Court Opinion

ID: 9603456
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:06:28.247868+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:56.524974
License: Public Domain

NEELY, Justice,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent because I believe it is the clear purport of W.Va.Code, 18-5-13a [1985] that the members of the Board of Education who constitute the statutorily required quorum at the hearing on a school closing be the same members who vote on whether the school should be closed. The closing of a local school is an intensely emotional issue; although there are many schools that need to be closed or consolidated, communities should have the opportunity to present their side of any school closing issue to the board members who will ultimately make the decision. A hearing before a person or group who will not make the ultimate decision isn’t much of a hearing. The residents of Loudendale might as well have been given a hearing before the cows and the chickens.
Two new members of the board who had not been elected at the time of the hearing and a third member who had not attended the hearing voted to close the school, much *439to the prejudice of the local residents. Certainly it is the tradition in judicial bodies, preeminently the Supreme Court of the United States, not to decide cases when members of the Court whose votes are necessary to the ultimate decision did not hear the oral arguments. In such circumstances it is traditional for judicial bodies to set the case for reargument because those adversely affected by a decision should have an abiding conviction that the persons making the decision fairly and objectively evaluated their position. This, I believe, is also the intent of the language in Code, 18-5-13a [1985].
Furthermore, even if the majority are correct that a school board is an ongoing corporate entity where the persons who hear a matter need not always be entirely the same persons who vote on the matter, I still believe that the decision of the Circuit Court of Kanawha County comes within Syllabus Point 1, State ex rel. Payne v. Board of Education of Jefferson County, 135 W.Va. 349, 63 S.E.2d 579 (1951) because the actions of the board in this case were “arbitrary conduct.” It is one thing to say that not all persons who vote on a matter need to have attended the hearing; it is quite another to say that a majority of those who vote on a matter need not have attended the hearing. The Code, after all, requires a quorum of board members at the public hearing, W.Va.Code, 18-5-13a [1985], and a quorum is defined as a majority of the members, W.Va.Code, 18-5-4 [1985]. The members of the Board of Education who heard the testimony about the school closing decided to table any action concerning the recommended closure. Thus the quorum of the board who heard the testimony concluded that the disadvantages of closure outweighed its advantages. In my estimation, the successful motion to table, combined with ten months of inactivity, constituted a decision by the board not to close the school.
According to Robert’s Rules of Order, on the effect of tabling motions:
In organizations that hold regular business sessions quarterly or oftener, a question laid on the table remains there until taken from the table or until the close of the next regular session; if not taken up by that time, the question dies. In assemblies that do not have regular sessions as often as quarterly, a question laid on the table can remain there only until the end of the current session; and unless taken from the table earlier, the matter dies with the close of that session. [Emphasis added.]
H. Robert, Robert’s Rules of Order, Newly Revised 181-82 (1970). Robert’s point out that a motion to lay on the table is often misused in place of a motion to postpone indefinitely. Id. at 183.
Postpone Indefinitely is a motion that the assembly decline to take a position on the main question. Its adoption kills the main motion (for the duration of the session) and avoids a direct vote on the question.
Id. at 105. Regardless of whether the original vote to table the school closing was properly styled, the matter was clearly dead by the time the second vote was taken. It could be introduced afresh in 1989, but not without a new motion and a new public hearing.
Significantly, the second vote came eleven months after the public hearing, and ten months after the tabling vote. W. Va. Code, 18-5-lc [1975], requires that each board be organized every two years, following elections, in July of even-numbered years. This is analogous to the organization of a separate U.S. Congress every two years, even if the membership is nearly the same. The board organized in July 1986 held the hearing in March 1988 and voted in April 1988 to table the school closing. The new board, organized in July 1988, voted in February 1989 to close the school. Under W.Va.Code, 18-5-lc [1975], these were distinct boards. Therefore, the requirement in W.Va.Code, 18-5-13a [1985] that the board hold a public hearing before the board votes to close a school, necessarily refers to one board. The board that held the hearing voted to table the school closing. It was a different board that later voted, without a hearing, to close the school. Code sections 18-5-lc [1975] and 18-5-13a [1985] require that the same or*440ganized board hold the hearing and vote on the matter. That was clearly violated in this case.
Accordingly, I would affirm the judgment of the Circuit Court of Kanawha County.