Lynchburg City Council and School Board members are to sit down together Tuesday, days after council deadlocked on votes to ask school board member Christian DePaul to resign and one week after the school board stripped DePaul of his committee leadership positions.
The previously scheduled joint work session between council and board is scheduled to start at 4 p.m. at the Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance at 300 Lucado Place.
Later Tuesday, council is scheduled to have its regular meeting at 7 p.m. in City Hall. The agenda, and accompanying information, can be found here.
The joint work session’s agenda says the city officials will hear a presentation on the school’s budget and capital plans. There is no mention of the controversy surrounding DePaul’s behavior toward Interim Superintendent Ben Copeland, which last week became a central and unresolved topic for both bodies.
According to information presented at a Feb. 4 school board meeting, DePaul last month put a picture of a character from the movie “The Goonies” on a wall in a school administration meeting room, covering a framed picture of a former school superintendent. DePaul labeled the picture with Copeland’s name.
The picture was discovered by staff the next week and was taken down. The school board removed DePaul from his positions as chairman of the Student Discipline Committee and Facilities and Finance Committee.
“What I thought was going to be a joke turned out to be nothing close to that … I brought dishonor to this board,” DePaul told the school board on Feb. 4.
DePaul offered to resign if city council wanted him to. Mayor Larry Taylor called a special council meeting for Thursday, but two votes connected to DePaul’s conduct failed on 3-3 ties, with Councilwoman Stephanie Reed out of town.
The first motion, proposed by Councilman Sterling Wilder, called for DePaul to resign. The second motion, from Councilwoman Jacqueline Timmer, was for council to establish a process for handling possible resignations, censures and “public admonishments.”
“This is a wild day for Lynchburg,” Timmer said Thursday, then added that situations like that surrounding DePaul had “become pretty commonplace for Lynchburg right now.”
Even if council and school board members avoid discussing DePaul’s actions during Tuesday’s joint session, council seems likely to have an earful at its regular meeting that night — during the public address section, at least six speakers have signed up to talk about DePaul or the school board.
