York County School Board retreat canceled after open meetings law concerns raised
YORK COUNTY, Va. (WAVY) — A retreat for the York County School Board previously scheduled for Friday has been canceled.
It comes after concerns were raised by the board’s attorney and outside counsel that the meeting could violate open meeting requirements of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act and lead to potential litigation. It also comes amid heavy criticism of the right-wing School Board Member Alliance, which was scheduled to lead training at the retreat.
York County School Board Attorney Melanie Berry said one of the issues was a discrepancy between when the board agreed on a date for the retreat and when the meeting was officially announced to the public.
Berry pointed to subsection E of section § 2.2-3707 of the Virginia Freedom of Information Act code, which says “notice, reasonable under the circumstance, of special, emergency, or continued meetings shall be given contemporaneously with the notice provided to the members of the public body conducting the meeting.”
Berry said that because the board retreat was considered a special meeting, based on the FOIA code, that the meeting should’ve been announced back when school board members agreed on the date back in late March.
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“When they decide on a date, that’s when a notice is supposed to be posted,” Berry said.
Additionally, Berry noted that the agenda of the meeting was shared with the public days after it was shared with the board. Berry said Board Chair Lynda Fairman sent out the agenda for the retreat to all board members on Friday, May 3.
However, the school board office closed at 2:30 p.m. that Friday and the agenda wasn’t posted online on the district’s BoardDocs page until Monday, May 6.
That could also be found as a violation of FOIA law under under subsection G of § 2.2-3707, Berry said.
“At least one copy of the proposed agenda and all agenda packets and, unless exempt, all materials furnished to members of a public body for a meeting shall be made available for public inspection at the same time such documents are furnished to the members of the public body.”
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10 On Your Side spoke to Megan Rhyne, the director of Virginia Coalition for Open Government, for her perspective on the matter. She says the timing of the public notice of the retreat didn’t appear to be an issue, as it was made at least three work days ahead of time.
Though the timing with posting the agenda could be an issue.
“What FOIA says is whenever, you don’t even have to have an agenda, but if you have agenda you make it available to the public the same time the members have it.”
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Board member James Richardson said during Monday night’s work session that this is “another example of not communicating or being transparent” from Fairman.
“If you had merely just asked for help, advice or guidance from the superintendent … or the board attorney, you could have avoided much of this, but you refuse to communicate,” Richardson said.
Richardson also said he wouldn’t attend the retreat as previously planned. He said that attending a retreat run by the School Board Member Alliance goes against the school board’s policy BHB.
“In addition, I will not be affiliated with a group that makes insensitive comments on social media, and comments in public that could be construed as being racist. They are not proven experts in their field, they work out of a private residence, and even when they presented at our board meeting on policy services they changed their website a night or so before to reflect they’re now a nonpartisan group.”
“SBMA conveniently even added an exclusionary clause to their policy services so we would not be able to use other policy services but theirs,” Richardson said. “They certainly should’ve known this the night they presented but didn’t disclose that fact. Not very transparent.”
Board member Mark Shafer said he thinks having SBMA at a retreat wouldn’t help “draw anyone together.” He said believes the SBMA and Executive Director Sherri Story are also not “high quality and should not be teaching us,” citing Story’s past “racially sensitive at best, probably racist at worst” comments.
Fairman said: “I will say the [SBMA] trainings that I’ve attended, people who’ve gone to other trainings and compared it with SBMA. They said the SBMA trainings were far superior, focused completely on what the law was and what the law required as opposed to other agendas thrown in that were done by other organizations.”
“It’s not covering the law too well, because we keep violating it here,” Richardson said in response.
Fairman had no comment on Monday when asked by 10 On Your Side about Richardson’s comments and about continuing to have the board align with SBMA.
Meanwhile a new date for the retreat has not been shared at this time.
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