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By LEANN McCOY
Staff Writer
Tim LeClair, incumbent District One school board member, will retain the post by default for a second term after federal officials ordered an election in March, and no other candidates qualified.
School district officials said there has been confusion about the election, which they thought was to be in November.
“The race to qualify was complicated by a lack of communication of information between the Mississippi Department of Education and the Mississippi Attorney General’s office. This is difficult to keep the Grenada School District within compliance of the law,” said Board Attorney Holmes Adams.
“During the last legislative session, the state House and Senate passed a measure called House Bill 877 that changes the original March election date to a general election date, which is usually held in November,” he said.
“The bill was accepted and sent to the United States Justice Department for preclearance under the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Adams said.
The new law could not become effective until it was pre-cleared, he said.
According to Adams, the Department of Justice pre-cleared the change of date, but gave no preclearance with any other changes with respect to the elections.
“The House bill was incomplete because it did not address all changes that needed to be made to the voting laws to make it legal,” he said.
Superintendent Dr. David Daigneault said the Grenada School District, as well, as many around the state were under the impression they were operating under the new law.
“We had a team of lawyers in here helping us make sure we were within bounds,” he said. “The district was anticipating a November election.”
Daigneault said he was surprised last Friday, Jan. 22, when the central office received a call that said go back to the original March election date.
“(Circuit Clerk) Linda Barnette was at a meeting and heard about the change. She called us and said, ‘We have an issue,’” Daigneault said. “We began right after that call searching and working on getting back into code.”
Daigneault said the central office did not receive the Attorney General’s decision calling to go back to the March election until Jan. 22 at 4:28 p.m.
Under the original law, the qualification deadline must be at least 40 days before the election, which is held the first Saturday of every March, he said. No one, but LeClair qualified for the race by the 5 p.m. Monday deadline, officials said.
“The office worked hard to get the information out about the change, and that our deadline was Monday,” he said.
A flyer was posted about the qualification deadline on the GSD Web site, post office, city hall, the courthouse and was sent out to area radio and cable TV stations.
Dr. Daigneault said it is unclear whether the new election law will go into effect.
LeClair took over the District One post from Winky McAdams in March 2005. Each trustee member serves a five-year term.
The next election is March 2011 for the District Two seat held by Dr. David Braswell. Arlene Conley represents District Three and is the. Her term expires March 2012. James Hughes represents District Four. His term expires March 2013.
Statement released
by Dr. David Daigneault
The Grenada School District complies with federal and State laws concerning education.
However, due to lack of the communication of information from the Mississippi State Department of Education and the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, our ability to comply with regulations relating to the upcoming school board election has been difficult.
We were not informed until last Friday about a reversal of the date of the District 1 election. This reversal required that candidate qualifying information be submitted this past Monday.
This lack of communication to the School District has caused innumerable problems for the District and has raised unfounded suspicions from some isolated community members.
We responded in the most effective methods available to disseminate this information.
As soon as this change of date was revealed to the District, we promptly posted this info on the GSD Web site, submitted announcements to the cable station, two radio stations, and posted information at each school site and various other locations including the Post Office, City Hall, and Court House.
The District regrets any inconvenience this problem has caused, but the District must comply with the law and schedule the election when we are told to do so, even if we were not informed in a timely manner.
According to the current law mandates, we are required to set the District 1 election in March instead of November as we were previously instructed.
We have no option but to comply with the reversal of this directive, even though this action places the District in an uncomfortable position.
This problem began during the 2009 session of the Mississippi Legislature, when House Bill 877 was passed and changed the process for the election of members of the school district board of trustees.
The law was passed by the legislature and signed by the Governor but was never pre-cleared by the Justice Department. Therefore, since the preclearance was not received, the law in effect prior to the passage of House Bill 877 is still valid, even though we were not notified of this reversal.
Thus, the State requires that the election be set on March 6, 2010.
The District urges the community to stay apprised of District developments on our Web site to receive the most updated information. The Grenada School District Web site is http://www.gsd.k12.ms.us.
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1/31/2010
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