The Butler County Board of Education called a special meeting to order Thursday evening for the purpose of discussing board member applications for District 2 in the wake of Terry Williams’ passing.

District 5 representative Mickey Jones outlined the board’s plan to announce a successor to the position within 30 days, in accordance with the policy manual of the Butler County Board of Education.

“With the consensus of the board completely, we have received six applications for District 2 board position that was opened by the death of Mr. Williams,” Jones said.

“The board has agreed that we would interview all six.  We were going to take tonight to review applications and narrow it down to three or four, but we feel that we owe that to each of those individuals to interview them one-on-one, and we will do that Aug. 8 at 6 p.m. Each candidate will be notified tomorrow about a scheduled time for them.”

The six applicants are Terry Banks, Susan Andrews, Vonnie Lawson, Lois Robinson, Kenneth Dale Gates and James R. Seale.

“And I want to just clarify for the public that it is in our policy, in Section 1.1g on unexpired term fulfillment, that states ‘in the event a vacancy occurs in the office of a member of the board of education, the remaining members of the board shall fill the vacancy by appointment within 30 days thereafter by a majority vote.  The newly appointed member shall reside in the district for which he or she is appointed and will serve the remainder of the unexpired term.  In the event the board of education fails to fill the vacant position, the state superintendent shall appoint a successor,’” Jones added.

“Based on that information and the death of Mr. Williams, we have to fill that position by Aug. 15.  By doing the interviews on Aug. 8, that should give us plenty of time to have them take the oath of office on Aug. 18 at our regularly scheduled board meeting.”

Butler County Superintendent Amy Bryan also introduced an item of business concerning the report of bid results for the planned construction project at McKenzie School.

“Goodwyn Mills and Cawood conducted a bid the day before our last board meeting, and were not prepared to give us their recommendation at that meeting, which is, of course, one of the reasons for this meeting,” Bryan said.

“They received four bids, and they looked at the two lowest bids.  The actual first one, they don’t consider a responsible bid.  And because of that, they’ve recommended that we go with the second bid in the amount of $1,230,700 with Wyatt Sasser Construction of Andalusia, who they do recognize as a responsible bid.”

In other news, eight new hires were announced for the coming year, including:

Wayne Walters, new career tech teacher at Greenville High School

Michelle Phelps, she is a special education teacher at Georgiana School

Ashley Brock, new library media specialist at W.O. Parmer Elementary

Anne Shakespeare, new elementary teacher at Georgiana

Angela Peacock, new Bright Beginnings instructional aide at Georgiana School

Brandon Lilly, history teacher at Greenville High School

Joel Teal, science teacher at McKenzie School

Shanna Baldwin, Bright Beginnings instructional aide at McKenzie School

Blake Towns, elementary teacher at Georgiana School