NORWALK, Conn. — You can no longer read complaints made by citizens if you look at Board of Education meeting minutes, which BoE member Shirley Mosby said Tuesday is a violation of policy.
The change in the way public comments are reported in the minutes is not a violation of policy, BoE Chairman Mike Lyons said Wednesday. It’s also not in violation of state law, he said.
This little disagreement at Tuesday’s meeting, which Lyons was not present for, led to Migdalia Rivas, Rosa Murray and Mosby voting one way and the rest of the Board voting another, twice.
This began with Rivas asking Policy Committee Chairwoman Heidi Keyes to put reviewing Board Policy 9326, which related to minutes of meetings, on an upcoming agenda. Keyes agreed.
The minutes for the May 19 meeting, which had not been approved yet, were not in compliance with that policy, Mosby said. She would be voting against approving the minutes, she said.
The minutes list the names of people who spoke to the Board and what topic they were talking about, but do not include any indication of the substance of their remarks.
There is a notation: “In accordance with Board of Education meeting record requirements, minutes only reflect the name, address and subject of public comments made. Comments can be viewed as recorded on local Public Access television and by audio tape.”
Mosby’s father was one of the speakers at the May 19 meeting. The entry regarding him is “protest of treatment at last meeting.” Her father had attempted to address the Board on May 5 without putting his name on the sign up sheet, after other speakers had concluded. He had been ignored.
The change in the way minutes are kept was made without a Board vote or discussion, Mosby said.
“My concern is that we did receive a email, to the Board, telling us this that action was taken,” Mosby said. “But the Board was not informed of a meeting so we could discuss this, before it was going to go. So I am a little bit concerned that the recording person can just go ahead and change our minutes format without having the discussion with the full Board.”
This is not in compliance with the policy as written, she said.
“The Board consists of nine members,” Mosby said. “One person alone is not the board. If we cannot come together as a group and sit down and discuss something, whatever action is taken by one individual is an action that is not in compliance. So if we are going to sit here and do these things we need to sit here and work together as a Board and bring this up, and then basically at that point, have a discussion at least. All nine of us in order for us to make a decision.”
Later she said, “If we decide that we are going to make a change we need to involve the community, the public, parents, all of the stakeholders because when you make changes to policies you have to make sure, especially of this magnitude it needs to have everyone at the table.”
Rivas made a motion to table approving the minutes.
“It’s very important when the public does come to make their comments,” she said. People who read the minutes won’t know what they talked about, she said.
Rivas, Murray and Mosby voted to table approving the minutes. Mike Barbis, Artie Kassimis, Bryan Meek and Keyes voted not to table them. Sherelle Harris was absent, as was Lyons.
Mosby and Rivas voted against approving the minutes. Murray abstained. The other four Board members voted in favor.
“I’ve discussed this with the Executive Committee, and we agreed that having lengthy summaries of public comments in the minutes is not necessary (particularly given the fact that all such comments are now videotaped and made available in a couple of days on our YouTube channel),” Lyons said in a Wednesday email.
Lyons, Keyes and Kassimis are on the Executive Committee.
“The ‘speakers’ referenced in Policy 9326 are the members of the Board, and Board members’ comments will continue to be summarized as always,” Lyons wrote. “There is no requirement that public comments be summarized. The FOI (Freedom of Information) Act and Robert’s Rules don’t require any such statements to be included in the minutes, either.”
The matter may not be over with, he said.
“I gave this instruction to the recording secretary under my authority as chair to rule on the procedural matters, per Robert’s Rules,” Lyons wrote. “If Ms. Mosby objects, she can appeal the ruling of the Chair at the next Board meeting and the Board can decide whether to sustain or overturn my ruling, by majority vote.”
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