Transparency, or lack thereof.
Last weekend I filed a Freedom of Information Request via email to CHSD99′s Board of Education regarding their Closed Session that began the April 27th School Board meeting.
The Illinois Freedom of Information Act and the Illinois Attorney General’s office (which publishes guidelines for both the FOIA and for the Illinois Open Meeting Act) both say discussions of public policy, in this case the board’s Nepotism Policy, must be held in Open Sessions.
Sun, May 3, 2009 at 9:40 AM
To: D99-Board@csd99.orgCc: mmcdonald@csd99.orgMs. Julia BeckmanPresident, CHSD99 Board of EducationVia email5/3/09
Dear Ms. Beckman,
This is a request for public records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
Please make available for my inspection by May 10, 2009 the following public records:
The verbatim minutes of the CHSD99 Board of Education Closed Session meeting held April 27th, 2009 that specifically addresses discussion and possible decisions made regarding Board Policy 2.100 Nepotism.
Discussion in a closed meeting is limited to matters covered by the exception specified in the vote to close. There is no citation to discuss public board policy 2.100 Nepotism in Closed Session made in the April 27th, 2009 agenda. It is my understanding that part of this Closed Session discussed two employees. I do not wish to view that information, as personnel matters are fair subject for Closed Session, and are cited in the April 27th, 2009 agenda.
If for any reason you feel any information or record requested is exempt from public scrutiny, please provide that portion of this request not in dispute, specifically the discussion of public policy by the board that is required to be held in Open Session by the Illinois Open Meetings Act. For those employment portions that qualify as exempt, please redact the information. If you choose to deny this request, please provide a written explanation of its specific nature and the specific statutory authority under which you are withholding this request for verbatim minutes directly related to the discussion of public policy.
As this is a request to inspect public records, Illinois law allows no fees to be charged. In the event I need copies of the public records, I understand I can be charged only for the actual cost of the copies, and not for any staff time involved. As this request is made in my capacity as a taxpaying resident of CHSD99, the disclosure of these records is in the public interest and therefore I request a waiver of any copy fees.
Please feel free to contact me at this email address should you have any questions, problems or concerns regarding the scope or nature of this request. I am happy to discuss, hone or reasonably alter this request for expediency.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
Best regards,
Mark Thoman
markthoman@gmail.com
I copied the entire board as well as Dr. Mark McDonald, 99 Superintendent. On Monday I got a prompt and courteous reply from 99 Super McDonald that 99 accepts written requests via mail or in writing, so I printed it out and mailed it off Monday.
In Wednesday’s May 6th print edition of the Reporter/Progress newspaper, page 9 featured an uncredited opinion (generally meaning the paper’s Editorial Board approved it as a paper position) “D99 skirts around legal boundary”. They noticed the same thing I did, that Board President Beckman said they had discussed the Nepotism Policy in Closed Session, and concluded:
“Regardless, any talk of district policy cannot be cloaked under personnel issues. Board members violated the law, and they should give the details of their discussion.”
By law, they have up to 10 days to reply. I will be posting that reply here.
Mark,
Good for you. I was surprised as well when I read the nepotism remark.
If everything was reported correctly then such discussion in exec session was out of bounds.
I applaud the Reporter as well for catching it.
I should know this but I don’t. What would the penalty be for not disclosing the minutes of the nepotism discussion?
And secondly how could we prove such discussion actually happened?
I don’t know that there is any penalty. It appears IL AG Lisa Madigan has change in the works:
Here’s the url for the Board Policy on closed sessions: http://www.dg58.org/boe/policies_pdf/8022.pdf. From what I understand, an attorney was in the room for the closed session the entire time. I suggest that your conjecture is way off base, and the Board didn’t violate anything.
Just because the Reporter said something in an editorial, doesn’t make it true.
Perhaps you should stop with the conspiracy theories…it’s one thing to ask for clarification, but quite another to start accusing board members wholesale of breaking the law. Please remember that these are volunteers who serve our community, our children and the taxpayers. They don’t have personal agendas.
