In what is becoming a very public game of Gotcha, the Board of Education for the Public Schools of Robeson County on Tuesday night lost a 15-year member, a career educator, and someone who brought a special expertise, perspective and grace to a board that is short on all three.

Loistine DeFreece handled her ejection from the board in the midst of a meeting and a full house with dignity, but also fired a shot over the bow on her way out, promising she would seek election again, but as an at-large member.

DeFreece had to go because she has lived outside of District 1, whose voters have elected her four times, since soon after Hurricane Matthew, when her longtime South Lumberton home was damaged beyond repair. The night of her exit from the board was actually the three-year anniversary of Matthew’s unwelcome visit, but it wasn’t really coincidentally, coming on the day that about half of the board had planned to dismiss Superintendent Shanita Wooten.

About half, which isn’t enough for an 11-member board. DeFreece’s vote, we are convinced, was necessary to oust Wooten, and we aren’t sure that it would have been enough.

So why, after almost three years, now?

DeFreece took the microphone to announce her resignation soon after Gerome Chavis, the face of the We the People movement, spoke to the board members, telling them what they already knew, that DeFreece lived outside of District 1, she was registered to vote and had done so elsewhere, and the board’s own policy prevented her from representing a district she doesn’t live in.

Chavis was there because he knew that DeFreece’s vote would be critical if Wooten were to be removed — and he has a leading role in her tenuous position as the superintendent. Chavis doesn’t deny being at a meeting with Wooten; Lacy Cummings, who has run before and will again for county commissioners; and Patrick Dial, a former cafeteria manager for the public schools, during a meeting at Chavis’ house in May.

What is in dispute is what prompted the meeting, and what was said. Dial has told this newspaper that he was asked to attend, offered a high-paying job in the system, but there was a quid pro quo — that he was to stay out of Cummings’ run for commissioner, and that his wife, Faline, a county commissioner, was to vote as instructed.

Dial maintains he said no to all that — and made clear his wife’s vote is hers, not his.

Chavis, not in a direct conversation with this newspaper but by a Facebook video, says Dial prompted the meeting because he believed his job security was in doubt, and pretty much disputes the rest of Dial’s story.

Believe whom you will.

But we are comfortable in saying this: Wooten should not have been at Chavis’ house with a county commissioner candidate talking personnel. Period.

That is why her future as superintendent of the local school system hangs by as much as a single seat— and it matters not that such shenanigans are standard fare in Robeson County when key jobs are often awarded not on aptitude but on reciprocation.

Wooten simply has to be above that.

So now we will be entertained as we watch the process to replace DeFreece on the board, knowing that the remaining 10 board members, who are split right down the middle, will be looking to find someone who falls on what they determine to be the right side of the Wooten tug-a-war.

It is a tangled web indeed. Funny, except it isn’t.

Notice that not once in this editorial regarding the Board of Education and the administration of the county schools did we mention what is best for the students. We just can’t figure out where they fit in to all this.