In a Times Union article about picking the new superintendent, Fel Lee, vice chairman of the School Board, said the board having to deal with the state’s Sunshine Law will have a greater impact on the superintendent candidate pool than the election because some candidates may not want their names to be made public early in the process.
The sunshine laws? That’s the problem? Well I guess I can understand that, the school board has had a problem with those for a while now.
When they discussed firing the superintendent they did so at a meeting called, quarterly goals update, when they did fire the superintendent four days later the meeting was called, continuing quarterly goals update. Notice no mention of firing the superintendent.
You won’t find mention of that in the notes either.
In a previous Times Union article, Barbara Petersen, president of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, an open government advocacy group, said the board at a minimum ran afoul of the spirit of the law and possibly violated it.
“If they are saying that during that meeting we all agreed that we are not going to renew the superintendent’s contract, then there should at least be some mention of that in the minutes,” Petersen said. “It doesn’t have to be a verbatim transcript, it doesn’t have to be an audio recording, but it has to be an accurate reflection of what occurred.”
I actually like Fel Lee, as far as I can tell he is the only school board member worth his salt, but I find it at best ironic that he mentions the sunshine laws as an impediment to finding a new superintendent.
No comments:
Post a Comment