Executive Session - School and City - When are they appropriate?

  • 2,899 views
  • Added
  • Author:
Saturday Feb 2, 2013 the school board will hold an executive session probably to discuss the upcoming negotiations with the teacher's union.  Is this appropriate?  Both the city and the school board always go into executive sessions for employment discussions. The school and the city are allowed to hold these discussions in executive sessions.  Read ORC 121.22 you'll see they are not required to hold them in executive session.  I contend that both these political organizations should choose to hold many of these discussions during open public meetings.  For many of the other meetings where it makes sense to hold executive sessions, council should decide what items could have been discussed in an open meeting.  After ending the executive session council should conduct an open meeting containing that information and then publish minutes. 
 
Lets examine Saturday's School Board meeting.  The announcement for the meeting states, " The Huber Heights City Schools Board of Education will hold a Special Session on Saturday, February 2, 2013 at 9:00 a.m. in the Central Office Board Room and will immediately convene in Executive Session for the discussion of personnel and negotiations.   No action will be taken."  I suspect the Board will talk about the upcoming negotiations with the Teacher's Union.  It is perfectly reasonable for them to discuss in executive session what kind of approach they intend on take during the negotiations.  However, if the topic is actually about these upcoming negotiations that kind of detail can and should be stated.
 
A more significant difference between what has occurred in the past versus what should happen concerns the actual negotiations.  I am advocating that the school board does not go into executive session for these negotiations.  In fact, the school board should make plans to broadcast the entire negotiations over the internet.  This would help dispel a lot of the rumors and misinformation the public has that outside agencies use to disparage the School Board and the Unions. 

Rating

Unrated
Edited