William Marvel: Finagling for Lentini

The Conway School Board exists primarily to oversee policies to be followed by students, staff and others, but the board itself isn't very good at following them. There are hundreds of policies, arranged in an alphabetical code inscrutable to those not immersed in district administrative trivia. The policy labeled BDD, for example, declares that meeting procedures will follow the 11th edition of Robert's Rules of Order. Board members flagrantly violated that policy last week when they held a ranked-choice vote to sneak Joe Lentini into a vacant board seat. They violated it again last Oct. 12, while doing the same for Lentini's protégé, Barbara Lyons.

Twenty-one paragraphs of Robert's Rules relate to voting, and none of them recognizes the relatively new scheme of ranked-choice ballots — which political partisans devised to circumvent the democratic concept of majority rule. Robert's recognizes no motion as passed "unless approval is expressed by more than half those entitled to vote." Last week, three of the six sitting members supported Lentini and the remaining three supported the principal other applicant, Jerry Goodrich. A tie defeats any motion, so the board could decide on no candidate while operating under Robert's Rules, as their own policy dictates they must.