Nearly a month after the Kingston City School District’s (KCSD) Board of Education was deadlocked in its choice of a new president, trustees went in a different direction, elevating interim president Marie Anderson to the role for the remainder of the 2023-24 school year.
During a School Board meeting held on Wednesday, July 12, trustees were split 4-4, with last year’s president Steven Spicer earning the support of Anderson, Cathy Collins and Suzanne Jordan; and Herb Lamb picking up votes from Jennifer Fitzgerald, Priscilla Lowe and Marc Rider. Both Spicer and Lamb voted for themselves. The split vote was possible with trustee Robin Jacobowitz absent.
At their next meeting, held on Wednesday, August 9, the School Board unanimously chose Anderson as its president and elected Jacobowitz its vice-president by a 7-1 vote, with only Spicer — who nominated himself for the position — the sole no vote. In an unexpected twist, the meeting was once again attended by eight trustees because Lamb had resigned from the School Board two days earlier.
Lamb attended the August 9 meeting, and during public participation addressed allegations against Spicer by former Trustee James Shaughnessy.
“Sitting in the room on the board is a former president who has never once denied accusations made by a former board member,” Lamb said. “If he accused me the first thing I would have said, ‘You are crazy and you better have proof because I did not do it.’”
As of press time, the Board of Education splash page on the KCSD website shows a group photo of the 2022-23 School Board, including former members Shaughnessy, who resigned as a trustee in April of this year, Lamb and Nora Scherer, who retired at the end of her last three-year term. Shaughnessy served continuously on the School Board after winning at the polls in 2006, and was president from 2011-13 and 2019-22.
Shaughnessy resigned with more than a year remaining on his term, announcing at the time that he wanted to give voters a chance to determine who would fill the seat. More recently, Shaughnessy alleged that Spicer had sent him a bitter anonymous card two years ago.
In a public Facebook post on Saturday, July 1, Shaughnessy posted photos of a pair of printed envelopes and letters he claimed were both sent by Spicer.
The first bore Spicer’s name and return address on an envelope postmarked July 9, 2021, and a congratulatory letter after Shaughnessy defeated him to retain the presidency of the School Board; Spicer was elected vice-president that year.
In a side-by-side image, the first envelope sits above a second, this time with no return address, and a postmark dated July 19, 2021. The image also includes a short anonymous note reading: “This is how you plan to close out years of public service? Petty bitterness & B.S. Just so sad & shameful, Jim. Embarrassing really.”
In his post, Shaughnessy addressed the anonymous note.
“When I received it, I immediately suspected that Spicer had sent it,” Shaughnessy wrote. “I could hear the cadence of his voice in reading the note. When the envelopes are placed together, there is no doubt in my mind that Spicer sent both.”
Shaughnessy was the lone no vote against appointing Spicer to the School Board in February 2019 after trustee Danielle Guido resigned the previous month.
“Spicer should never have been appointed to the Board in the first place, and he certainly should not have been elected president,” wrote Shaughnessy in his Facebook post. “In my opinion, he has done nothing of positive significance in his year as president.”
Last week, Lamb confirmed that he received a similar anonymous letter to the one sent to Shaughnessy and had all three letters in question analyzed, concluding they all came from the same sender.
“The entire (School) Board…was aware of these accusations,” Lamb said. “Yet one board member nominated the former president knowing the lack of ethics and the strong-arming of members to vote his way in the future, and three members and he voted for him to be president again.”
Lamb said that on Monday, August 7, he received similar phone calls from three trustees who he felt were showing support for Spicer at the former president’s direction. Though the rot had set in much earlier, Lamb said, it was then that he decided to resign.
“Seeing the lack of ethics, integrity and plain morality, I cannot be part of this board because I don’t lack those characteristics,” Lamb said. “My parents raised me correctly.”
Lamb added that he has filed a complaint with the office of the state Commissioner of Education Betty Rosa.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves,” Lamb said.
Lamb ran unsuccessful campaigns to join the Board of Education in 2007 and 2017 before winning in 2019 to fill the remaining two years of an unexpired term. He then won reelection to the School Board for a full three year term in 2022.
After Lamb’s departure from the meeting, parent Mariclare Cranston said she’d intended to use her time to speak about a different topic, but said Lamb’s comments had caused her great concern about the School Board.
“I’ve never felt so defeated after hearing Mr. Lamb’s remarks,” Cranston said. “God, I hope they’re not true. How are we to put the future of our kids in a group of people who are so busy playing political chess that they’re not listening to the parents of the district?”
Cranston added that the community is paying even greater attention to the district after “what happened” at Kingston High School earlier in the year, alluding to a May 3 attack in the cafeteria that sent one student to the hospital.
“We are watching and we are paying attention,” Cranston said. “We desperately need transparency, we need change and we need every one of you to step up to the plate because we do not trust you at this point.”
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