How the open Fort Wayne Community School board seat will be filled
How the open Fort Wayne Community School board seat will be filled
Rohli Booker’s resignation to serve on Fort Wayne City Council starts a unique replacement process that the FWCS board is very familiar with
Fort Wayne mayor Tom Henry’s March 28 death set in motion a series of events that have rapidly reshaped the city’s political landscape.
On April 20, City Councilwoman Sharon Tucker won a caucus to replace Henry — which required her to resign her City Council seat — and last Saturday, Fort Wayne Community School board vice president Rohli Booker won a caucus to replace Tucker.
After Booker’s swearing-in yesterday at Citizens Square, a final domino remains to fall: filling Booker’s former spot on the FWCS school board.
This time, no caucus will be called. School board races in Indiana are nonpartisan, so neither the Democratic nor Republican parties will play a role in selecting Booker’s replacement.
Instead, the other six FWCS board members will choose that person. It’s a process they are quite familiar with; this is the fourth vacancy they’ve had to fill in the past seven years.
Tracking turnover
In 2017, then vice president Mark GiaQuinta resigned his at-large seat a year and a half before the end of his term. More than a dozen people applied to replace him, including Austin Knox, who is now Wayne Township Trustee and was a candidate in last month’s mayoral caucus. Ultimately the board chose Maria Norman, who currently serves as its president.
Three years later, board member Jordan Lebamoff died suddenly from a heart attack at age 54. (Lebamoff’s father Ivan Lebamoff, a Democrat, was mayor of Fort Wayne from 1972 to 1976.) The younger Lebamoff was replaced by Booker on July 27, 2020.
Later that year, former City Councilman Tom Smith resigned just weeks into his second term on the board. He had filed for re-election months earlier but changed his mind after the deadline to withdraw from the race.
Despite publicly urging voters to support the other candidate running for his District 3 seat, Smith won the election. After he formally submitted his resignation, the other six board members selected Noah Smith (no relation) as his replacement.
Replacement process
FWCS board members earn $2,000 in annual compensation plus stipends for meetings attended. Anyone who is at least 21, has been a resident of FWCS District 3 — see map — for a year or more, and is a registered voter can apply for the seat Booker vacated.
The other board members will review all the applications and select which candidates they want to interview in person. They typically talk to around five, and each is asked the same set of questions.
Anne Duff, who was one of several FWCS board members at Booker’s swearing-in ceremony Tuesday, said she’ll be looking for someone who is passionate about public education and understands the key role that the Indiana General Assembly plays in what happens in the state’s public schools.
She said a good board member is a person comfortable with “being an advocate, being willing to talk to legislators, write emails, being a spokesperson for the district, visiting schools and learning what each school does and what each school is all about.”
Duff also told me she believes Booker’s replacement needs to help promote what’s happening at FWCS to the community at large. “There’s so many hidden gems people don’t know about.”
Photo Gallery: Rohli Booker Swearing-In
