SCHOOL BOARD BATTLE

Like most school committees, Bangor’s board keeps issues affecting students at the forefront of its agenda; unlike most committees, its efforts in recent decades haven’t been interrupted by intra-board battles that pit ideas and personalities against each other. But that is what is happening now in Bangor, and it is not necessarily a bad thing as long as all officials involved are open about it and are able to prevent this clash from hurting the rest of the education system.

With a leadership vote last week, the conflict on the Bangor School Committee became clear: Three members wanted longtime Chairwoman Martha Newman to continue in her post; three did not. (One member was absent.) The sides offered various options, without immediate resolution, though one eventually was found. Two days later, the newest member of the opposition, Dan Tremble, who had been elected just the week before, found he was ineligible to serve while his wife was also employed by the school system, where she is an education technician.

The state law seems straightforward on this: “A member of a school board or spouse may not be an employee of a public school within the jurisdiction of the school board to which the member is elected.”

The question raised by those opposing Chairwoman Newman is the timing of the discovery of this law. Superintendent Sandy Ervin informed Mr. Tremble about it two days after the leadership vote and eight days after the Nov. 7 election. A lack of notification until after the election had the effect of keeping another candidate who had also expressed doubt about the board’s leadership from being elected.

Superintendent Ervin says he knew beforehand that a school-board member could not have a spouse who was a teacher, but plausibly says he did not know until Nov. 13, while researching what to do when a board deadlocks, as he expected the board to do that day, that the law applied to all school employees.

Were this a time of calm and agreement on the board, the incident could be passed off as merely an unfortunate oversight by the candidate and by officials. But given the heightened feelings that could be made worse if this event were less than fully aired, the board should, in public session, ask the superintendent to walk through this recent history. It should be clear, however, that only these events are being reviewed and that the discussion would be confined to the question of how Mr. Tremble came to face the choice of whether to continue on the board.

The bright spot in this conflict is that during a brief recess after the 3-3-board deadlock, the two sides worked out an agreement in which Mrs. Newman would keep her role and a board member opposing her, James Cox, would be named vice chairman. That indicates the members are serious about solving issues before them, and that they can handle the public discussion that should take place.