School Board’s Closed Session With County Called Illegal : Antelope Valley: District officials offer various justifications for the meeting on possible layoffs. But attorneys doubt the explanations are valid.

Board members of the Antelope Valley Union High School District appear to have violated state law by holding a two-hour private meeting last week with Los Angeles County officials to develop a bailout plan for the financially troubled district, attorneys said Thursday.

District officials have insisted that they were entitled to meet privately. But they have given varying and, sometimes conflicting, legal justifications for the closed session. And attorneys who deal with the state’s open meetings law say the district’s explanations do not appear valid.

Meeting in closed session March 18, the school board worked out a deal with county officials to avoid laying off about 55 employees because of a projected $4.6-million budget deficit. In doing so, the board acted in secret and without any prior public comment on its commitments to the county.

Later that night, when about 500 people showed up for a public board meeting that had the proposed layoffs on the agenda as part of a budget recovery plan, school board President Sophia Waugh immediately announced that the district had already settled the issue with the county.

County education officials last month, alarmed at the district’s projected shortfall, appointed a monitor to oversee the district’s finances and ordered the preparation of a recovery plan. School board members sought the meeting with county officials to gain their agreement to a recovery plan without immediate layoffs.

The state’s open meetings law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, requires the governing boards of public agencies to conduct most business in public so citizens can monitor their actions. The law contains some exceptions, but none that attorneys said appear to justify the district’s move.

Tom Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Assn., said the board’s action appears to be a clear violation of the open meetings law. “All of this appears to be budget issues, which should be discussed in public session,” Newton said.

“It sounds like it’s questionable,” agreed Paul Smith, deputy general counsel of the state Department of Education. Although district officials might have had some claim to privacy, Smith said any discussion of the district’s finances should have been public.

Even the leaders of the district’s two teachers unions have objected to the secretive way that district officials handled the process. “This is definitely something that should have been discussed in public,” said Dave Kennedy, president of the Antelope Valley Federation of Teachers.

“I do think it was poorly done,” said Sue Turner, president of the Antelope Valley Teachers Assn., the teachers’ bargaining agent. Turner said she has asked an attorney with the California Teachers Assn., her group’s parent organization, to review the board’s action.

Although pleased that the board found a way to avoid the threatened layoff of 55 non-teaching employees this year, district employees complained about having no input before the board also promised county officials that it would seek 7% across-the-board pay cuts and other concessions as part of the bailout plan.

District Supt. Kenneth Brummel and board members agreed they saw no legal problem with the board’s private session with Calvin Hall, an assistant superintendent in the Los Angeles County Office of Education, and one of his aides. Details of the bailout plan still must be approved by the county.

District officials gave widely varying legal reasons for their action. The night of the meeting, Brummel said the closed session was permitted under an exception in state law that allows agencies facing pending litigation, such as from the county or state, to meet in private.

However, Brummel said neither agency had given any indication that they planned to sue the district. And state law only permits such a closed meeting for the governing board to meet with its own attorney. The district’s attorney was not present at last week’s session, district officials said.

School board member Steve Landaker said the session was permitted under the pending-litigation exception, claiming one of the district’s major suppliers was threatening a lawsuit over the district’s financial problems. But two other board members said they didn’t recall any discussion of that.

Those two board members, Billy Pricer and Charles Whiteside, said they believed the closed session was permitted under an exception to the law dealing with personnel decisions, such as the layoffs, and/or another allowing public agencies to instruct their bargaining agents on salary negotiations.

But Newton said the personnel exception only applies when boards are evaluating the performance of individual employees, not considering broad-based budgetary decisions. And the list of jobs scheduled for elimination by the district had already been released and publicly discussed at a prior meeting.

The exception for bargaining instructions only applies to closed meetings with the district’s designated negotiating representative, and that was not the two county officials. Also any other topics, such as the board promising to balance its budget next year, would not have been permitted.

In addition, Newton said the private session may have been illegal because it began up to an hour before the 5 p.m. starting time listed on the board’s agenda. Pricer said board members were told to come early to accommodate Hall. But the district never gave public notice of the changed meeting time.

Board actions that violate the state’s open meetings law can be invalidated by a judge if challenged within 30 days. Also, board members who knowingly attend an illegal meeting where an action is taken can also be prosecuted, although that rarely occurs.

BACKGROUND

The Ralph M. Brown Act generally requires city councils, school boards and governing boards of other public agencies to conduct their business in public meetings. The so-called open meetings law, first adopted by the state Legislature in the early 1950s, is intended to allow the public to participate in and be informed of government decisions. The law does permit closed meetings in some cases, but only under narrow and specific circumstances.