CREEDE — Creede School District Board of Education Trustee Jen Harbert resigned in mid-September after serving for almost two years.

During the meeting on Sept. 21, Board members voted, 4-0, to accept her resignation and discussed the procedure of filling the vacant seat.

The Board of Education is currently moving into its election cycle with three seats open for November elections. With the recent resignation of Harbert, the board could attempt to find a replacement.

“The issue is whether or not there is sufficient time to fill the vacancy as we have done in the past with the resignation of a board member. It was the advice of the attorney that the time was too short to fill the vacancy,” explained Creede Board of Education President Dave Robinson. 

Robinson said that the window of time available to fill a vacancy per policy would be complete one day before the November election.

“Because of this, there is no need to call for a replacement for the seat prior to the election. The process would have been to accept the resignation at this meeting and then if we were going to fill the vacancy, we would have announced the open seat at the next meeting which puts us right at the election date,” explained Trustee Kara Brittian. 

The Board opted to wait until November to fill the vacancy when newly elected board members would be joining the board.

“It seems like our time would be better spent to wait until after the election and to fill the vacancy at that time,” Brittian said. 

Creede School Principal John Goss did mention that the school would be hosting a Meet the Candidates Night on Oct. 5 at 5 p.m. in the school.

Creede School teacher Tereasa Wall said that she was currently accepting question suggestions from the public and would do so until 4 p.m. on the day of the event.

“The students who will be leading the discussion have already started compiling questions and we plan to have it on live stream, but we would like public questions to be submitted prior to the night of the event. The students are really excited to be part of this project,” Wall said.

As of right now, there are three seats open for the election and five candidates running — Leslie Leggett, Matthew Sliwkowski, Brittni Shambaugh Addison, Jennifer Castleberry and Greg Pearson.