Or at least, no one on the board did until the last election.
This is a good example of what is called a straw man argument, and is something I specifically said I was not interested in hearing from trolls. You must not have read that post, and you certainly haven’t bothered to read, or at least understand, this one.
Ah, yes, the straw man argument. You know it well.
“Trolls” are what brings the traffic in. I know people in this village who come to this site just to read (and not post) what silly things will be posted next.
pragmatist,
You have posted a link to a Dist 58 policy. The Dist. 99 policy might be useful, and I would be interested in reading it, but the one you linked is not relevant. Do you have the 99 policy handy?
Sorry about that, I’d been comparing policies and copied the wrong link. Here is the 99 link: http://www.csd99.org/assets/1/boe_policies/2_200.pdf Here is the IL Act link: http://www.illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/government/open_meetings.html
Don’t appologize, Prag. You are just a Troll and you are not welcome on Thoman’s blog. Let’s just let Schoefield post.
The CHSD 99 BOE policy on Closed Session meetings is here, 2.200 Types of School Board Meetings.
The meeting minutes say:
Upon reconvening to Open Session:
This is not what was cited as the reason for going to Closed Session. Illinois Attorney General, Lisa Madigan, is very clear that exceptions to the OMA are strictly construed:
Mr. Faulkner, 99′s lawyer in attendance, can explain what that means to the board.
As to the rest, no secret made, please reread my first post, and the Comment Policy on the sidebar.
Mark-
With all due respect to your time and effort on behalf of Elaine’s muse, your agenda appears to be more ‘hall monitor’ than contributor.
If the bloggers, posters and assorted trolls who have faithfully been contributing here (for better or worse) bother you as much as they appear to, or don’t aspire to your lofty journalistic standards, then why not leave us to our own ignorance and focus on your own very worthy blog?
I second Meat’s observation along with a few other observers who only come here to view and not post.
I know several hundred residents who do not post here, but have gone out of their way to tell me confidentially that they agree completely with Mark Thoman’s last post. “It’s just a summary of the state law that pragmatist linked,” they say. “How could anyone possibly object? Let’s have more of that.”
Is Mark Thoman doing some other naughty thing we’re not aware of?
EJ stated in another post effectively that Mark Thoman does the public document research that few of us do and amen to that.. he is good at it and I enjoy the postings.
I too am interested in scanning his topics. Meat and others, it’s really easy to use your mouse and scroll down to the next EJ produced snippet.
Meat, please step up and submit more than one. You are a good witty writer.
Thank you Dgo. More musings from Meat are forthcoming, you can never have enough protein in a blog.
I have no issues with Mark’s posts. I just feel an inordinate amount of time was being spent flushing the Trolls for any comment regarded as slightly off topic then was remotely necessary.
Mark, maybe while you are investigation matters you would find out why it is taking so long for Hummer Park to be finished up where they installed the giant cell phone tower, er I mean flag pole. It is still a mess over there!
I enjoy Mr. Thoman’s posts and welcome him to this blog. He puts himself out there for what he thinks is right and he spends a great deal of time on researching his subjects. I respect that, whether I agree with him or not.
It’s too bad that there are a gaggle of haters out there in our village who’s sole mission is to beat Thoman down at every turn. It makes you wonder what they have to hide? Are they afraid that he is going to dish the dirt on their dirty deeds?
Apparently, Mark has finally created a puppet..
Appears to many of our readers that D99 operates in a vacuum from its consituents.
Poor engagement, tough FOIA follow on, inconsistent reasons for closed sessions. The topics may be endless.
What can be done to change this and how can DG Report readers help encourage the change? Our bet is that it takes too much time and effort for most to start to demand change and that most of us would be far more satisfied posting to a blog than doing anything about it.
Care for a challenge?
If the challenge is to remove Julia Beckman from the 99 board, I’m in! How do we do it?