Monday night, the Orange County School Board reaffirmed the leadership decisions it made in a heated meeting two months ago, voting again to appoint Will Atherton as board chair and Tony McKnight as vice chair.
Monday’s meeting took only eight minutes – a far cry from May’s meeting, which featured an abrupt and unexpected vote to oust Brenda Stephens as board chair just two months before her term was set to expire. It was also a narrow vote of 4 to 3 in May, with the two sides splitting along gender lines: the four men on the board (Atherton, McKnight, Stephen Halkiotis, and Matthew Roberts) voted to replace Stephens with Atherton, while the board’s three women (Stephens, Hillary MacKenzie, and Sarah Smylie) voted for Stephens.
Atherton has said that the vote was triggered by concerns about a conflict of interest in an investigation of racial discrimination in the schools, but some opponents of the move called it a power grab.
Stephens, for her part, tried to reassure the public at that May meeting, saying, “They can take the chair, but they cannot take (my) voice.”
Monday’s meeting was quicker and quieter, but the divisions between board members were still apparent. With Smylie absent, Stephens and MacKenzie immediately called for the board to vote by show of hands, but the four male members rejected that motion, moving instead to vote by ballot.
Because the board voted by ballot, the individual members’ votes were not announced publicly on Monday – but Atherton and McKnight each received four votes.
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