There’s no word yet about when Wake School Board Chair Ron Margiotta plans to call a special meeting of the board to approve his decision to hire Republican attorney Thomas Farr for $250 an hour to audit the board’s legal services while providing some of his own on the side.  Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Wonder if the audit by Farr will say that Farr can do a better job than the board’s current counsel, even if his $250 an hour is significantly higher than the fees charged by current attorney Ann Majestic of Tharrington Smith.

The decision on Farr was scheduled for Tuesday’s board meeting but it was listed in the wrong place on the agenda so it wasn’t eligible for consideration, prompting Margiotta to say that he would call another meeting to consider it.

Given the way the new school board majority has behaved so far, no word of a meeting doesn’t mean for sure that a meeting hasn’t already been held.  We may just not know about it yet.

Margiotta also signed the official minutes Thursday from a committee of the whole meeting held December 15 to discuss the survey of parents about year-round schools.

The minutes confirm that Margiotta doesn’t think he has to abide by what a majority of committee members decides.  After a long discussion, the committee decided to approve a suggestion by John Tedesco to ask for parents’ input in three ways—sending them a survey that they could complete online, send back to their child’s school, or mail to school officials using an addressed, metered envelope distributed with the survey.

The plan was to have the results available by the March 16 board meeting and the Superintendent’s recommendation made by the April 6 meeting.

The minutes say that “board members decided by a thumbs-up consensus on the option Mt. Tedesco suggested with the adjusted timeline and to survey K-8 only. “

Sounds pretty clear, judging by the “thumbs-up consensus.”  But when the committee reconvened Tuesday, it was as if the earlier meeting had never happened, that thumbs had never been up.

Margiotta apparently asked the staff to speed up the timeline and now parents will have to answer the questions online or request that a hard copy be sent to them which they would then return by mail.

And all parents will be surveyed, not just parents of students in grade K-8 who can attend year-round schools. The survey will be completed by January and the board will see the results February 2.  

The survey is almost a moot point after the board adopted a last-minute resolution to reassign thousands of kids by ending the current year-round assignment policy.  The whole episode reflects the new majority’s disdain for the democratic process and widely accepted rules of order.

It is amateur hour. Thumbs are turned up instead of votes taken.  Formal motions are rare and all but useless when they are made. Decisions made by a committee reported in the minutes are completely ignored by the board chair who signs the minutes.

Why have committee meetings at all if Margiotta can simply decide he doesn’t like what the committee decides?  It is a waste of time and money, not to mention all the thumbs up rendered meaningless.

This is no way to run a railroad—or a school board when so much is at stake.  Democracy and our community’s chances for a brighter future seem to be wasting away in Margiottaville.