Our state’s extremely important two open government laws, the Freedom of Information Law and the Open Meetings Law, were enacted by state legislatures about two generations ago, over powerful objections raised at that time by our teachers’ unions and our school administrators’ associations.
The unions and the associations finally allowed the laws to be passed, but only if they contained certain deficiencies. One of the most glaring deficiencies of both laws is that under each, no kind of a meaningful penalty can be imposed on a public body, which includes school districts, for not following the law.
As a result, school districts, including our own Port Washington School District, constantly ignore certain aspects of both laws, with a smile. I’ve detailed this unfortunate situation in a message titled, “A Giant Is Gone (Part 2)”, which I hope is scheduled to be published in “The Port Washington Times”, in the not too distant future.
The Freedom of Information Law “reaffirms your right to know how your government operates. It provides (for) rights of access to records reflective of government decisions and policies that affect the lives of every New Yorker (and every school district resident).” The Open Meetings Law “gives the public the right to attend meetings of public bodies ( like our school district), listen to the debates (of those bodies) ( by our school district’s BOE) and to watch the decision making process in action.”
In this message, I want to focus only on “minutes” of meetings. The Open Meetings Law requires that minutes of both open meetings and executive sessions must be compiled and made available to the public, within two weeks of an open meeting and within one week of an executive session, if any action is taken at that executive session.
The law also states that if minutes have been prepared, but have not yet been approved of, they may be marked “draft”, “unapproved” or “non-final”, when they are disclosed to the public (within, of course, the required time frame just mentioned).
The Freedom of Information Law requires that a voting record must be compiled that identifies how individual members (e.g. of our BOE) voted in every instance in which a vote is taken and if a vote is not unanimous, then the compilation must identify who voted in favor of and who voted against the action.
Our Port board of education held four illegal executive sessions during the latter part of this past June. “ A Giant Is Gone (Part 2)” explains why the sessions were illegal.
The sessions were held on June 17th, 18th, 24th and the 26th. We are now in mid-September. If you will go onto our school district’s website today, you will not find any minutes for those executive sessions.
Of course, those executive sessions were held while Karen Sloan was still president of our school board, so perhaps, we cannot fault our new board president, Nora Johnson, for the failure to provide our community with the required minutes of those sessions. However, since July 1st, when Mrs. Johnson took over the post of president, our Board of Education held executive sessions on July 1st and on Aug. 6th, and it held open meetings on July 1st, Aug. 6th, Aug. 13th and on Aug. 20th.
Again, if you will go onto our school district’s website today, you will not find minutes for any of the board’s July or August executive sessions or meetings. I can only account for our school board’s failure to provide our community with the minutes that are required by law, as a deliberate policy to ignore our community and also the law.
Since three members of our current school board are licensed attorneys in the state of New York, I am more than surprised that such a policy is condoned. Never mind the slap in the face to our community, what sort of an example is our school board setting for our children?
Our state’s education law requires that school districts must follow the state’s Freedom of Information Law and the state’s Open Meetings Law. In fact, education law actually repeats many of the requirements of those open government laws.
So, when our board of education chooses to ignore a requirement of either open government law, it is also ignoring a requirement of the state’s education law. If you should happen to attend the next Port board of education meeting, you might ask our board’s president why our school district is following this very unsettling practice.
Some school board member might argue that since the board’s open meetings are now live-streamed, that minutes of those meetings are no longer necessary. I would reject that argument by simply saying that a Port resident shouldn’t have to watch a video recording for two hours, in order to determine what the highlights were of a meeting, if the resident could actually determine highlights, when instead, reading prepared minutes for a minute or two, would do that for the resident.
Didn’t each of our school board members take an oath of office that included upholding the constitution of the United States and the laws of the State of New York?
Joel Katz
Port Washington
