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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 required by state law to make an appointment within 30 days. If the deadline is not met, the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency’s board will be required to fill the seat.
The DPSCD board voted Tuesday night to interview two candidates for the seat – the person they select will serve through the end of 2026. To streamline the process, the board chose to interview the runner up from the 2024 election, Sherisse Butler, as well as the next highest scoring applicant from the process to make two appointments in 2025. That person’s name has not been made public, and the board didn’t mention Butler’s name during the meeting.
The board will score the two on written responses and interviews. A third-party law firm will tally the scores and then the board will vote on the appointment of the person with the highest score.
LaTrice McClendon, chair of the board, said at Tuesday’s meeting neither of the applicants are running in the November election.
Board members Steve Bland Jr. and Bessie Harris were chosen by the board to fill last year’s open seats. They are both running in November.
McClendon suggested the interviews to fill the current opening because Bland and Harris were not on the board to participate during the previous process.
Although the board did not name Butler as one of the potential applicants Tuesday, she was the fourth highest vote-getter in the 2024 election, after board members Monique Bryant and Ida Simmons Short, as well as former board member Sherry Gay-Dagnogo.
Butler was senior vice president and executive director of City Year Detroit, a nonprofit that DPSCD contracts with to provide tutoring and mentoring to students. She said in an email Thursday that she left the position earlier this month.
Butler didn’t respond to questions about whether she would interview for the board seat.
Butler also applied to fill a vacant seat on the board last year but withdrew her application before the selection process was complete.
The dates of the upcoming interviews have not yet been publicly posted.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.
Aug. 13, 2026: This story was updated to say Butler recently left her position at City Year.
