Richmond School Board cancels weekend retreat
The Richmond School Board has cancelled a planned — but never publicly advertised — weekend leadership retreat in Charlottesville. Under Virginia law, government bodies are required to advertise public meetings at least three days in advance and to publish an agenda for those meetings.
Editor’s note: Since we originally published this story School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges got back in touch with us. We’ve updated the article to reflect her comments.
The Richmond School Board has canceled a planned — but never publicly advertised — weekend leadership retreat in Charlottesville.
Under Virginia law, government bodies are required to advertise public meetings at least three days in advance and to publish an agenda for those meetings. Richmond Schools did not do that. As of 11:30am. Thursday, the board’s clerk had not yet published any official meeting notice on the School Board’s web site, and no notices had run in local print publications in previous days.
Maria Everett, executive director of the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council, says she received a call from Angela Lewis, clerk of the Richmond School Board, early on Thursday afternoon asking for advice on whether the meeting could go ahead despite the failure to advertise.
The answer, Everett says, was yes and no.
“The definition of a [public] meeting is a gathering and a discussion of public business,” she says. “If they were all out playing golf and talking about their golf game, it’s not a meeting under FOIA.”
Everett advised Lewis that it would still be legal to hold the retreat, so long as the Board’s attorney was present to ensure conversation stayed far clear of anything related to official School Board business.
The published agenda for the Friday meeting included a closed session meeting, while both days of the retreat included an official call to order of a board session and an “open agenda” period. Agendas for both meetings were sent to board members just after 10:30am on Thursday morning.
The retreat agenda also involved team building exercises for the board members and, Everett says, she told Lewis that learning “how to get along as a group” doesn’t require public advertisement.
“It’s not a violation of FOIA,” Everett says, though the fact that the meeting is planned to take place in Charlottesville at University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, and so more of a hardship for the public to attend, “it’s in my opinion not the smartest thing you can do politically, but it’s not a violation of law.”
Apparently, Richmond leaders decided to take both her advice and her personal opinion.
“We don’t want a whiff of that,” says School Board Chairwoman Kimberly Bridges, who says the entire meeting, including the team building exercise, is now cancelled to avoid even the perception of impropriety. The plan now is to reschedule, she says. “We’ll just start over again and make sure everyone gets ample notice.”
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Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
What is this board trying to do by having a retreat in CHARLOTTESVILLE? Gimme a break! What a waste of money! They can’t figure out how to give proper notice for a meeting, but they want us to trust them with our kids? How many administrators do they have working on the School Board? CHARLOTTESVILLE?
Actually, Kim Bridges is wrong. But, perhaps it depends on the precise meaning of the word “advertise.” Perhaps she is using semantic logic similar to that employed by Bill Clinton when he famously attempted to parse the meaning of the word “is.”
I happened to be online yesterday morning around 11 a.m. and have a copy of the notice the School Board posted on its website as well as the agenda. While it is “technically true” that they did not “advertise,” i.e., PAY for ADVERTISING, they most certainly did advertise the fact that they intended to have this meeting. A meeting that, were it not for Dovi’s diligence, would have been in violation of the state’s open meeting law.
I agree with Kate Falcon. When I was on the board, I always questioned why we needed to meet in Charlottesville. In fact, in response to pushing, we actually did meet in Richmond twice. I hope citizens concerned about accountability will ask to be a part of future retreats and that they insist these retreats be scheduled in Richmond.
Richmond School Board makes a big deal about the poverty level in our schools and how much they want parental and community involvement. Yet, they continue to schedule school board retreats just far enough away as to be impossible for even people with cars to “conveniently” attend? There’s a mixed message there, folks.
So, what else is new?When the meetings have the appearance of being open, the decisions have been made in private. Remember how the teleconferences were used to circumvent open meetings; that was illegal. Until there is an outcry by the people who elected them, this disregard for the rights of the electorate will continue.
Richmond Public Schools is not required to publish notices of meetings in newspapers or on its website. All they are required to do in the way of advertising is tack two written notices up, as described in State Code 2.2-3707:
C. Every public body shall give notice of the date, time, and location of its meetings by
placing the notice in a prominent public location at which notices are regularly posted
and in the office of the clerk of the public body, or in the case of a public body that has
no clerk, in the office of the chief administrator.
They must also notify people who have asked annually to be notified of meetings.
Interesting defense of the known actions by Ms Dale.
I wonder aloud if this particular section of the code were re-written today if the same language would be deemed sufficient due diligence by a public body.
The retreats have been at UVa since staff of the Darden School of Business and Curry School of Education conduct them as part of a leadership development grant. We typically do have members of the public and media attending as well and do a briefing at one of the meetings back in Richmond to review lessons learned at UVa. To increase transparency about all school board professional development and travel, Vice-Chair Dawn Page and I will be recommending some additional processes for full board and public review at Monday’s board meeting. We had planned to do this before the notice snafu, but now the timing is especially appropriate.
The idea that the board’s attorney could keep all nine members and administrators from discussing the public’s business during a week-end long retreat borders on the absurd.
Why does this board need a workshop on “how to get along”? They have clearly mastered the art of “going along to get along,” as evidenced by their all too frequent group assents to nonsense.
Group hugs and singing kumbaya will not fix what ails RPS or this group of School Board members.
Consider the budget recently approved that cuts teachers and programs for students, yet leaves intact administrative staff.
Consider their repeated efforts to blame parents for the problems the students have, yet the board’s willingness to prance off to Charlottesville for a cushy weekend at the Darden School.
Consider the lack of ADA compliance in the schools and the board’s hypocritical and obstructionist efforts to destroy the Patrick Henry Charter School.
And, who can forget their group approval of a “gag order” that would have prevented members from being critical of one another or of the administration?
Falcon should run for School Board!