Committed or just obligated?

by Michael Moore and Dale Bohren
Tuesday, September 18, 2007 2:08 PM MDT

Why would anybody care if school district business is open to public scrutiny? Maybe because school districts spend enormous amounts of public money; or maybe because the direction a school district takes can have tremendous impact on our children and future prospects of our community. Either reason is reason enough.

It was about this time in 2006 that the Casper Journal and Casper Star-Tribune asked the Natrona County School District to open several of its meetings to the public.

Our school district employees embrace a unique form of management where business that would normally be squarely on the elected school board’s plate and subject to Wyoming’s open meeting laws is shifted into committees.

These committees, made up of representatives of many stakeholder groups, including members of the school board, discuss and recommend action to the board.

Meetings of the Interest Based Agreements Process (IBAP) and Compact Issues Committee (CIC) had been closed to the public for years. We felt, however, that this shift does not shield the decision-making process from the necessity of remaining open to the public and encouraged the district to open its doors.

An IBAP group that had been assembled to begin planning the calendar for the 2007-08 school year was the case in point.

After several meetings between both sides, the public was granted access. We genuinely appreciated the district’s cooperation, and attended and reported on as many meetings as possible in the last year.

Many members of the school district’s groups welcomed the public with open arms; others had reservations, but understood the need to open the meetings. Several others, mostly members of various unions, made it clear to us that the public shouldn’t be allowed in.

So how much progress has been made?

The IBAP, CIC and other meetings are open to the public. But there is reason to believe that some school district employees still are resisting the spirit of open meetings and the concept that the public’s business must be conducted in public.

At a meeting of the Natrona County School District Board of Trustees on Sept. 10, a list was handed out to those who attended that included topics to be discussed at future CIC meetings. Among those topics to be discussed, without a specific date set, were:

* “Media has caused some major problems, so things were not said that needed to be said.”

* “We need to talk about how we openly communicate and have trust with the media present.”

* “Media discussion.”

* “Media reporting leads to expectations that sometimes cannot be met.”

* “People participating without being trained in the process.”

CIC is the top district committee in which all issues of importance are discussed. Because CIC discussions are central to the management of the district, we find these notes to be disturbing and destructive.

Comments like “media has caused some major problems, things were not said that needed to be said” create a feeling not only of mistrust, but leave the impression of manipulation behind closed doors.

If something can’t be said or approved in public, maybe it should not be said or approved at all.

This list may or may not be official. But the fact such a list was circulating with copies available at a School Board meeting makes it clear that certain members of the CIC still see open meetings as an issue of “us vs. the media.”

But the issue never should have been focused on the media; the issue is about the school district doing the public’s business in public.

We feel that while a lot of progress has been made, there is still more to do. We sincerely appreciate the public access the school board has granted to school district meetings.

We adamantly believe that these meetings should be open to the public n not to a newspaper reporter, but to the general public including newspaper reporters. The newspaper reporter’s role is simply to share what happens at meetings with members of the public who couldn’t or didn’t attend those meetings.

During one of our meetings with the CIC last year, one person asked us why the meetings should be open. After all, this person argued, the school district has a communications team, and the Journal, Star-Tribune and other media outlets should just report the information that is made available to them by the district.

Here’s a perfect example of why that’s not a good idea.

On Sept. 11, the district’s communications team sent out a release about the previous night’s school board meeting, which was open to the public and covered by our newspaper. In the meeting there was discussion about nearly $96,000 in cost overruns for the new Natrona County High School track that district staff had known about since April but that the school board had not been told about.

The communications team wrote:

“On Monday, the board had questions about cost overruns, which were addressed by representatives (SIC) from GSG Architecture and 71 Construction.

”An additional $27,950 is requested for architect and engineering costs.

”An additional $68,100 is requested for contractor costs.

”According to Planning and Construction Manager Dennis Bay, P.E., these costs are additional to previously accepted enhancements that the board approved.”

The communications team report was certainly not untrue, but several key facts were left out. The board wanted to know about these cost overruns, and pointed its collective finger squarely at GSG Architecture, the firm designing the track.

Fortunately for the architects, they produced correspondence with the school district on the spot outlining the costs before they were incurred. It was the school district’s cabinet member who failed to share the increased cost with the school board, but that information was not included in the school district’s news release. It was, however, included in the newspaper reports.

Today, Wyoming is fortunate to have the resources to fully fund public education. We also enjoy a vibrant and active media. Most people who are involved in either industry are good and heartfelt people of integrity.

It is the responsibility of the school district to notify and handle the public’s business in public. The obligation of the media is to cover the school district’s meetings n school board, IBAP, CIC and others n fairly and accurately for the general public.

We believe education issues and open meetings are vital to each other and encourage any and everyone involved in these issues to remain committed to common goals and problem solving required to educate our kids to the best of our collective ability, in meetings conducted in public and not behind the public’s back.

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