Local school board’s Open Meetings violation confirmed by court

The Daily Times from Glasgow reports that “Barren Circuit Judge Phillip Patton agreed with an earlier decision by the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General that the Glasgow Independent Schools Board of Education willfully violated the Open Meetings Act in a judgement (sic) entered on Thursday.”

In addition to this reconfirmed violation by the Glasgow Independent School Board, there have been four other Open Meetings violations by Kentucky school agencies in calendar year 2015. This includes violations by two other local boards and a local school decision making council and – perhaps most shocking – even a violation by the Kentucky Board of Education, as well.

To date, these five violations account for one out of three Open Meetings violations among all of the thousands of public agencies in Kentucky in 2015. The situation points to what appears to be either growing arrogance or ignorance within the state’s education community regarding their responsibilities for transparency. This unsatisfactory situation is fueled by the arrogance of the state’s leading education agency – the Kentucky Board of Education – which has refused to acknowledge or make amends for its violation of the Open Meetings law during the hiring of the new commissioner of education.

It’s time for the Kentucky Board of Education to step up to the plate to acknowledge it made a mistake and to start acting like a leader to help lower level education agencies in the commonwealth to understand and comply with the law, as well. The state board could easily schedule a briefing at one of its webcast meetings from the Open Meetings experts at the attorney general’s office. That would allow other education groups to either listen in live or log on later to the archived version of the webcast.

Leadership here is badly needed. Sadly, so far, we are still waiting.