Schools

Superintendent, School Committee Respond to Open Meeting Law Complaint

Decision from Attorney General's office determines March 1 open session minutes were "sufficiently detailed," but the March 1 executive session minutes were not.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office recently weighed in on an open meeting law complaint against the Stoughton School Committee for “failing to create and maintain accurate minutes” of its open session and executive session meetings on March 1, 2011, stating that the School Committee’s open session minutes from that date were “sufficiently detailed,” but the executive session minutes were not.

Former School Committee member Dr. Erdem Ural filed the original complaint. Dr. Ural lost his bid for reelection in and is on the School Committee in the April 2012 town election.  

Superintendent of Schools Dr. Marguerite Rizzi and the Stoughton School Committee discussed this decision at the January 10, 2012 School Committee meeting.

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Dr. Rizzi said the finding “clearly states” there was no problem with the open session minutes from March 1. As for the executive session minutes, she said it was a matter of adding more detail—including more than just the votes taken, but at the same time not drafting a verbatim transcript.  

At Tuesday’s meeting, School Committee member Allan Mills said he “finds it troublesome that we have to deal with this.”

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Fellow member Tom Colburn said this was “not done intentionally.”

According to the decision from the Attorney General’s office, the final approved minutes [for both the open and executive sessions on March 1] “do not include language suggested by Dr. Ural, which he believed more clearly reflected his comments on a number of matters.”

The decision from the Attorney General’s office states:

Although the Committee did not include certain comments from Dr. Ural in the final version of its March 1, 2011 open session minutes, we believe the Committee substantially complied with the requirement that it provide an accurate and sufficiently detailed summary of the discussion.

The minutes may not cover every remark and opinion presented at the meeting, but the Committee provided what the law requires.

We encourage public bodies to include dissenting or minority opinions, particularly when a request is made to include remarks in the minutes. However, the content of meeting minutes is left to the discretion of the public body so long as it substantially complies with the requirement that the minutes be accurate and provides a summary of the discussion of each topic.

After reviewing the Committee's executive session minutes, however, we find that the Committee did not include the minimum detail required by the law. The Committee entered executive session at 9:15 p.m. and adjourned at 10:40 p.m. The minutes contain a heading for "Contract Negotiations" followed by two brief sentences, and a heading for "Grievance" followed by three brief sentences.

For a discussion of at least two topics that lasted one hour and twenty-five minutes, the level of detail provided by the Committee is not sufficient. We are unable to determine whether Dr. Ural's 2 proposed edits to the minutes are accurate as the minutes are sparse and there is no recording of what occurred.

The School Committee has to draft and approve a new set of executive session minutes within 30-days of the decision, which was dated December 27, 2011.

This is the second opening meeting law complaint the School Committee has dealt with in recent months. Back in November 2011, the office of the Attorney General determined the Stoughton School Committee when members voted on a contract extension for Superintendent of Schools Dr. Marguerite Rizzi during an executive session.

The School Committee has since reaffirmed the Superintendent’s contract extension in an open meeting ().

With open meeting laws changing, Dr. Rizzi said that the School Committee would be taking open meeting law training in the near-future.

A copy of the Attorney General's Decision is posted in the media gallery.


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