Higley Unified School District voters will decide who fills a vacant governing board seat in November after two courts rejected Maricopa County School Superintendent Shelli Boggs’ decision to fill the position by appointment.
The Nov. 3 election will feature a separate two-year contest to complete the term of former board member Scott Glover, who resigned July 20 as he prepared to move to Portugal.
Travis White and Kathleen Richards are the two qualified write-in candidates for the seat. Their names will not appear on the ballot, meaning voters will have to write in the name of their preferred candidate.
Under Arizona law, write-in votes count only for candidates who qualified by filing the required paperwork by the deadline. Writing in the name of someone who did not qualify does not result in a counted vote.
The election represents a significant change from the process HUSD and Boggs had been following since Glover’s resignation.
Boggs initially decided to use the appointment process allowed under state law. HUSD solicited applications and community feedback before its Governing Board voted Aug. 11 to forward Brooke Garrett, Kimberly Jackson and White to Boggs for consideration.
Boggs was not required to select one of the district’s three recommendations and could have chosen someone else to fill the vacancy.
Instead, White sued Boggs and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors on July 27, challenging the decision not to put the seat on the ballot.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Julie Mata ruled Aug. 19 that the vacancy must be placed on the Nov. 3 ballot and that the write-in filings must be processed. The Arizona Court of Appeals upheld the decision Aug. 21, according to Boggs’ office.
Boggs said she will comply with the ruling but remains critical of the circumstances surrounding the vacancy and the filing of the two write-in candidacies.
“Access to information should never become privileged access to the ballot,” Boggs said in a statement issued Aug. 21.
According to the timeline released by Boggs’ office, Glover contacted the county July 9 with questions about the resignation process and write-in candidate information.
His resignation letter was hand-delivered to Boggs’ office at 8:29 a.m. July 20, the final day for write-in candidates to file for the November election.
At 10:43 a.m., two people — White and Richards — arrived at the office seeking to file for the remainder of Glover’s term. Boggs received legal advice at 11:50 a.m. that the seat should not be placed on the November ballot and that she could fill it by appointment or special election. She chose appointment.
Glover’s resignation was submitted to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office at 12:32 p.m. and emailed to the other HUSD board members at 4:59 p.m., according to Boggs’ timeline. The write-in filing deadline was 5 p.m.
Boggs said those circumstances were behind her decision to use an appointment process that would give other district residents an opportunity to seek the seat.
“The people of Higley Unified deserve to know exactly what happened,” Boggs said. “A Governing Board seat unexpectedly became available on the final day of filing. Within two hours, individuals who knew about the vacancy were at our office ready to file, while the broader community did not even know there was a seat available.”
The circumstances also drew objections before the court ruling.
At the Aug. 11 HUSD board meeting, Pam Ingermanson, who identified herself as a district taxpayer, questioned how White and Richards knew about the vacancy in time to file and alleged that they had coordinated with Glover. Glover, White and Richards could not be reached for comment on those allegations.
Board Member Anna Van Hoek also objected to White being among the district’s three recommendations to Boggs and cast the lone dissenting vote when the board approved Garrett, Jackson and White on a 3-1 vote.
The three were selected based on a district community survey after officials attempted to remove duplicate responses and focused on respondents who said they lived within district boundaries. Garrett finished first with 210 selections, followed by Jackson with 147, White with 119 and Richards with 114.
Board President Amanda Wade said Aug. 22 that HUSD had received little communication from the county about what would happen after the court decisions. The district previously submitted its three recommendations and received confirmation that they had been received.
“The county has not communicated with us at all,” Wade said. “At all.”
Wade said she did not know whether Boggs would still appoint someone to serve between now and the election, although she considered that unlikely. She said the district also does not yet have a clear answer about precisely when the winner of the November election could take office.
The court-ordered election does accomplish something Wade had emphasized when HUSD began its appointment process: giving district voters a role in deciding who completes Glover’s term.
“Ultimately, I would like very much for this process of our community coming together to fill Scott’s position, to have the county recognize the efforts that we are doing to try to include the community feedback in that this seat belongs to the voters of the Higley Unified School District,” Wade said in a July interview.
Boggs, however, said her concern was whether all those voters had received an equal opportunity to become candidates.
“The court has resolved the legal question,” Boggs said. “The people of Higley can decide for themselves what they think about the circumstances that created it. The timeline speaks for itself.”
The two-year race will be one of three HUSD Governing Board contests on the Nov. 3 ballot. Two regularly scheduled four-year seats also are up for election. Wade, Van Hoek and challenger Michelle Morris are the candidates for those two seats.
Glover, White, Richards and White’s attorney, Bo Sul, could not be reached for comment.
Please submit comments at yourvalley.net/letters or email them to AzOpinions@iniusa.org. We are committed to publishing a wide variety of reader opinions, as long as they meet our Civility Guidelines. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him on X at @sp_blodgett.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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