The Highland Park Board of Education is being sued by one of its own members for violating the state's Open Meetings Act after a telephone vote was taken to approve a $150-a-month stipend for the board president, retroactive 38 months.

School board member Robert Davis, who filed the lawsuit on Thursday, said the $5,700 paid to board President Jamille Edwards doesn't make sense because the district is running a $3-million budget shortfall.

"This is an outright robbery from the treasury of the Highland Park school district," Davis said. "Here we are faced with a daunting deficit and here you have a person on the board trying to receive close to $6,000 from the students' budget."

Edwards requested the $150-a-month stipend to cover her cell phone, mileage and other costs in a letter to Superintendent Arthur Carter.

"Due to the responsibilities of the president, it is my belief that the officeholder should be entitled to an additional expenses reimbursement due to the demands of this office, which frequently require travel, sometimes lengthy phone calls and conferencing," Edwards wrote.

Morris Garraway, executive assistant for the board, took a telephone poll Aug. 19 to gauge board members' opinion on the monthly stipend.

Of the six board members, one did not return a call to Garraway, one asked for more information and declined to vote, and four voted yes, including Edwards and Davis, according to the call log. Davis, however, disputes the call log and says in his lawsuit that he did not vote to approve the stipend.

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