Hulbert School Board Member Removed

The Tahlequah Daily Press reports that Hulbert school board member Charles Thompson was removed from office Monday for failing to meet professional development requirements set by state law.

School officials recently discovered Thompson had not accrued required professional development hours within his first 15 months on the board. According to state law, the board is required to make a seat vacant if the person elected to it hasn’t acquired 12 hours of professional development classes in that time frame.

“I want to apologize to everybody on the board, because I have clearly dropped the ball here on this,” said Thompson.  “This is not something I take lightly, and honestly, I hadn’t been keeping track of things myself. I think I got 15 or 18 hours all together, something like that. The classes I was attending, or the lectures I was attending, I thought counted toward that new-member training, and it didn’t.”  Thompson said some seminars he attended did count.

Thompson was asked if he had received letters from the state showing how many hours he had taken; he said that he had gotten a few letters.

“And when I first got elected, I went to a two-day seminar in Oklahoma City, and they gave me this nice, fancy little badge and told me I needed to take that with me and check in at each lecture, and that was the only time that I got to use it, because each time after that, they’d issue a new one, and I just wonder,” said Thompson. “They’ve got accountability for all of the hours, but, you know, honestly I wonder if there was some confusion, some misaccounting, if you will, on someone else’s part at the state level. Completely irrelevant, because I should be keeping track of it myself.”

Read more at this link. The seat remains vacant for the time being.

Thompson ran for Congress in 2010, and eventually became the Republican nominee. He received 43% of the vote against sitting 2nd District Congressman Dan Boren (D-Muskogee). This instance isn't the first time Thompson has had paperwork problems.