Durham resident sues to stop search for Oyster River School District superintendent

From Roni Reino in Foster's this morning.

DURHAM — A Durham resident is seeking to stop the current Oyster River School District superintendent search, saying the School Board is violating the Right-to-Know Law.

David Taylor, a former Oyster River School Board member, filed a petition and order for ex parte injunctive relief in Strafford County Superior Court on Tuesday in hopes of immediately stopping the search process.

Taylor claims the School Board has recently violated the Right-to-Know Law in two ways. 

During at least three workshop sessions for the superintendent search, he claims the members made decisions regarding the process.

He said the members have failed to follow their own rules and cited the Oyster River School Board policy BE, which states "no formal action shall be taken by the Board at a workshop or informational meeting."

Taylor says the members made decisions on how to conduct the search, including approving announcements, advertisements and what kind of focus groups would be used during the search. If the members were expecting to make decisions, Taylor said, they should have called a special meeting and informed the public.

He also claims that at a Dec. 21 meeting, the School Board members "basically held a secret ballot" to choose two community members on the screening committee. He claims the board members wrote who they wanted to be on the committee on a piece of paper and placed it in a sealed envelope before the meeting. At the Dec. 21 meeting, he says the student representative choose two envelopes at random.

"We don't know what board member put what member into that envelope," he said, adding the public had a right to know. 

Taylor is asking the courts to require the district stop its current superintendent search immediately so they can go back and restart the process with "appropriate" voting.

This is not the first time Taylor has said he believes the School Board has not followed the Right-to-Know Law. In August, Taylor filed a suit against the district, saying during the interim superintendent search, the School Board held improper meetings in secret to make decisions on how to conduct the search.

"It's somewhat remarkable to me, that after I filed the first one, they continued to violate the Right-to-Know Law," he said.

Interim Superintendent Leon Levesque said the School Board has been doing its best to follow proper procedure for the current search.

"He's looking at some technicalities," he said of Taylor. "(The School Board members) have made a valiant effort to make everything open. Everything has been posted."

The process, he said, has been open since it began this fall.

"It was done very openly and they even employed an outside agent to try to present this in an open, transparent matter," he said. "I believe they are on the right track."

The district has hired consulting firm NESDEC to aid in the process. They are currently going through the process of screening candidates this week. 

The screening committee is made up of two parents, two community members, one student representative, three teachers, an administrator and two School Board members.

"Their goal is to try to present some finalists to the School Board by the end of January," he said.

A permanent superintendent is expected to be in place by July 1 if the process continues as scheduled.