North Mason seeks makeup days, new board member

As of April 21, the North Mason School District needs makeup days and a new board director.

Superintendent Dana Rosenbach submitted a waiver to make up for the days the district missed due to weather and emergencies.

Rosenbach said state law requires a district to go past June 14, at least, in instructional days, including any makeup days, before that district can be considered for a waiver.

“In a typical year, you would have had to make up at least three days, plus hit that June 14 mark, before you could submit an application,” Rosenbach said. “One of our days this year was a declared emergency. Friday, Jan. 7, was a mudslide day, so that day, we know we’ll get approved. We made up another day in March, so that just leaves us with a third day.”

Even though Rosenbach assured the board the mudslide day would get approved, she conceded “we still have to submit the waiver request.”

Rosenbach told the board her conversations with state-level boards of health and education have indicated “we would have a better chance this year to have (makeup days) approved than in any other year.”

Rosenbach expressed hope the district would receive a reply to its requested makeup days within a week or two after submitting the waiver, so that “we can update our families and hopefully tell them the good news that they’ll be done on June 17.”

With the recent resignation of District 1 Director Art Wightman, the North Mason School District has posted an opening for his former school board seat, whose end posting date was April 29.

“So far, we have two qualified candidates,” Rosenbach said April 21. “Because of the timing, we checked on some things with the county elections office, and the filing period for the November election is the week of May 16.”

The next regular school board meeting, which falls after the district’s 30-day posting period, is scheduled for May 19.

“Even though you are going to appoint someone who will serve from now through December, we will have an election for that position, because it was opened and will have an appointed person in office for the November election,” Rosenbach said. “The people running for that position have the filing week of May 16-20.”

Rosenbach recommended to the board that they set a special session to consider and interview those applicants, rather than waiting to do so during the board’s next regularly scheduled meeting May 19.

“We should do it prior to that, so (the applicants) have time to look at that filing period,” Rosenbach said. “It’s not a Friday short day, when they can just get that done and get it down to Shelton.”

When District 3 Director Laura Boad noted the vacant position’s term doesn’t expire until 2023, but the board director would nonetheless need to run in 2022, Rosenbach laid out the election law requirement that the director has to run in the next available election after their predecessor resigned.

“They would have to run twice in two years in this case,” Rosenbach said, before turning to District 2 Director Leanna Krotzer. “That’s what you had to do when you joined the board.”

The board scheduled a special session for 6 p.m. Tuesday to review the position’s applicants.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
kboxleitner@masoncounty.com