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The Examiner U-46 News Feed

U-46 Committee holds policy update discussion


By Seth Hancock
  The Board of Education in School District U-46 is in the process of updating its policy under Section 2.201 in light of passage of House Bill 4630 as the board held a legislative committee meeting on Monday, Aug. 29.
  The board had a healthy, philosophical discussion about when and if closed session recordings should be made public. Board member Traci Ellis was not in attendance.
  The meeting opened with public comments as Wayne resident Rick Newton implored the board to “have the courage and integrity to follow the rule” rather than “follow the group think,” and Elgin resident Julie Schmidt said full transparency and unfettered access are important principles to follow and the board should be for “more transparency, not less transparency.”
  “It’s certainly important to craft policy, but it’s just as important to adhere to it,” Newton said.
  Schmidt said she wanted all seven board members to have “unfettered” and “un-intimidated” access to closed session recordings.
  Last year, the board’s majority (Ellis, Sue Kerr, Veronica Noland and Donna Smith) changed Section 2.201 with a 4-3 vote of its policy to require a majority vote for access to closed session recordings after board member Jeanette Ward requested access to previous recordings shortly after being elected to her seat.
  HB4630 was passed unanimously by the state’s General Assembly, and signed into law by Gov. Bruce Rauner, to reaffirm all local elected officials’ right to access recordings without the dictates of the majority under the Open Meetings Act (OMA).
  The sponsor of HB4630, Rep. Jeannie Ives, came to a U-46 board meeting in June and said lawmakers were “very concerned to hear that duly elected officials throughout Illinois were denied to simple access to closed session minutes and recordings.”
  Because of the board majority’s misinterpretation of the OMA, its policy needs to be changed again and the board discussed what, if any, closed session meetings should be made public.
  Ward opened by suggesting that after the list of 14 subjects allowed to be discussed in closed session under Section 2.201, the policy should “just cite the law.”
  Noland, who co-chaired the meeting with Ward, said: “I have some concerns just with some of the interpretation of it, and I would love for us to clarify that. I feel that the law the way it is written right now has some room for improvement just for clarity.”
  Noland said “I think our staff may be confused” about some of the interpretations and wanted to know what the end result would be with what would happen to recordings. She said there are written minutes that need approval, and after those minutes are approved she feels recordings should be destroyed.
  Ward said: “For me it’s not about keeping them so much as being more transparent to the public.”
  The board should “err on the side of releasing it instead of on the side of destroying it,” said Ward. “What is in this meeting that we discussed that the public doesn’t have a right to know?”
  The written minutes are “a very short summary” sometimes not capturing “the meat” of the discussion according to Ward.
  Noland said she’s for transparency, but “it could change the culture of closed session meetings” and inhibit open discussions in those meetings.
  Board member Phil Costello said the public should know “how do we get things done here” and said that when he was on the other side of the desk he often didn’t know where the board was coming from on certain votes.
  Smith, who admitted Ward was right that the written minutes are vague, said “we do have to approve the minutes” and that making those minutes more accurate should suffice.
  “Well, I’d like to see both done,” Ward responded referring to making the minutes accurate and releasing recordings to the public that no longer need confidentiality.
  “I don’t disagree with transparency… I don’t have anything to hide,” said Smith, but she didn’t know how “this whole thing plays out” with who decides what can be made public. Smith, the board’s president, has been on the board since 2001.
  Costello said the committee meeting should be used to “narrow down” what can and cannot be made public, and both he and Ward said board self-evaluations would be a good start on what can be released. Board self-evaluation was the subject of the Jan. 25, 2014 meeting that the public was denied access to by the majority after a 4-3 vote on Aug. 15.
  “I think those would be less prone” to needing confidentiality Ward said.
  Smith, ignoring that Ward wanted that to be in the policy, said: “We’re not here to decide if we’re going to make things public or not. We’re here about a policy about what we want.”
  Ward noted that the OMA does allow for releasing closed session tapes to the public which led to a debate of whether or not it’s required. The OMA, under Section 2.06 and subsections d and e, does clarify a process that board’s must decide if confidentiality is still needed or not before destruction.
  Miguel Rodriguez, the district’s chief legal counsel, said releasing tapes to the public is not required but reviewing minutes is.
  “Just because it doesn’t require us to release the recordings to the public doesn’t mean it’s not good public policy,” Ward said.
  Costello suggested the board discuss at the conclusion of each closed session meeting what possibly needs to remain confidential and what the public should hear which Ward agreed to. Noland said “in practice” that was a good idea but didn’t know if that should be policy.
  “I would think that we would always err on the side of full disclosure,” Costello said.
  Board member Cody Holt added: “What it comes down for me is what is being discussed in closed session? It is public business”
  Smith said that minutes should be more detailed “the majority of things that we discuss in closed session are never ever going to be released” and she couldn’t think of a reason why they should be. Holt disagreed and said: “I think there’s probably more things that need to be released.”
  Costello confirmed with Rodriguez that the practice has always been to just say confidentiality is needed before voting for destruction, and he said the public deserves more justification.
  Regarding Noland’s statement that board members may not freely discuss issues in closed session if they know it will be made public, The Examiner asked if that implies the public meetings are just a show leaving the public without understanding of where their elected officials are coming from.
  “I feel like [the public is] starting to see more of them in the open session,” Noland said, but she was referring to staff evaluations as well as the “interpersonal relationships and things you would not want to discuss openly” during board self-evaluations.
  Considering the public elects board members and those board members make decisions on how their tax dollars are spent, shouldn’t the public hear how the board works together on interpersonal relationships?
  “I don’t actually think so,” Noland said. “You’ll see, hear at the public what the relationships are in the meeting. That self-evaluation is when you work on improvement, and I don’t think that needs to be public. It doesn’t help to make that public because that’s where you deal with the most basic, or whatever what’s bugging you the most or whatever you’re the happiest with.”
  Noland said those meetings can sometimes get emotional and making them public “there would be no improvement, and I want improvement” and that the self-evaluation is “for the seven of us.” 
  The OMA does not require local bodies to have any closed session meetings. Under Section 2a it states: “Nothing in this Section or this Act shall be construed to require that any meeting be closed to the public.”

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