Two epic marketing failures might help justify the newly seated Butler School Board’s vote to reverse the sale of the Broad Street School until they review the consolidation of Butler School District.

In 2006, Ford Motors dumped the Taurus, one of Ford’s best-selling models for 20 years. The move baffled Alan Mullaly when he became Ford’s CEO that same year. Mullaly ordered the Taurus brand’s return in 2007. Ford has sold nearly 600,000 of them since.

In 1985, Coca Cola changed its formula. Executives feared they were losing market share to their slightly sweeter rival, Pepsi. But New Coke was a dismal failure. Consumers wanted nothing to do with it. The company quickly reverted to its original 100-year-old recipe.

You can’t fault either company’s effort to improve a product, or to backpedal when consumers object. As one long-forgotten executive trainer once said, Whatever’s worth trying, is worth evaluating.

That’s where the new school board fits into the picture. Evaluation was on the minds of new members Leland Clark, Jennifer Cummings, Suzie Hammonds-Bradrick and Nina Teff, who voted with John Conrad and Bill Halle to reverse last month’s vote to sell Broad Street Elementary to Arc of Butler County for $475,007.

The new board wants an update on the district’s six-months-old consolidation. That plan closed five of 11 elementary schools, inlcuding Broad Street, and converted one of them, Center Avenue, into an alternative and special needs school.

While nobody seems opposed to consolidation, there’s a strong rift regarding how to achieve it. Some of the new members backed a plan that would place grades K-6 in elementary buildings, leaving grades 7-8 in the middle school, while incumbent board members opted for grades K-4 in the elementary schools, 5-6 in the middle school, 7-9 in the intermediate high school and 10-12 in the senior high.

The rift deepened after the May primary when voters swept the challengers into office and unseated the incumbents who had adopted the plan.

Many events put into motion last May have reshaped Butler’s consolidation issue. We can’t go back six months and start over — and some options available back then won’t work as easily now.

But what happens next is crucial: The new board’s reputation will rest on the way they choose to conduct their evaluation of the consolidation’s first six months.

There’s much to discuss and consider, but the sooner they complete this task, the better.

Board member Al Vavro, a holdover from the previous board, indicated he would like to serve on the newly forming committee that will review the consolidation. It would be a good idea for Nina Teff, the new board president, to appoint Vavro since he offers insight into the intent of any details in the original plan.

Clearly now a member of the board’s minority opinion on the consolidation, Vavro should have every right to explain and defend the strategy that’s been unfolding since May, and it’s incumbent on the rest of the board to hear him out.