Colorado School Board Ordered to Release Closed-Door Meeting Records

Former technology director Harriett White won a victory on several of her claims in a lawsuit against her former employer, the Brush School District in Colorado. A district court judge has ordered the school board to release complete or partial records from 11 closed-door meetings conducted in violation of the Colorado Open Meetings Law. The lawsuit touches on nearly every executive session held by the school board during 2009.

Get the details here.

Iowa Senate Approves Subjecting Non-Profit School Board to Open Meeting Laws

The Iowa Senate voted to make the Iowa Association of School Boards subject to state openness requirements, applying open meetings and open records laws to a privately run association.

The move comes as a nonprofit school board is alleged to have inflated salaries and engaged in other questionable practices.

Read more here.

School board reaches settlement in newspaper suit

The Steamboat Springs School Board in Colorado agreed to pay $50,000 of The Steamboat Pilot & Today's attorney fees after a lawsuit stemming from the board's violation of open meetings laws. The board will also have to release minutes from that executive session in which its “notice was deficient in failing to state that the executive session would concern the release of the survey results. In addition, the notice was deficient in not identifying that the ‘personnel matter’ was specifically the performance of the superintendent.”

The Steamboat Springs School Board formally accepted a lawsuit settlement offer from the Pilot & Today on Monday.

The settlement was tentatively approved by board members last month on the heels of a March ruling by the Colorado Court of Appeals that the previous School Board violated the state’s Open Meetings Law by not properly announcing the intention of its executive session at a Jan. 8, 2007, meeting. As a result of the ruling and settlement offer, the district will pay $50,000 of the newspaper’s attorney fees and release the transcripts from the illegal meeting.

The motion to accept the settlement offer was approved 4-1 on Monday, with a couple of board members expressing satisfaction that the lawsuit is now behind them. Board member John DeVincentis was the only dissenting vote, but he wasn’t the only one displeased with the outcome.

More here.

School travel expenses raise questions in Mich.

FOI at Work!
A Flint Journal review of Genesee County school system's receipts and expense records reveal that administrators and educators are staying at three- and four-star hotels while attending conferences in America's vacation meccas. An average of $16,000 was spent by the school districts in the past two and a half years to send school board members and superintendents on trips. Expenses charged to the district include $420 per night hotel accommodations and a $61 steak dinner (for one).

When local school leaders hit up resort hotels and dine in pricey restaurants, the tab adds up quickly -- and all at the taxpayers' expense.

A Flint Journal review of more than a thousand pages of receipts, check orders and expense forms revealed that the top brass in Genesee County's 22 public school districts have spent at least $365,000 on travel since July 2006.

For some districts, that figure includes airfare to vacation hot spots, fancy meals, car rentals and at least one alcoholic drink. It also includes board mileage reimbursement and fees for board certification classes at in-state conferences.

More here.

School board members fined for violating open-meetings law

School board members in Spirit Lake, Iowa, who violated the state's open-meetings law twice must now pay $400 each in fines, the Des Moines Register reported. The first violation occurred when members met in a hotel lobby in Des Moines. The second offense referred to an incident in which members discussed the district's finances in a private meeting that had been scheduled to discuss the hiring process for a new superintendent. Citizens are now calling for the resignation of the involved members.

A Dickinson County judge on Monday ordered Spirit Lake school board members to pay $400 each for breaking the state's open-meetings law twice.

Taxpayers who mounted a case against the elected officials now want them to resign.

Board members broke the law in November 2007 when they held a meeting in the lobby of a hotel in Des Moines, 200 miles from Spirit Lake, District Judge John Duffy ruled.

More here.

Miss. needs clarification on what agencies can charge for records

The Biloxi School Board told Keith Rogers it would cost $84 for copies of exhibits presented at a School Board meeting, the Fort Mills Times reported. That included the cost of research, even though the information was already available online to School Board members with a password. The governor told The Clarion-Ledger it would cost more than $14,000 for gubernatorial e-mails spanning four days. That included "$7,500 to hire private attorneys to review the e-mails for exempted material and $5,400 to bring in an out-of-town computer consultant."

Biloxi resident Keith Rogers thought he would be able to review and copy exhibits the School Board used to decide that an 52-year-old elementary school in his neighborhood will be turned into an alternative school next year.

"I thought I would get them because they are public records," Rogers said. "The secretary at first was very defensive about releasing them at all."

She eventually informed Rogers he could have the records for $3 a page. The school system's standard charge includes the cost of copies, research and time, even though in this case the records already had been assembled and were available on the Internet to board members who had passwords.

More here.

Fla. teacher union sues school board for closing meetings

Following Miami-Dade School Board's closed-door "executive session" to discuss the budget, United Teachers of Dade sued. The union is asking for the minutes from all the closed-door meetings the board has illegally held and for a court order voiding any actions taken that stem from these meetings.

United Teachers of Dade, Florida's largest teacher union, sued the Miami-Dade School Board Thursday for violating the state's Government in the Sunshine Law and demanded that all budget decisions be made in the open.

UTD's suit alleges that the board broke the law when they met January 30 in a closed-door "executive session" called by Superintendent Alberto Carvalho.

Under Florida law, the board is only allowed to discuss issues directly involving litigation or contract negotiations during executive sessions.

More here.

Transparency after a done deal does little good

The new Right-to-Know Law makes it only voluntarily for Pennsylvania school boards to disclose the terms of contract proposals before they are signed.

Pennsylvania taxpayers have a right to know what their respective school districts are doing -- before it's too late to do anything about it.

The commonwealth's new Right-to-Know Law should have ensured complete transparency. Unfortunately, it does not, according to Terry Mutchler, executive director of the new Office of Open Records.

The public has every right to demand accountability. It should never be forced to come to school boards, hat in hand, begging to be given information about the untold costs to taxpayers.

More here.

E-Mail Meetings In Colorado...

Two Louisville residents have lodged a formal complaint with the Boulder Valley school board alleging members violated the state’s open-meetings law by using e-mail to discuss public business in private.

On several occasions in the past year, three or more members of the seven-member school board exchanged e-mails discussing issues related to the demolition, reconstruction and proposed preservation of Louisville Middle School, according to documents disclosed through a request under the Colorado Open Records Act.

Ty Gee, an attorney and longtime community activist, and John Leary, a former Louisville councilman, have demanded the board “take remedial action” by creating a policy to ensure “a violation does not occur again.”

“The school board should have known about the Open Meetings Act,” said Gee, who, along with Leary, has opposed demolition of the middle school’s historic facade. “If you’re an elected official, there are certain basics.”

More here.

In Atlanta, Unrest Over Secret School Deals

This is an issue that resurfaces frequency, in which school districts and school board make multi-million land deals behind closed doors. In fact, the folks right here in Columbia, Mo., recently raised sufficient cain to get the school district to reverse a land deal and re-open the proceedings...

Gwinnett school board members have authorized spending about $40 million on land for six new schools in closed door meetings over the last year.

Discussion and votes — since July 2006 — took place during multiple executive sessions, meetings that are closed to the public. A move that some watchdog groups consider unfair to parents and others who want to be involved in the process.

But the practice is nothing new. Board members have voted on land purchases in secret for more than 30 years. They defend their actions as necessary to protect their negotiations so they can get the lowest price.

"We feel we are being extremely good stewards of the public's money," said Carole Boyce, board vice chairwoman. "Why do we need to change it if it works?"

Advocates for open government say the board makes it impossible for the public to know about the land until the deal is complete. That means Gwinnett parents have no say in where their children's schools should be built.

More here.