The Atlantic City school board will hold a special meeting Thursday to prepare for hiring a new assistant superintendent.
The meeting comes a week after current assistant Sherry Yahn announced she would be leaving effective June 30.
A posting on the district's website alerts visitors to the meeting, but does say what it will entail. There also was no public agenda posted within 24 hours of the meeting.
But an ad did say that the purpose of the meeting is "to invoke the Doctrine of necessity in preparation of the hiring of an Assistant Superintendent of Schools and approve the job description."
Yahn is leaving the position at the end of the school year. That comes after an anonymous 24-page packet alleging "unethical and criminal actions" by Yahn.
The packet obtained by BreakingAC claims that Yahn's certification only allows her to oversee curriculum and instruction, and that she only has a supervisor certifcate.
"She has been basically running the district for year without having adequate credentials," the unknown writer claims, noting that to run day-to-day operations, she would need certification as a chief school administrator.
"In the case of an emergency where the Superintendent of Schools is out for any reason, Yahn cannot step in to fill that position, which leaves the board and the district in a vulnerable state with no coverage," it reads.
Yahn's inability to step in as superintendent became public during a meeting last year, when the board voted to extend the outgoing superintendent, Barry Caldwell.
Caldwell was supposed to retire Barry Caldwell was set to retire last June, but an abrupt halt to the search for his replacement left the district with an emergent vacancy.
State-appointed fiscal monitor Carole Morris confirmed at that time that there was no one in the district who could step in as acting superintendent, including Yahn.
As a result, Caldwell was given a raise of more than 12 percent to stay on in the position until a new superintendent was chosen.
Many said that the search was restarted because La'Quetta Small had missed the deadline. That allegation was denied, although Small was eventually chosen by the committee.
That committee was chosen by Board of Education President Shay Steele, who was not allowed to be involved in the search due to conflicts of both his wife and father working for the district.
The Doctrine of Necessity was also invoked for those votes. It specifically allows conflicted members only to participate in that vote but no other aspect. Steele, the board solicitor, the state monitor, the state Department of Education and county superintendent have all failed to respond to questions about that ethics violation.
The board will invoke the doctrine again during Thursday special meeting. While the statute on the doctrine says it's something that is only used sparingly, Atlantic City has invoked it about a half-dozen times in the past year.
Neither Yahn, Small, Steele, Morris nor solicitor Tracy Riley would answer questions about the allegations against Yahn or the special meeting.
