The Lytle ISD Board of Trustees postponed a decision on who to appoint to the vacant Single Member District 3 position, or whether to appoint anyone at all, during the meeting held on Monday, July 27.
Maria Frie held the SMD 3 position until earlier this month, when she resigned due to an impending move.
“According to our local Board policy, the next step for us is we have the ability to appoint someone to fill that vacancy until the next regularly scheduled election, which at this point is going to be May of 2021,” Board President LeeAnna Mask said.
At that time, the election for the SMD 3 seat will be to fill the remaining two years of Frie’s term before returning to its regular election cycle.
Bobby Sollock, Kevin Englehart, and David Emery all expressed interest in being appointed to the seat and attended the meeting via Zoom.
Sollock works for Union Pacific Railroad and has two daughters enrolled at Lytle Elementary School.
“Over the last several years I’ve actively volunteered, whether it be reading, field trips, Board meetings, anything that goes on at the school, I’m up there to volunteer,” Sollock said.
He has served on the Site-Based Committee, the Safety Task Force, the Survey Committee for Capturing Kids’ Hearts, and has served as PTO Treasurer for LES for the past three years.
Englehart is an electrical engineer and a 2006 graduate of Lytle High School. His oldest child is entering Kindergarten at Lytle Primary School this year.
“I’m very excited to be a part of the community and try to get more involved in the community, now that I live here and own a house here in Lytle,” Englehart said. “And I’m just excited to potentially be part of the Board.”
David Emery is a retired member of the Air Force with a Master’s degree in Education with a specialty in counseling from Boston University, and has children entering into 5th grade and 9th grade.
“I’ve been wanting to be more involved in the community, and especially the school with the children,” Emery said. “And since I have kids who will be in school here at least for seven more years, I thought this would be something that I would like to do.
“I have a lot of administrative experience through the military as a staff officer and as a commander, and it’s time to step up and help out and I’d love to be a part of this group.”
Board Secretary Reagan Wagner and Vice President Nan Boyd nominated Sollock for the SMD 3 position.
“I’d like to fill it with Bobby, primarily because he’s had the volunteer experience in the school over the last three years,” Wagner said.
The motion failed on a 3-3 tie, with Mask voting for it and trustees Mae Flores, Anthony Reyna, and Oscar Jimenez voting against it.
Reyna and Jimenez then nominated Englehart for the position. That motion failed 4-2 after failing to attract additional support.
Mask made a motion to table the issue until the next Board meeting.
“We can put it on, or not put it on,” Mask said. “We’ll see how it goes.”
Jimenez provided the second for the motion, which passed 6-0.
By Marly Davis
Staff Writer