New deadlines released to fill Richland’s school board vacancies after 3 members recalled
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Richland School Board Recall Effort
A high-profile group of voters filed to recall board members Semi Bird, Audra Byrd and Kari Williams after their controversial vote to make face masks optional.
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Educational Service District 123 — the regional authority that assists schools districts with public education, from Clarkston to Prosser — released a timeline Wednesday to fix the Richland School Board’s quorum issue.
ESD 123’s board of directors has been tasked by law to appoint one candidate to the Richland School Board after a successful recall ousted three of its five school board members for violating the state’s former indoor COVID mask mandate.
Those school board members are Semi Bird, Kari Williams and Audra Byrd. They attended their last public meeting on Tuesday.
Washington state law requires a school board have a majority of its members present at public meetings in order to conduct the people’s business. In Richland’s case, that’s three school board members.
The ESD 123 board plans to gather applications and appoint a temporary school board member to Bird’s seat, which is up for reelection in the Nov. 7 election.
The selected candidate will serve for less than three months.
Here’s ESD 123’s timeline:
- Tuesday, Aug. 15, 9 a.m. — Benton County Auditor will certify the Aug. 1 election results.
- Tuesday, Aug. 15, 9:30 a.m. — ESD 123 will begin accepting applications to fill Bird’s Position No. 3 seat. Applications will be available online at esd123.org and in-person at the agency’s Court Street building in Pasco.
- Wednesday, Aug. 23, 4:30 p.m. — Deadline for submissions of applications for the seat.
- Thursday, Aug. 24, 3:30 p.m. — The ESD 123 board will meet in a one-hour, closed-door executive session to screen the applicants and announce in a public meeting the two-to-five finalists they have selected to interview.
- Tuesday, Aug. 29, 4:30 p.m. — The ESD 123 board will hold a special public meeting to interview candidates. Afterwards, they will recess into executive session to review and evaluate the qualifications of the applicants, and then reconvene the public meeting to vote on and announce their selected candidate to serve on the Richland School Board.
- Thursday, Aug. 31, 6:30 p.m. — The newly appointed Richland School Board member for Position No. 3 will be sworn in at a regular meeting at the TLAC building in West Richland.
After the appointment, it will be up to Richland School Board members Rick Jansons and Jill Oldson, as well as the new ESD 123 appointee, to fill the remaining two vacancies on the board this September and October.
One of those appointments will be for Audra Byrd’s seat, which still has two years remaining. It’s expected that candidate will serve the remaining term until the next election in 2025.
General election voters on Nov. 7 will choose candidates to elect and fill Position No. 3, as well as Williams’ Position No. 4 seat.
Despite a successful recall, Williams is running for office again and could be back in her seat by the end of the year.
During the Aug. 1 primary election, she survived a challenge from a more conservative candidate and earned enough votes to move on to the Nov. 7 general election, where she could be reelected to another four-year term.
This story was originally published August 9, 2023 at 12:24 PM.
