OMAHA — School board elections might go under the radar in most districts, but sometimes members aren't so quick in picking their leaders.
A few Nebraska districts had trouble this month when electing school board officers.Â
The Bennington school board took a week and more than two dozen rounds before it decided its officers Jan. 16 after a deadlock vote.
“I don't have any great tips for you," Derek Aldridge, Bennington's legal counsel, told the board after 25 voting rounds. "There isn't a tiebreaker — there's no coin flip, there's no arm wrestling, there's nothing like that."
One school district in the state did try one of those solutions to avoid a marathon officer election: a coin flip.
North Platte school board members tossed a coin to pick both the board president and secretary during a meeting last week.
​A board policy adopted in 2020 required the coin tosses after 10 tie votes.
"I don't know that North Platte has had the situation before, so it was all new to us," said Angela Blaesi, who won the presidency.
Blaesi and Matt Pedersen were nominated for president at the board's meeting Jan. 9. After 10 3-3 votes, board clerk Sheila Furley tossed the coin, and it favored Blaesi.
​A second coin flip was needed later in the meeting after Jo Ann Lundgreen and Emily Garrick tied 10 times for secretary.
Lundgreen won the toss.
Blaesi said she's not sure flipping a coin is the most professional way to settle tie votes, and some people have suggested the board revisit the policy.
"But now, hearing that other boards are taking a very long time, I'm thinking, well, thank goodness we only had to go 10, because we could have been there for a long time."
When it was adopted in 2020, the policy seemed like a good way to ensure a definite end to the voting so it wouldn't drag on all night, she said.
Some school board elections in Nebraska have gone all night. In 2017, the Omaha Public Schools board took two weeks and more than 125 rounds of voting before it finalized its positions.
The Millard school board members took 55 rounds to elect Mike Kennedy as board president in 2016.
On Jan. 5, Kirk Penner was elected vice president of the Nebraska State Board of Education in the 11th round.Â
School districts don't usually have any relief, like a coin toss, when it comes to deadlocks during elections. Members normally have to go through rounds of voting until at least one member changes their mind.
During Bennington's first election meeting Jan. 9, Allyson Slobotski and Tim Dreessen were deadlocked with a 3-3 vote. The two candidates still had three votes apiece after 25 rounds of voting by secret ballot.
Board members asked Aldridge several times whether there are any alternative solutions, such as having two co-presidents instead of one president. There wasn't, at least not in Bennington board policies.
Aldridge recommended that the board continue elections until a candidate received the majority, which would be four votes.Â
"This is the hurdle we have to get over. All we’re doing is kicking the can down the road," he said when a board member asked whether they could table the election.
The voting continued to have the same results until the 26th round, when members decided to suspend the elections to allow public comment to proceed. The meeting was then tabled to Jan. 16.
Slobotski was elected as president after receiving the majority in the second round of voting Jan. 16.
In North Platte, Blaesi said that once a deadlock became apparent she would have preferred pausing the balloting and letting the nominees explain why they were a good fit for the office.
"Go to five, and if it looks like you're digging in your heels, then maybe do some campaigning," she said. "Two minutes each. It doesn't even have to be two minutes. Just say your piece. Why do you want this position?"
The North Platte coin flips, of course, weren't missed by some local jokers online.
Said one person on social media: "I heard that the next time they need a superintendent, they’ll narrow it down to two candidates who will then play a fifteen-round match of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who gets the job."