Board of Education plans private ‘retreats’

The Board of Education plans to hold at least five private meetings, which it calls “retreats,” during the 2017-18 school year.

Previous such meetings have been criticized by the head of the state Committee on Open Government.

Topics to be discussed at the 2017-18 “retreats” include making sense of student achievement data, lowering or eliminating suspensions, using restorative justice, creating a mental health curriculum and establishing strategies to combat cyber bullying. The board also plans to conduct a self-evaluation and review the superintendent’s evaluation.

“We will have at least five” such meetings, board President Nora Scherer said.

The board, in written goals for the coming year, said it will schedule “retreats during 2017-2018 to build on our effectiveness as a governing body for our school community.”

Scherer defended the closeddoor sessions as preliminary discussions during which the board will not make any decisions.

“We’re talking about being a better team,” she said.

Robert Freeman, executive director of the state Committee on Open Government, has said previously that the board meeting in private to conduct a self-evaluation violates the state Open Meetings Law.

The only issue among the several that can be discuss privately is the superintendent’s evaluation, but that would need to be in an executive session and not under the guise of team building, Freeman said.

“It’s almost like discussing the establishment of rules to govern their meetings,” he said. “If that’s what they’re doing, it seems to me that is a meeting covered by the Open Meetings Law.”

Freeman said there seems to be a misunderstanding of how the state Open Meetings Law applies to the training of board members.

“If the subject matter involves the steps that a board might take in relation to a particular issue or controversy or policy, I think that’s completely different, and I think that would constitute a meeting covered by the law,” he said.