It’s time to hold HPS boardmembers accountable

We have talked about the prolonged absences of two city councilmembers and the hardship it had created for the four remaining councilmembers to carry on city business.
The city has a policy on absences that says, if a councilmember misses five consecutive meetings without being officially excused, their seat is considered vacant.
Well, something similar needs to be done for the Hamtramck Public School Board, where one member has not attended a meeting, without any explanation, for over a year, and another has stopped attending, apparently in protest over his treatment by fellow boardmembers.
And there is a third current boardmember who has spotty attendance at best.
There is nothing the school board can do about forcing their fellow members to attend, or allow the board to replace them, because there is no attendance policy for boardmembers.
It’s high time the board adopts a policy on this, because obviously some members are not taking their paid jobs seriously.
We have no idea why, for all these years, the board failed to address this issue but, then again, the board and district have become largely dysfunctional.
Last year, there were three months where the board failed to meet even once, which is in violation of state law – a law that the state has ignored the enforcement of, for some unexplained reason.
Hamtramck taxpayers, parents and students deserve better – much better.
It’s never too late to adopt a board policy and put it into effect moving forward. But moving forward appears not to be something this board is interested in, or perhaps even capable of.
Remember this when you go to vote in November to fill two empty seats on the school board.
And remember, too, that Board President Jihan Aiyash, who is up for re-election, has refused to address this issue. And we can see why. She spent a good portion of 2023 absent from board meetings without providing an explanation.
Posted Aug. 23, 2024