The state’s open public meeting law isn’t that difficult to understand, it really isn’t.
That’s because exceptions to the law — the times when government bodies at any level can close a meeting to the public — are very few.
Exceptions include discussions of litigation, real estate purchases and personnel matters, such as salary issues and disciplinary action.
Discussing “personnel matters” is not supposed to be code for talking about things in private that government bodies would rather not talk about in public.
So we trust that when Everett School Board and district officials meet with the state Attorney General’s Office to get advice on its closed-door meeting practices, they will be set straight.
The Everett School Board cannot, as new school board member Jessica Olson informed them, close a meeting to the public to listen to a staff presentation about high school student test scores.
Even if members say they were connecting the test results to a performance review of brand-new Superintendent Gary Cohn.
(Not helping that unconvincing argument is the fact that Cohn’s performance was not, in fact, discussed, Olson said.)
(Solution: Release the test scores first, then evaluate Cohn.)
The board was told to keep the test scores confidential, Olson said.
After being challenged by The Herald on the legality of reviewing test scores outside of public view, the district released the preliminary results.
Olson was the only school board member to question the closed-door meeting, which is extremely disappointing since secrecy was a much-discussed topic during the last school board election, and in Cohn’s own hiring.
The superintendent said he’s convinced the district did nothing wrong.
“This is my first year,” Cohn said. “These are the first set of indicators of how we’re doing, and I wanted the board members to be able to talk with me about how I’m doing.”
Include “parents, teachers and taxpayers” along with “board members” and Cohn would be right.
The school board is not supposed to be a public-relations clearinghouse.
Board Vice President Kristie Dutton also said no wrongdoing occurred.
“We’ve been to multiple trainings at the state and national level regarding this topic and regarding meeting management,” she said. “We have a lot of experience doing this.”
Apparently they do, which is worrisome.
Thanks to Olson, however, the public is also now aware of this practice.
In the future, when faced with a decision about whether to close a meeting, the superintendent and the school board might just want to pretend there is a camera hidden in the ceiling, and that the public is watching.
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