Christopher Peak Photo
Goldson: “Mixed message.”
The state Freedom of Information Commission has again found that the New Haven Board of Education violated open meeting laws.
In two separate decisions, the FOIC ruled that the BOE illegally held by email a meeting about a Creed High School student’s suspension and illegally went into executive session last year to discuss firing part-time employees.
The commission also found that the Board of Ed illegally hatched a plan via email to order the superintendent to rescind firing notices to those employees.
Read the decisions from the commission here and here.
Paula S. Pearlman, a staff attorney who served as hearing officer, drew those conclusions in response to a July 19, 2018 complaint filed against the BOE by New Haven Independent reporter Christopher Peak.
The meetings in question took place in May 2018 and June 2018.
The first illegal meeting took place over phone and email about the suspended Creed student.
Peak found out about the meeting after making a public records request. From those records, Peak discovered that board members had voted by email and phone in favor of staying a decision to suspend a Creed student and allowing her to attend prom. They also voted by email to hold a formal hearing for the student after the prom.
In his complaint to the commission, Peak called the May meeting a “secret meeting … which was not properly noticed and recorded.” The board in its response to the complaint argued that because it was a meeting of its Democratic members, it could be excluded from the open meeting requirements for the FOI Act. The board is made up of seven members: five Democrats and two unaffiliated members.
It turns out that of the five board members who participated in that meeting, only three were Democrats; the other two members are unaffiliated.
The second illegal meeting involved board members going into executive session to discuss laying off 1,100 part-time school employees and at least one other matter, though they only vaguely told the public that they were going to meet in private “to discuss personnel and contractual issues.” The board admitted that its reason for going into the executive session that day was insufficient and that the employees that were going to receive notices “were not notified of the Board’s intention to discuss their employment or layoffs,” Pearlman wrote.
“It is found that the agenda for the June 25th meeting did not reasonably apprise the public of the business to be transacted in the executive session at issue,” Pearlman wrote. “It is also found that prior to entering into executive session, the Board failed to identify with sufficient particularity the business to be transacted during the executive session.
“It is further found that the respondents did not enter into executive session for a purpose permitted,” under the statue, Pearlman concluded.
Pearlman further found that the board violated the law in the lead-up to a July 2 press conference (in video) where six board members, including Board President Darnell Goldson and Mayor Toni Harp, directed Superintendent Carol Birks to rescind layoff notices to part-time employees. (Birks did not attend the press conference.) The commission did not find that the press conference, in and of itself, violated the open meetings law.
In each matter, Peak suggested a remedy for the violations. For the first, he asked the commission to “require the board members to publish all email communication[s] between themselves from May 18, 2018, to the hearing date;” and order the board “to strictly follow the law and educate themselves on the Freedom of Information Act’s requirements; and impose civil penalties against the board. In the second case, he asked the commission to “order minutes to be filed for the June 22nd executive session with the same degree of detail about what transpired as would have been revealed by holding the session in public;” “order the board to strictly comply with the requirements of state law; “order the board to stop holding illegal meetings by email;” and impose civil penalties against the board.
In both cases, the commission declined to impose those additional remedies. Instead, the commission rapped the board on the wrist and ordered: “Henceforth, the respondents shall fully comply with the meetings provisions set forth” in the general statue.
Goldson: We’ve Stepped Up
BOE President Goldson called the commission’s decisions “a mixed message.”
“I found it significant that the commission agreed with us that press conferences are not considered board meetings,” he stated in an email. “Additionally, although the commission staff partially agreed with the plaintiff that the email discussions between board members before the press conference and regarding the student suspension were unauthorized meetings or communications, it refused to impose sanctions on the board.”
“It should be noted these occurrences occurred before the board and staff participated in FOI training sessions, and since I have frequently been in contact with the FOI commission staff with inquiries and confer regularly with our legal counsel,” Goldson added.
He said that in an effort to make sure the board is being transparent, he has made a point to be careful about when the board goes into executive session and asked city attorneys to provide more public information about when the board elects to meet behind closed doors. He said the board also has updated its bylaws and both BOE members and public school staffers have since undergone FOI training.
“We even confer with reporters to make sure they are comfortable with our decisions related to reporting,” he said. Goldson added that he continues to remind board members of the limits of their communications.