Following an eight-hour meeting of the Forest Lake Area Schools board last week that failed to fill a vacancy — or accomplish other pressing board business — the board met again Wednesday and narrowed the candidate list down to three.
“What transpired last Thursday until two in the morning was extremely difficult,” board member Jill Christenson said during Wednesday evening’s meeting. “That meeting was incredibly difficult, unnecessary, and a lot of trust has been broken.”
During the Dec. 4 meeting, the board was unable to agree on one candidate to fill the vacancy and other agenda items had to wait as the result of language used in the Nov. 20 resolution defining the vacancy-filling process. That resolution was adopted as a special order of business and Board Chairman Curt Rebelein argued that no other business could be conducted until the special order was resolved.
During Wednesday’s meeting, the board voted unanimously to rescind the Nov. 20 resolution. Instead, candidates who received at least four votes would move forward in the process. The three candidates moving forward are Andi Courneya, Princesa Hansen and Paul Pease.
Candidates Scot Doboszenski, Laura Ndirangu and Jim Smith were eliminated from consideration before the voting took place “since they failed to secure majority support last week,” Rebelein said during the meeting. Candidates Kenneth Rutford and Daniel Tuott were removed from consideration after receiving fewer than four yes votes on Wednesday.
“I just want to say thank you to all the applicants in this process, and for your patience, because I know this has probably been a long week of not really knowing what’s happening,” board member Tessa Antonsen said during the meeting. “So we apologize for that unknown, and appreciate so much public involvement and interest in this whole process.”
Along with thanking members of the public for their participation in the election process, multiple members of the board also apologized to those who witnessed the tension during the Dec. 4 meeting.
“We do not want that to happen again,” board member Gail Theisen said during the meeting. “That was stressful, that was exhausting, and it was so void of why we’re here. We’re here for our students and our district, and we’re very passionate about that, so let’s just continue down that road of positivity and trying to build relationships with each other.”
Rebelein also spoke to his role as chairman in the events that occurred in the previous meeting.
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“I’ll be the first to say it’s much easier to preside over a meeting where there’s agreement rather than disagreement and gridlock,” Rebelein said during the meeting. “That gets difficult, especially when you’re in a position where you need to enforce the rules and the resolutions and stuff that have been put forward. That put me in a tough position as well because I wanted to see it get done last week, but at the same time, I had to meet the directive of the board’s will as a majority. Now that the majority’s changed that will and we’ve resolved that resolution, that will make that much easier moving forward.”
Rebelein suggested that now that the candidates have been narrowed down to three, the board and public can take time to reflect on the finalists. Rebelein said next steps would be defined by Friday to be presented at the next board meeting on Dec. 18.
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