On September 2, 2021 , John Siemion, the president of the GHAPS Board of Education, resigned after 22 years. His term was due to end in four years, but stress related to Covid proved too great for Siemion. In a letter to the community, he wrote, “School board members are unpaid and volunteering to do the work for free and because they care about the students. For the most part my time on the GHAPS Board of Education has been enjoyable. I can’t say that anymore.”
Siemion, who voted consistently for universal masking in schools, also said, “I started to evaluate what’s been going on with me. And I realized. All the stuff about the masking, it’s getting to me.” . [i]
At the time of his resignation, only two weeks had passed since the August 17, 2021 meeting where the Board voted to mask students. Siemion, and all but one of the trustees, were unmasked in that meeting and continued not to wear masks throughout the year. They met during school hours in the Education Service Center, which is a school building, without masks and did not wear masks in any of their monthly school board meetings.
The masking policy is mentioned here merely to highlight the hypocrisy and lack of trust the parents had in the Board. There was a large group of parents who were voicing their concerns over the mask mandate and how it was affecting the education of their children. The public comments were heart-felt and enthusiastic; however, it is clear that Siemion could not take the pressure.
GHAPS Board Policy and Guideline 0142.5 explains the procedure for filling school board vacancies. Vacancies have to be filled within 30 days by a majority vote of the full board or the position will be appointed by the county.
Sixteen applications were turned in to the Board president and four people were offered interviews. One applicant put his application in on time but was told “the choice had already been made.”
Another candidate got his application in on time and was told interviews were already started.
This was not a good sign that proper due diligence and procedures would be followed during the appointment process.
At some point prior to the Special Meeting for filling the vacancy on September 28, 2021, the time of the meeting was changed from 7 PM to 5 PM. One Board member, Barbara Pietrangelo, missed the email notifying Board members of time change. By the time she realized it was changed, she was late to the meeting. They started the meeting without her and had already interviewed applicant Marc Eickholt.
This is where the adherence to the intent of the board policy starts to veer off course. Board Policy 0142.5 states that: “Appointment by the Board to fill a vacancy shall be by a majority vote of the full Board.”
After the interviews, the Board members scored the candidates. Below is the score card that was used to determine the “winner.” The scores were tallied but Pietrangelo’s scores were not counted on the score column for Eickholt because she was not there for the interview. However, she did have access to his application and answers to the questions therein. See below for the score card that the Board used to rank the applicants.
Figure 1. Score card provided by GHAPS from the September 28, 2021 Special Meeting
According to the way the numbers were manipulated (not counting Pietrangelo’s scores) Eickholt got the highest “percentage” of votes. However, if Pietrangelo’s votes had counted for the Eickholt column, he would have had 347 votes and Brunner would have won with 348 votes. In this manner, Brunner would have clearly had the most points. Table 2 below shows what the result would have been when counting the votes of the full Board--as the policy requires--without manipulation.
Figure 2. Actual tallies of all the board member’s votes showing Brunner with the most points and percentage
After the scores were tallied in this biased way, Trustee Nichole Stack made a motion to appoint Marc Eickholt to the vacant position. There were two “no” votes and four “yes” votes. The minutes from the meeting reflect that Eickholt was then approved to fill the vacant position.
However, it is apparent by anyone looking at the sequence of events, that the tally card was used to determine which candidate the Board was going to vote on. If Pietrangelo’s vote had been counted, the candidate John Brunner would have had the highest score and would have been chosen as the candidate to vote on. This is concerning because the Board Policy clearly states that “Appointment by the Board to fill a vacancy shall be by a majority vote of the full Board. “ The intent of this rule was not followed when they did not count Pietrangelo’s score on the candidates.
The next day, September 29, 2021 Andy Ingall, the Superintendent at the time, wrote a letter to the community announcing the newly appointed Board member:
“Last night, September 28, 2021, each candidate was interviewed with the same 13 questions. Board members rated each candidate using 12 categories, overall responses, and overall rating. Based on the summary of scores and deliberation of the Board, the Board selected and appointed Marc Eickholt to the Board through December 31, 2022. The remaining four years of this seat will be filled by election at the November 2022 general election.”
In the above message, he states “based on the summary of scores…the Board selected Marc Eickholt.” So, it is clear that the score card led to his appointment but the score card was faulty and not representative of the full Board. There was also no audio available from the meeting to be able to review the actual discussion that took place. Of note, every other Board meeting is routinely audio recorded but this one is not available.
Previous to being appointed via this broken process, Marc had this to say about the public voicing their concerns:
If you’re someone who feels the need to call unpaid volunteers who are your neighbors names while threatening them because you disagree, I suggest you skip the meetings and go try to actually have a conversation with the experts that they are taking advice from. I’m sure your evening YouTube and TikTok research will hold up well to what they have likely dedicated most of their lives to. Let the school boards get back to the boring work of approving budgets, hires, and conference travel requests.
However, he was not at the meeting referred to in his above Facebook rant, so his opinion is not based on reality. He is running again for the Board in November 2022, when his appointment expires.
Marc Eickholt
This sequence of events leading to his appointment is just one example where the GHAPS School Board did not follow policy. They need to be held accountable for their actions and the public should be aware of how they are not following their own rules.
[i] https://www.fox17online.com/news/local-news/lakeshore/ottawa/grand-haven-school-board-president-resigns-blames-mask-arguments