Republican Guilford County Board of Education Members Crissy Pratt and Linda Welborn – along with the man selected by the Guilford County Republican Party to fill a vacancy on that board – are suing the seven other members of the school board, including new District 3 member Bill Goebel who filled that seat.
The lawsuit, which will be heard first in Guilford County Superior Court, seeks a remedy of removing Goebel from that District 3 seat and replacing him with Michael Logan, the teacher selected by the local Republican Party to fill the vacancy.
The suit brought by the three claims that the Democratic board members violated North Carolina’s open meetings law when they planned a bombshell surprise in early April that kept Logan out of the seat and hurriedly put Goebel in the seat, with no one other than the participants in the plot knowing ahead of time what was going to transpire.
The stunning move by the Democrats angered Republicans across the county – and a fuming and very vocal Logan had to be removed from the meeting by a police officer.
The vacancy was created last November when former District 3 school board member Pat Tillman was elected as that district’s county commissioner.
Though Goebel is a registered Republican, many Republican Party leaders question his party allegiance – especially since he went along with the secret plan that gave him the District 3 school board seat. He has since been reprimanded by the local Republican Party.
The claim at the center of the lawsuit is that the Democratic board members in on the plot did not adhere to state open meetings law. The details of Goebel’s appointment to the board were finalized in a meeting behind closed doors at a private law firm when school board Chairman Deena Hayes and school board attorney Jill Wilson met with Goebel hours before the Democratic members appointed him to the board.
Wilson, though acting as the entire board’s attorney, did not inform the two Republican members of the plan. Under North Carolina law, telephone communication can qualify as a meeting, and the plaintiffs argue that, due to phone calls made at that time, an illegal meeting took place without them or the public being notified. All meetings of school boards in the state must be properly noticed.
Earlier this year, the fight over the seat broke out over the District 3 vacancy because Democrats on the board refused to seat Logan, the Republican Party’s selection. Some legal experts argue that the board was legally required to seat Logan. Even after state legislators passed a law clearly meant to force the board to appoint Logan, the board refused and appointed Goebel.
Is anyone surprised by this? The local (National Socialist) Democrat Apparatus is taking a page (and possibly directions) from their handlers higher up.
You mean a page from the republican playbook?
I’ve met Crissy a few times…she’s very smart and can argue with the best of them. Good luck upholding the law.
Thank you
And this is why I moved my family OUT OF GUILFORD COUNTY!!!!!!
Prince Skip-the-Hyp and the Council will do as it pleases. Don’t like it? Then sue; George Soros will come to the rescue.
The County voters who didn’t bother to show up are responsible for this.
The Guilford County Board of Education is useless and so apparently is their attorney, Jill Wilson. An attorney should know the law. If she was in violation of the open meetings law, then she and her law firm should be fired. The board can no longer trust that she will make sound decisions and recommendations based on the law. She should stop trying to appease and go along with Deena Hayes. Deena Hayes is a racist and does not like to be challenged. That is why she did not want Michael Logan on the board. He will not yield to Hayes, and she knows it. A private meeting in a private law firm regarding public business? Deena Hayes and Jill Wilson, cut from the same cloth.
DEMONRATS don’t play by the rules. They are a sneaky bunch of bottom dwellers!
Don’t disagree. But so are REPUBILTURDS.
Hip hip horah! Finally someone standing up to these cheaters.
Love it!
It’s a shame that the School Board was dishonest. These are the people running the schools that are educating our kids. People need to get out and vote for people that will up hold the law. School Choice will change Guilford County when all the parents pull their kids out and put them in Schools that are making the grades.
Perhaps the Legislature, which is now irresistibly Republican, will take the opportunity to intervene, as it has on occasion in the past, in this local affair. When people repeatedly refuse to follow the law for partisan reasons (and the party they represent is not the party in power) it is doubtless as easy to change the laws empowering the recalcitrant obstructionists as it is to force them to behave…