish School District school board did not go to a vote in 2021. Katie Clarke, Darcy Schellinger, Nick Polumbus, Jerrie Boksich, Shannon Hanson, Todd Lengacher, and Quincy Bennetts were named in the recall petitions. Recall supporters had until December 29, 2021, to collect 2,391 signatures per board member. They did not collect enough signatures by the deadline.[1][2][3]
Recall supporters said board members ignored parents' constitutional rights when they unanimously voted on August 12, 2021, to require masks for students, staff, and visitors in kindergarten through sixth grade. In the same vote, the board recommended masks for seventh through twelfth grades but did not require them. Lengacher said board members took in information from multiple sources before making their decision, including surveys from families and staff in the district, hours of public comment, and guidelines from state and federal medical experts.[1]
Schellinger's and Polumbus' terms were due to expire in May 2022. Clarke's, Boksich's, and Hanson's terms were due to expire in May 2023, and Lengacher's and Bennetts' terms were due to expire in May 2024.[2]
To read about other recall efforts related to the coronavirus and government responses to the pandemic, click here.
Recall supporters
The recall effort was started by Jenny Paatalo, a parent of a sixth-grader and an eighth-grader in the district. Paatalo said that she did not agree with the board's decision to require masks for kindergarten through sixth grades, but she said she started the recall effort due to the board's conduct and the process that led to their decision on the mask requirement.[1]
Paatalo said she was upset that the board did not allow for public comment when discussing the district's mask policy. She said not allowing public comment violated Montana’s Constitutional Right of Participation, which says “the public has the right to expect governmental agencies to afford such reasonable opportunity for citizen participation in the operation of the agencies prior to the final decision.”[1]
Recall opponents
Lengacher said he disagreed with Paatalo's allegation that the board did not allow for public participation in the discussion. "The challenge here is that so few people engage with school boards, so there is a lack of understanding of how school boards work and how to engage with them," Lengacher said.[1]
According to the Missoula Current, 41 members of the public commented during the board's August 12 meeting.[1]
Hanson said he welcomed citizens' efforts to hold school board members accountable but that he did not believe the board's decision warranted a recall. “Making the final decision on this matter is exclusively the responsibility and purview of the board as a whole,” Hanson said.[1]
Path to the ballot
- See also: Laws governing recall in Montana
To get the recall on the ballot, recall supporters would have had to collect 2,391 signatures per board member by December 29, 2021.[1]
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.
2021 recall efforts
- See also: School board recalls
Ballotpedia tracked 92 school board recall efforts against 237 board members in 2021. Recall elections against 17 board members were held in 2021. The school board recall success rate was 0.42%.
The chart below details the status of 2021 recall efforts by individual school board member.
See also
- Recall campaigns in Montana
- Political recall efforts, 2021
- School board recalls
- States that allow school board recalls
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 Missoula Current, "Whitefish school board recall effort is emblematic of bigger movement," November 8, 2021
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Whitefish School District, "School Board Trustees," accessed December 1, 2021
- ↑ Whitefish Pilot, "Rewind 2021: A look back at the stories that shaped the last year," January 5, 2022
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