Detroit school board to fill vacant seat of late member Iris Taylor ahead of November election
The Detroit school board will begin interviewing applicants as early as next week to fill a seat left open after the recent death of member Iris Taylor. Though the seat will be up for grabs in the Nov. 3 election, the Detroit Public Schools Community District’s board is…
The Detroit school board aims to fill the vacant seat left by late member Iris Taylor ahead of the November election. The board plans to initiate interviews with potential candidates as early as next week, a requirement by state law. If the appointment is not made within 30 days, the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency’s board will be responsible for filling the position.
During their meeting on Tuesday, the DPSCD board voted to interview two applicants for the vacant seat. The selected individual will serve until the end of 2026. To expedite the process, the board opted to interview Sherisse Butler, the runner-up from the 2024 election, alongside the next highest-scoring applicant from the same process, whose name has not been disclosed yet.
The board will evaluate the two candidates based on their written responses and interviews. A third-party law firm will compile the scores, and the board will subsequently vote on the appointment of the candidate with the highest score. Neither of the applicants, Sherisse Butler and the unnamed individual, are running in the November election.
LaTrice McClendon, the chair of the board, mentioned that both applicants are not currently running in the upcoming election. Board members Steve Bland Jr. and Bessie Harris filled last year’s vacant seats and are both contesting the November election. LaTrice McClendon proposed the interviews to fill the current opening because Bland and Harris were not present on the board during the previous process.
Although the board did not explicitly name Sherisse Butler as one of the potential applicants during the meeting, she ranked fourth in the 2024 election, trailing only board members Monique Bryant, Ida Simmons Short, and former board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo. Butler is the senior vice president and executive director of City Year Detroit, a nonprofit organization contracted by DPSCD to provide tutoring and mentoring services to students.
She also submitted an application for the vacant seat last year but withdrew her application before the selection process concluded.
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