To support the largest administrative office found in any Connecticut school district, Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez requested that the Board of Education approve a nearly half-million dollar contract for her friends from the New Jersey based Attuned Education Partners (“HPS Pays a Half-Million Dollars to Learn How to Innovate”).

Seven of the 9 Board of Education members found the time to attend the Board’s September 19th Regular Meeting where the Superintendent’s 8-year string of failed outsourcing contracts are dutifully approved by the Board.  The only thing that does not fail at HPS is the Boards “Aye” vote to whatever is put before them.  However, this night was nearly a watershed moment for the Board and common sense – or wasn’t it?

The issue is one of counting votes.  Naturally, the BOE never thought that this was going to be an issue and they never qualified a vote counting process in the context of awarding million dollar contracts into their Bylaws.  The Titanic will never sink, so 20 lifeboats for 2,200 people?  Perfect.

Following questions and comments by Board members regarding the Attuned contract (Attuned was told that the Board vote is merely a formality, so making the drive up from Jersey was not necessary, virtual attendance was fine), a vote was called for.  Three members voted “Aye,” two members voted “Nay,” and there were 2 abstentions.  All heads turned with confusion to Hartford Corporate Counsel Lori Mizerak like she was a Titanic lifeboat.  Based on her advice, Chairman Rigueur stated that abstentions do not count and Attuned gets a win.

While it is true that those wishing to abstain from the vote aren’t in fact voting at all, their vote is not a “Nay” vote and counted towards determining a majority.  However, while not representing a “Nay” vote, an abstention may have the same impact as a “Nay” vote in certain situations.

The Board needs a majority “Aye” vote to pass a motion, but a “majority” of what?  This nuance is important and will show why the Board Bylaws must state a process for determining a vote’s outcome.

Robert’s Rules of Order (RONR), an accepted parliamentary procedure in place since the 19th century, which Chairman Rigueur and the Board rarely follow with fidelity despite its adoption by the Board in May of 2022, defines “a majority as those who are present and voting.”  So, if the Board decided this was a good time to follow RONR, the Attuned motion did pass on a 3-2 vote.  However, if language existed which stated simply, “a majority vote shall be necessary,” then the Attuned vote would have failed.

If the language defining a majority “is based on the number of total members, abstentions count as no-votes because the basis for the majority is a fixed number.”  In this situation, the abstentions have the same impact as a “Nay” vote, despite not actually being counted as a “Nay” vote.  In essence, the abstentions have prevented the “Aye” votes from obtaining a majority.  Policy language for determining a vote’s outcome which does not contain the phrase (or similar, I imagine), “present and voting,” requires that the total membership at the meeting be the basis for determining a majority.  Three “Aye” votes do not represent a majority of the 7 members at the meeting.

As previously mentioned, the Board has not breached the possibility of this problem being an issue in the context of voting to approve million-dollar contracts by adding a rule to their Bylaws.  Even if they had, like their respect to RONR, the Chairman and the Board routinely breaks or ignores the Bylaws they do have, so…

If we like our Board of Education to be consistent with the rules they themselves adopted to guide their work, then this Attuned contract did not pass.

The Bylaws of the Board contain 11 different instances where a process for determining a vote’s outcome is mentioned (9120, 9221, 9222, 9250(a), 9312, 9314, 9321(b) – twice, 9321(c), and 9321(e)).  All but one of these rules defines a “majority” as a fixed number, the members at the meeting.  Being consistent with language they have adopted in 10 instances of their Bylaws, the Attuned vote should have been determined by a majority of those at the meeting and not a majority of those present and voting, thereby resulting in a rejection of the Attuned contract.