DECATUR, Ill. (WAND) - Decatur Public Schools voted to release sections of three closed meetings to the public after the Illinois State Attorney General's Public Access Office (PAC) found the board violated the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
WAND News had obtained a determination letter sent from the PAC to the station, School Board President Beth Nolan and the district attorney. The PAC said the board "discussed certain unauthorized topics during at least three of the five meetings" WAND News requested a review of.
The board was represented in the PAC review by Luke Feeny of Miller, Tracy, Braun, Funk and Miller, Ltd., out of Monticello. He argued the closed sessions where to discuss "the appointment, employment, compensation, discipline, performance or dismissal of specific employees."
WAND News requested officials review meetings after the station obtained emails that seemed to show the board voted on and approved a bonus for Assistant Superintendent Jeffrey Dase. The PAC found the closed session discussion on this topic wasn't a violation of the Open Meetings Act because the final vote was public, but did note, based on emails provided by WAND, that Nolan appeared to “seek the implementation of the bonus before the public vote which reversed the Board's closed session decision to award it."
In a review of recordings from a Sept. 8, 2020 closed session meeting, the PAC said it found the board "improperly discussed" making organizational chart changes that would create a new position and improperly discussed the "attributes it sought in any future candidate."
The PAC ruling also noted the school board improperly had discussions about whether to "proceed" with an item that was on the Sept. 22, 2020 agenda and what "substantive course of action to take on the underlying matter."
Further, the PAC found the board acted improperly in an Oct. 27, 2020 meeting when discussing the reorganization of the order of meetings, meeting structure, as well “as political considerations and the ability to keep a document from being requested and disclosed pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act FOIA”.
In regard to a Sept. 29, 2020 meeting, the PAC did not cite any specific violations from a closed session but wrote “arguably, the Board improperly discussed a Board member' s conduct in closed session on September 29, 2020, but the dialogue was enmeshed with a proper discussion of a specific employee' s performance.”
A non-binding ruling said the board needed to make the closed session verbatim recordings from Sept. 8, 2020, Sept. 22, 2020 and Oct. 27, 2020 meetings publicly available. The board was cautioned to “limit its closed session discussions to the scope of the exceptions it cites to close portions of its meetings in the future.”
On Tuesday night, the board decided unanimously to make "discrete portions" of those meeting recordings - about 40 minutes in total - available in a vote. The board's resolution noted it wasn't required to release the audio, but felt doing so was in the district's best interests.
See the full resolution, which begins here at page 160, to learn which specific parts will be released.
WAND News approached Nolan after Tuesday night's meeting to ask questions. She refused to answer questions and walked away from our Chris Carter as he asked.
The following was the DPS statement released in early March in response to the PAC ruling:
"Decatur Public Schools has received and is reviewing today’s advisory opinion issued by the Illinois Attorney General’s office. As expected, the ruling concludes that the DPS Board of Education DID NOT take improper action in closed session regarding a proposed bonus for the District’s Assistant Superintendent. The opinion from the AG’s office does state that some portions of conversations held in closed session on three dates fall outside the scope of closed session topics. As such, DPS and its attorneys are reviewing closed session recordings from those three dates, as well as the request from the AG’s office that the Board vote to make portions of these closed session meetings publicly available."
