Hartford Schools Chief Gets a (Preliminary) Lesson in Civics [Updated]

See bottom of post for important update from school attorney

Hartford school officials have issued a partial mea culpa on their decision barring the media from covering Monday’s private get-together between Superintendent Christina Kishimoto and parents/students/teachers/administrators/board members at the Classical Magnet School.

Early this afternoon, schools spokesman David Medina sent around the following statement:

It was the intention of the district to hold a private meeting between the Superintendent and families of Classical Magnet School on Monday, Feb. 13, that would not fall under the FOIA’s definition of a public meeting.

Upon consultation with our attorney, we have been advised that because the term “School Governance Council” was used to invite parents to the meeting and in communications with the press, the meeting was considered a public meeting.

This was our error.

Apology received. But this tale may require dropping in a second time on a civics class.

Monday night, Medina, who was stationed outside the Classical Magnet school, barred Courant reporter Vanessa de la Torre from attending the meeting, and placed a phone call to Assistant Corporation Counsel Melinda Kaufmann, who he said assured him it was legal to turn reporters away. Legal authority for that decision was promised Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning it was promised “shortly.” Tuesday night, it still didn’t exist.

Nor, the school system now acknowledges, did it ever.

But the statement from Medina suggests the violation of law was technical — that the meeting was illegally closed only because invitations invoked Classical Magnet’s School Governance Council. (State law is clear that council meetings are subject to the state’s Freedom of Information laws, which govern access to public meetings.)

The statement did not address a meeting a week earlier at the Burns School at which reporters were also barred from attending. In that meeting, as at Classical Magnet, Kishimoto heard from parents concerned about her decision to replace the school’s principal.

Based on the statement, it appears the school system leadership believes that assembly — which was not billed as a School Governance Council meeting — was legally closed to the press; and that the decision at Classical Magnet would have been legal as well had there been no mention of the council.

It was that fact pattern, presumably, that Attorney Kaufmann had in mind when she assured Medina that barring the press was legal, and for which she assured she could provide a legal underpinning. I’ve asked both Medina and Kaufmann to provide that legal authority.

That was an hour ago. I’ll let you know what I hear.

Update: Tuesday evening, Attorney Kaufmann provided a copy of the memo she prepared for school officials, in which she concluded that a meeting between the superintendent and parents of a school could be closed to the media under an exemption in the law covering “an administrative or staff meeting of a single-member public agency.”

Connecticut’s Freedom of Information Commission has ruled several times on the scope of that exemption, and held consistently that for the exemption to apply, the meeting must involve other town employees and concern the routine administrative functions of the office.

Here’s an excerpt from the commission’s most-recent take — also in a case in which a school superintendent held a closed meeting with a large group of people from the community:

10.  The Commission has examined the question of what constitutes an “administrative or staff meeting of a single member public agency” in several prior decisions.  In those cases, in which it was found that single-member public agencies, such as a first selectman, or a chairman [of] a board of education, gathered with another town official, attorney or staff member, to discuss a ministerial or other routine matter related to the daily administration of that office, the Commission consistently concluded that the gatherings were not “meetings” within the meaning of §1-200(2), G.S.  The Commission concluded, instead, that the gatherings were “administrative or staff meetings of a single-member public agency.”

11.  In the instant case, however, it is found that the members of the committee were not members of the superintendent’s staff; that the meeting … was unrelated to the superintendent’s routine, daily responsibilities; and that it did not concern administrative matters.  It is therefore found that such meeting was not an administrative or staff meeting of the superintendent.

Meanwhile, Courant columnist Rick Green chimes in with his own thoughts here, arguing that conducting the public’s business in public is the real issue, not whether Kishimoto’s ban-the-media decisions were legally supportable.