Complaint: Board violated open meetings law
The parent of a Howard County public school student filed a formal complaint Friday that the Howard County Board of Education violated the Maryland Open Meetings Act during its controversial vote on school redistricting Thursday night.
After one of the 55 motions made during the board’s meeting failed by a 3-4 margin to move students in a certain neighborhood to a different school, school board members moved to enter into a closed discussion, and returned to vote again on the failed motion in open session. One board member reversed her vote to support the motion, and it passed.
The parent, Barbara Krupiarz, wrote in her complaint to the Maryland Open Meetings Compliance Board that school board members “had a large number of work sessions to deliberate on these matters.”
To “secretly discuss a failed vote after months of public meetings is clearly a violation of the Open Meetings Act and a significant deterioration of the public trust,” Krupiarz wrote.
The compliance board, a governorappointed panel that functions under the Maryland Office of the Attorney General, issues opinions on potential violations to the state’s open meetings law, but has no authority to issue sanctions.
“Reconsidering a vote in private session, without a specific reference to an exception [in the state sunshine law] seems to be a clear violation,” said Chuck Tobin, co-chair of Ballard Spahr’s Media and Entertainment Law Group, a national law firm that specializes in First Amendment litigation.
Thursday’s meeting marked the end to a redistricting process in Howard County that will move more than 5,400 students to different schools in an effort to balance socioeconomic levels and address capacity issues in the school system.
Krupiarz’s complaint alleges the violation occurred after a motion to move certain neighborhoods from Clemens Crossing Elementary School in Columbia to Bryant Woods Elementary School nearly 3 miles away failed by a 4-3 margin, with Vice Chairwoman Kirsten Coombs casting the deciding vote.
Board member Jennifer Mallo then moved the board “go into recess to consider the impacts of the failure of that last motion,” she said Thursday.
When board members reconvened, a vote to repropose the relocation passed; Coombs tearfully said the board must vote again “because otherwise the entire plan falls apart.”
The subsequent motion to approve the neighborhood’s redistricting passed.
“To say that they are reconsidering the impact of one board member’s vote is an admission that what they were doing is exactly what the open meetings act forbids,” Tobin said. “I think the public got shut out of a very important discussion.”
Maryland’s sunshine law ensures public access to the proceedings of public bodies, with certain exceptions related to judicial functions and legal advice; property acquisition; personnel matters; investing public funds; and public security, among others.