The saga of the District 3 seat on the Guilford County Board of Education continues, with the hiring of more attorneys.

The Guilford County school board, at a special meeting Monday, Sept. 11, voted 5-2 along party lines to hire an outside law firm to advise it on how to proceed with the legal question of who should be seated to represent District 3 at the Sept. 19 school board meeting.

School board attorney Jill Wilson advised the board that she needed to concentrate on being the attorney for the school board and her advice was to hire the law firm Poyner Spruill to advise the board on this particular and complicated legal issue.

Wilson said, “Neither the constitutional challenge by Mr. Goebel nor the legislation passed gives you the authority to be the decider.”

She added, “At the end of the day you are not going to pick between these two gentlemen.”

Despite the fact that the school board is not going to decide who represents District 3, Wilson said that the legal question was complicated and, “We have to know how to proceed and at this juncture need advice on how to proceed.”

The North Carolina General Assembly passed a bill that went into effect on Aug. 17 that removed Bill Goebel from his seat as the District 3 Guilford County Board of Education member.  According to that law, the executive committee of the Guilford County Republican Party would select the new District 3 school board member, who would be sworn in at the next meeting of the Guilford County Board of Education, which is Tuesday, Sept. 19.

Bill Goebel, through his attorney Chuck Winfree, challenged the constitutionality of that law and maintained that the District 3 seat was not vacant and therefore could not be filled by the nominee of the Republican Party.

Goebel attended the Sept. 11 meeting of the school board but was advised by Wilson to recuse himself from voting on the motion to hire outside attorneys, and Goebel didn’t vote.