After calls to resign, school board chair Gwozdz says she’s running for re-election
A group of Beaufort County school activists is calling on school board chairwoman Christina Gwozdz to resign, following what they called an “egregious abuse of power” in appointing members to a board committee.
Instead, Gwozdz said Monday she has “no intention of resigning,” and will run for re-election in November.
Gwozdz has represented District 9, which includes southern Bluffton and Dafuskie Island, on the school board since 2016. She was named chairwoman of the school board in January 2019.
On Friday, school activist and CARE founder Richard Bisi sent an email to school board members asking that Gwozdz resign after she denied board secretary William Smith’s request to join the Bluffton Ad Hoc committee, which has two members compared to other committees’ three.
“Ms. Gwozdz has abused her power and authority as chair by not responding to community concerns about transparency and not treating all board members fairly and equally,” Bisi wrote.
He said that Gwozdz has not responded to three emails asking for clarity on her decision.
Bisi also noted that CARE endorsed Gwozdz in 2016 and that CARE members volunteered for her campaign. Two of those CARE members, Tony Cambria and Mike Gleason, spoke at the board’s June 9 meeting asking Gwozdz to resign.
“Since becoming board chair she has demonstrated desires to self counsel, make unilateral decisions, introduce self serving resolutions while excluding other board members,” Cambria said at the board’s June 9 meeting. “The most serious violation is her obstruction of transparency.”
Gwozdz responded to Bisi’s call for her to resign in a Monday interview with the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
“On the internet, you can say anything and it doesn’t have to be true,” she said.
Gwozdz also said that she hasn’t responded to Bisi’s emails because he lives on Hilton Head Island, outside her district.
“Each member is elected by its constituency, and Mr. Bisi is not my constituent,” she said Monday. “It’d be like if I reached out to Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. She’s not going to answer me. I’m not her constituent.
Bisi called her response “utter nonsense” on Tuesday, noting that CARE’s Facebook page has more than 900 members from across the county.
Gwozdz is one of four school board members up for election in November.
Two of those members, Okatie rep John Dowling and Hilton Head Island rep JoAnn Orischak, have announced they will not seek re-election.
Earl Campbell, who has represented District 1 (Sheldon, Lobeco and Gray’s Hill) on the board for 30 years, has not announced his plans.
Bisi said Tuesday that CARE hasn’t endorsed school board candidates for 2020 yet, characterizing it as a “work in progress.”
The school board will hold an election for officers at their first meeting in January 2021, per the board’s policy manual.
‘Raw, biased, exclusionary politics’
The board voted to form the Bluffton Ad Hoc Committee in February after hearing a Beaufort County School District official’s prediction that the district “should be building a new school every two to three years” to keep up with growth in Bluffton.
Per board policy, the chairwoman is responsible for appointing school board members to committees. Board members are supposed to notify the chair of their interest in serving. “To the extent possible and practicable, the Board Chair will accommodate such request(s),” the policy say.
Rachel Wisnefski and Richard Geier were named as committee’s members March 3.
Gwozdz said Monday she gave board members two weeks to express interest in the committee, and that Wisnefski and Geier were the only members who responded.
She noted that board policy does not specifically state committees have to have three or more members, only that they must have five or less.
Gwozdz and Smith both confirmed that he requested to join the committee in April.
Smith said he only responded later because he was worried about having two members on a committee, which would affect majority votes and quorum.
“I felt as a board member, all our committees have between three and five members,” Smith said Tuesday. “My thing was, maybe I could help that committee or learn something from that committee. If it doesn’t have enough committee members, why not be a part of the committee?”
Smith abstained from the vote to establish the committee after introducing a failed motion to expand its scope to the entire county, which Gwozdz cited in an April 30 email denying his request to join the committee.
On May 19, board member Dowling introduced a motion to appoint Smith to the committee; it failed 3-6-2.
On June 9, CARE supporter Gleason spoke about the decision during the board’s public comment session, calling it “raw, biased, exclusionary politics by the chair.”
He also asked if Gwozdz’s actions were “the epitome of racism,” a question that Bisi echoed in his Friday letter.
Smith declined to comment on CARE’s call for Gwozdz to resign, or on Bisi’s remark that Gwozdz’s decision could have been racist.
“That statement is meant to be inflammatory and has no merit,” Gwozdz said Monday.
Bisi said Tuesday that the committee issue isn’t the only reason behind his call for Gwozdz to resign.
He cited excessive meeting length — four of the past six board meetings have lasted more than five hours — and a general lack of transparency as other reasons.
“The person today is not the person we campaigned for and supported four years ago,” he said.