Dedrick Martin and Laura Lisiski should both tender their immediate resignations.

Ypsilanti Community Schools board president David Bates and the rest of the board pulled a fast one on the community this evening. After a rambling explanation of the plan to ask the Washtenaw Intermediate School District to provide an interim superintendent while the two current district bosses stay on for the remainder of their contracts, Bates led what he described as deliberation.

There was no actual deliberation among the members of the board, just a reiteration of the plan. The selection sub-committee had worked out the entire proposal falling last week’s meeting where they failed to make a decision. This meeting was nothing more than a rubber stamp of that plan.

One of the primary rationales for keeping Ypsilanti superintendent Dedrick Martin and Willow Run’s Laura Lisiski was that they would have to pay them anyway for the remainder of their contracts. Given that the all of the existing union contracts are being abrogated by the fact that the districts the contracts were made with will cease to exist at the end of the school year, to argue that the superintendents should be treated any differently is utterly asinine.

Nonetheless, if Martin and Lisiski actually cared about what was best for the district and its students, they would both resign and walk away, allowing the board to move forward with fresh blood in the leadership position without a massive payout that it cannot afford or a protracted legal battle.

Unfortunately, the cowardly actions of Mr. Bates and this board have left the new consolidated district in a very poor position to start this new era.