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Date: 5/16/2023
EASTHAMPTON — Following the resignation of School Committee members Shannon Dunham and Laurie Garcia, the City Council and School Committee will be working together to fill the two vacant seats, with terms that expire at the end of December. The committee met for the first time on May 10 to establish the guidelines for interviews and voting on the two candidates.
Before beginning the convention, City Council President Homar Gomez was named the chair of the convention, School Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski was named the vice chair and City Clerk Barbara LaBombard was named the clerk.
Reading from the City Charter, Gomez explained that because the resignations occurred within six months of a scheduled election, a joint convention of the City Council and School Committee is required to solicit applications from residents for the vacancies. The deadline for residents to submit a letter of interest was May 15, after Reminder Publishing’s deadline. Gomez also clarified that the residents that fill those seats will be required to run for election in November if they want to continue on the committee.
In terms of voting for a candidate, Councilor Thomas Peake presented the idea of using ranked choice voting for the candidate, which is what the City Council used previously to fill a vacancy in 2020. With ranked choice voting, each member of the committee ranks the candidates before the votes are tallied. Once tallied, each candidate’s highest vote counts for their first-choice candidate. If there is no majority in the first round, the candidate with the least votes is eliminated. The process continues until one of the candidates receives a majority of the votes.
Because there are multiple seats that need to be filled, Peake proposed using sequential ranked choice voting, which eliminates the first winner from the ballot after they are selected and continues until a majority is found for a second candidate.
“We just run the ballots and the two candidates that win will be our winners. This method is really good at selecting multiple candidates who each have broad support among the body. It almost always mathematically gives you the two candidates who have the broadest support among the body,” he said.
To help demonstrate what the process would look like, Dan Gilbert, an election warden in the city, presented a spreadsheet that showcased the way several members of the convention could vote for a candidate. Using this example, Gilbert showed that the public will be able to see each member of the convention’s ballot as the votes are tallied for each round of voting.
The committee agreed to move forward with sequential ranked choice voting to fill the vacancies.
As part of the discussion, Gomez proposed that the convention allow each candidate to provide a five-minute statement when they are interviewed. Gomez also suggested presenting each candidate with the same three questions, which Councilor Owen Zaret called a “complicated task.”
“I think it’s great to ask the candidates questions, but I think the task of coming up with three questions we can all agree on tonight is daunting, and I would leave it up to the councilors to ask the candidates questions once they’ve presented themselves,” he said. “We don’t know what each individual candidate may say and present and that may lead to questions that we have for them individually.”
One concern that School Committee member Marin Goldstein brought up is the fact that the new School Committee members would immediately be interviewing and voting on an interim superintendent.
“I think that there might be value to having a question on that, because that is going to be one of the first thing they’re doing and it’s going to be having a significant impact on the School Committee and the school district,” he said.
Mayor Nicole LaChapelle said the process of picking a new superintendent was “exceptional” in filling the vacancies.
“I would be fine with it being the only question, because that’s something I would really want to know, and I think the public would want to know too,” she said.
Kwiecinski suggested asking candidates to answer the superintendent question in their opening statements along with explaining why they want to join the community.
“So, we’ve given them two questions that we want in our opening statement,” she said.
The committee ultimately agreed to allow each member of the committee to ask one question of the candidates during the interview process, while also limiting the opening statement for each candidate to five minutes. As part of the process, members of the convention will be able to speak with candidates individually following the interviews.
The convention will meet with candidates for the seats during a May 18 meeting before the convention makes a final decision on May 31, coverage of both meetings will appear in upcoming editions of The Reminder.