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Title
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EWP 2-2 Yr 1936 Oct 21 Filling Vacancies on the School Board.pdf
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Identifier
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0863fccd55a11508d4a40c8df4081e14
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45c78a63c8c5601192a40353defded6d
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c9c6b1b3b0d920bd72fcf36c31826cb2
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Is Version Of
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EWP_2-2_Yr_1936_Oct_21_Filling_Vacancies_on_the_School_Board.pdf
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Is Part Of
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Petitions
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Date Created
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2021-11-21 20:29:10 +0000
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12/28/03
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Format
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pdf
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Source
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/Volumes/Elements/EWP Files/source/Ingest One/2 Petitions Plans School Board and Districts/2-3_School_Trustee_Electoral_Board/2-3_Yr_1936
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/Volumes/T7 Shield/EWP/Elements/EWP Files/OCR/Petitions/2-1_School_Board/2-2_School_Board_Elections_and_Resignations/EWP_2-2_Yr_1936_Oct_21_Filling_Vacancies_on_the_School_Board_ocr.pdf
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/Volumes/T7 Shield/EWP/Elements/EWP Files/OCR/Petitions/2-3_School_Trustee_Electoral_Board/2-3_Yr_1936/EWP_2-2_Yr_1936_Oct_21_Filling_Vacancies_on_the_School_Board_ocr.pdf
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Publisher
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Digitized by: Edwin Washington Project
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extracted text
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BATH COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THEODORE R. SINCLAIR. SUPERINTENDENT
WARM SPRINGS, VA.
file
October 21, 1936
Supt. 0. L. Emerick
Leesburg, Virginia
Dear Mr. Emerick:
Please accept my apology for not replying promptly to your inquiry
of October 13. I have been unusually busy with several meetings and have
just found time to consult our Commonwealth's Attorney in reference to
the opinion of the Attorney General. I find that August 21 our Attorney
for the Commonwealth, Julian K. Hickman, requested an opinion and that
he received from the Attorney General a reply dated August 25. In his
reply he enclosed a copy of a letter to Honorable W. 0. Medley, Member
House of Delegates, Lyon Village, Virginia, which covers six pages and
has to do with the appointment in Arlington County. In his letter to
Mr. Hickman the Attorney General also stated that it is his opinion that
the same notice should be given for meetings to fill vacancies as is
required for meetings for appointments for new terms.
Since the letter is quite long and since you may already have a
copy of it, I am attempting to give you the gist of the letter which
will also serve as a reference for us should we desire it in the future.
I believe that you are familiar with the case in Arlington County, where
it appears that new appoints were made by the Electoral Board in a meeting
held first on July 3, 1936, and adjourned until July 6, 1936. I shall
give you first the conclusion which is as follows:
"In conclusion, it is my opinion that the school trustee electoral
board of Arlington County was, on July 6, 1936, withut power to appoint
a member of the county school board; that the failure to make the appointment
on or prior to July 1, 1936, did not create a vacancy in the term of the
member expiring on that day, and that such member, whose term would have
expired if a successor had been appointed, continues to hold over until
the school trustee electoral board is again empowered to appoint a
successor, which, under the statute, is within sixty days prior to July 1,
1940.
The Attorney General bases his opinion partly on a decision of the
Court of Appeals and partly on an opinion of the late Attorney General
Saunders. Other quotations from his letter are as follows:
"This statute confers the power to appoint school board members for
a term of four years beginning July 1, 1936, but expressly restricts the
exercise of this power to the time preceding the beginning of the term of
the school board members to be appointed."
BATH COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
THEODORE R. SINCLAIR. SUPERINTENDENT
WARM SPRINGS, VA.
Supt. 0. L. E., October 21, 1936
In reference to an appointment as Superintendent of the Poor in
the case of Chadduck V. Burke, 103 Va. 694, "the Supreme Court of
Appeals held this second appointment likewise void because not made
during the time within which the circuit court was authorized by statute
to make the appointment!
In reference to the question as to whether failure to appoint a
successor to a school board member operates to cause a vacancy on the
board which the Electoral Board may fill "it is said that the word
"vacancy", as applied to an office, has no technical meaning; that an
office is vacant or not according to whether it is occupied by one who
has a legal right to hold it and to exericse the powers and perform the
duties pertaining thereto. A vacant office is one without an incumbent.
Vacancy in office is one thing and term is another. An office may be
vacant and filled many times during a term of four years; but it cannot
become vacant at the end of a term where the incumbent is authorized to
hold over, for the instant the successor is duly appointed and has
qualified he becomes entitled to the office, and there has been no hiatus
at all. So long, therefore, as an office is supplied with an incumbent,
in the manner provided by the Constitution or law, who is legally qualified
to exercise the powers and perform the duties which appertain to it, the
office is not vacant. Section 106 of the Act under consideration, contemplates and has reference alone to vacancies occurring during the term of
an office, by death, resignation, removal and the like. It does not refer
to nor contemplate the filling of an office for the ensuing term, upon the
expiration of the preceding term; that was fully provided for by section
95 of the same Act, which has already been adverted to".
You may be interested in our particular situation. For more than
a year one of our very best members has insisted that he would not accept
reappointment. For some little time prior to July 1 and since that time
there has been considerable opposition to another member on the part of
a number of people in his rather thickly settled farm neighborhood. I
had no conferences with any members of the Electoral Board prior to July 1,
but since July 1 one member told me frankly that the appointment was allowed
to go by with the hope of persuading the first member to continue and
because reappointment of the second member might be unpopular and because
there appeared to be no better qualified person available in his district.
Later, this member told one of the members of our Board that there was
considerable criticism of the failure of the Board to make the appointments
for the present term. Later, in order to relieve the embarrassment of the
Electoral Board, the four individuals on the School Board joined in a
letter of resignation, stating that the resignation was made in order to
remove any possible legal difficulty. This was after the receipt of the
Attorney General's letter to the Attorney for the Commonwealth.
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Type
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OCR
