Although full school board meetings are open to the public, critics say the substantial discussions take place in board committee meetings, which occur behind closed doors.
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A large crowd packs a Phillipsburg School Board meeting in December.
In upcoming months, the Phillipsburg School Board will start discussing districtwide changes in several areas, from security enhancements to possible student redistricting and other school facility changes.
But although any final decisions must be made at a public school board meeting, those discussions will begin at school board committee meetings that are not open to the general public.
That’s nothing new, and certainly not exclusive to Phillipsburg.
Most school boards in the state, and practically all in Warren and Hunterdon counties, hold their board meetings in public, but committee meetings are held behind closed doors.
It's legal under the state Open Public Meetings Act, but some open government advocates argue it violates the spirit of the law, and some legislators are attempting to make those meetings more open.
“It’s totally contrary to the idea of what the Open Public Meetings Act is, but it’s been done this way, and probably will continue to be done this way, for a long time,” said John Paff, chairman of the New Jersey Libertarian Party’s Open Government Advocacy Project.
Others argue committee meetings are intended to be more like workshop, give-and-take discussions, and that elected officials may be less inclined to speak freely if they were public.
All final decisions are still made in public, and full board meetings usually get reports about what committees discuss, said Matthew Weng, special counsel for the New Jersey League of Municipalities.
“Making them public would just add more time, expense and delay to the process,” Weng said.
Law allows privacy
School board committees usually include two or three members from the full board who discuss a specific area, such as personnel, buildings and grounds, or policy.
They discuss topics and make a recommendation to the full board for a vote. Since committees do not have a quorum, or a majority of the full board, they are not required under New Jersey law to meet publicly.
The law is different in Pennsylvania, where board committees still cannot vote, but meetings must be held in open session and typically allow for public comment.
Paff argues that although New Jersey school board committees don’t make the decisions, the substantial discussions take place there and the full boards accept their recommendations with little to no discussion.
“Citizens don’t see the deliberation and thought processes that goes into the decisions,” he said.
But Phillipsburg Superintendent George Chando noted that at every full school board meeting, the committees give a report about their discussions.
Weng, speaking about subcommittees in general, said this is the case with most boards.
“I don’t know of any public body that’s going to thoughtlessly rubber-stamp the determination of a subcommittee without injecting their thoughts and opinions on it,” he said.
Mike Yaple, spokesman for the New Jersey School Boards Association, noted the school boards can choose to make their committee meetings public if they want to.
But in Warren County, in addition to Phillipsburg, the Belvidere, Hackettstown, North Warren Regional and Warren Hills Regional school districts all keep their committee meetings private.
In Hunterdon County, North Hunterdon-Voorhees, Hunterdon Central, Delaware Valley Regional and South Hunterdon Regional also hold those meetings in closed session.
Legislation proposed
A bill proposed in the New Jersey Senate would make several changes to state public meetings law, including requiring subcommittees to provide reports for the public.
That bill, proposed by Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, originally required those committees to keep detailed minutes of those meetings, but the language was softened due to opposition from critics.
Yaple said the NJSBA opposed that provision because it would have proved expensive for school boards to pay a staff person to attend every meeting and record the minutes.
They also argued the release of minutes on sensitive issues such as personnel negotiations could give away district strategies and give unions unfair advantages in negotiations.
Weinberg’s bill, if approved, would also allow anyone who files a successful lawsuit against a public body for violating the open meetings act to be reimbursed their legal fees.
Paff said he believes a lawsuit challenging the way school board committees work would be successful, but that nobody has filed one in the past because they could not recoup their fees.
Contact reporter Colin McEvoy at 610-258-7171 ex. 3631 or cmcevoy@express-times.com.