See You In Court! CABE Monthly Column
“See You In Court!” is written by Thomas Mooney and appears in the CABE Journal, a publication of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education.
With the arrival of warm weather and longer days, the Nutmeg Board of Education has been in the “expulsion season” in recent weeks, that special time of the year when in the exuberance of spring some students push past the boundaries of acceptable behavior. Some members of the Nutmeg Board actually relish the opportunity to sit in on such hearings, because they are able thereby to get a look at the inner workings of the Nutmeg Public Schools. Veteran Board member Bob Bombast, however, was sick of sitting through lengthy expulsion hearings, and he decided to do something about it.
Bob Bombast started with the current Board policy on student discipline, which describes conduct for which students may be expelled as well as the related procedures for expulsion hearings. The procedures set forth in the Board policy in Nutmeg reflect statutory requirements, including the need for at least three affirmative votes for an expulsion vote to be effective. Bob relied on another provision in the expulsion statute, however, to propose that all expulsion hearings will be heard by a hearing officer selected by the Superintendent.
Given the affection some Board members in Nutmeg have for conducting expulsion hearings, Bob knew that he had some work to do convince his fellow Board members to go along with these changes. Rather than bring the proposed changes to the Board in a public meeting, Bob sent his edits to the Board policy to the other Board members in an email for their consideration. In his email, Bob warned his fellow Board members against replying “all” to avoid the Board’s inadvertently conducing an illegal, unposted meeting through email discussion among a quorum. However, he did invite Board members to call him individually so that they could discuss his suggested edits.
Bob’s email evoked quite a response from the Board members. Some called Bob to say that they agree that the Board members have better things to do than to sit through expulsion hearings. However, others claimed that personally sitting on expulsion hearings was an important responsibility that they should fulfill as Board members.
Through these conversations, Bob concluded that he would not be able to gain Board consensus over email on the changes he was proposing to the student discipline policy, but he was still apprehensive about hashing this issue out at a public Board meeting. Then, inspiration struck. Bob labeled his edited version of the student discipline policy as a “DRAFT” so that the Board could discuss his edits to the Board’s student discipline policy in executive session. At Bob’s request, therefore, one of the agenda items for the May Board meeting was “Discussion of Draft Board Policy (discussion proposed for executive session).”
When the Board reached that agenda item at the meeting last evening, Nancy Newshound, ace reporter for the Nutmeg Bugle, stood up and shouted “Point of Order!” When Ms. Chairperson recognized Nancy, she claimed that the Board could not convene into executive session to discuss a Board policy, draft or not. But Bob was prepared.
“Nancy should read the Freedom of Information Act!” Bob responded. “Connecticut General Statutes Section 1-200(6) defines executive session as including “discussion of any matter which would result in the disclosure of public records or the information contained therein described in subsection (b) of section 1-210,” and Section 1-210(b) includes “Preliminary drafts or notes” in the list of records that may be kept confidential.
Did Bob’s response appropriately address the concern about executive session?
