Kitty McDowell will vacate her seat on the Camp Verde Uni ed School District Governing Board on Monday, Dec. 31.
Normally, this would have resulted in an election on Tuesday, Nov. 6, for the empty board seat. But with no member of the CVUSD community stepping up to run in Tuesday’s contest, the choice of a new board member has fallen to Yavapai County School Superintendent Tim Carter.
The seat on the CVUSD board is open to the public provided that all applicants are registered voters within the school district, citizens of the United States, be at least 18 years of age, possess their civil rights or have had their rights restored, have continually resided within the school district for at least one year immediately preceding taking office, and they or their spouse may not be employed by the district, or working for the district on a third party contract, according to a press release from Carter’s office.
Interested individuals must provide the superintendent’s of ce with a letter of intent and resume by Thursday, Nov. 29, at 5 p.m.. Carter intends to interview candidates on Wednesday, Dec. 5, before consulting with the CVUSD board on nalists and announcing a decision on later that day.
“I have several questions that I ask — it takes usually an hour to hour and 15 minutes to complete those inter- views,” Carter said. “Obviously I have to make sure that the person is statutorily qualified to hold the seat. If there are any potential conflicts of interest that person might have, we talk about those things. We talk about why that person wants to be on the board, what they want to try to accomplish.”
“There are two things that are critically important to me that board members understand,” Carter said. “First of all the scope and function of the office — what they have the ability to do and what they don’t have the ability to do. And it’s important that they don’t have some kind of axe to grind.
“If that’s why a person is running for board that is probably not in the overall best interest of youngsters or the school itself. And they need to have a pretty clear understanding of what is the role of the board vs. what is the role of the administration. So we have a conversation about that.”
Carter said that in his interview with candidates, he would try to focus on general questions about education and the role of the governing board, not focusing on Camp Verde.
However, in conversations with the CVUSD about candidates after the interviews, Carter hopes to get the board’s input on the candidates and which ones could best serve the interest of the school district.
In the end, Carter will still be the one making the final decision after consulting with the board.
Camp Verde is not the only school district in Yavapai County undergoing this process.
According to Carter, several other districts including Clarkdale, Seligman, and Yarnell, all had too few candidates for board this year, leading to a similar appointment process.
Carter’s choice will take office from Tuesday, Jan. 1, and serve through Thursday, Dec. 31, 2020.
There will be a swearing in ceremony at the district’s regular board meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 11.
Jon Hecht can be reached at 634-8551, or email jhecht@larsonnewspapers.com
