Tidbits from Monday – Part 2

One of the last things on Monday’s agenda was the approval of the minutes from the executive session of both the April 3rd and April 10th board meetings. Normally these minutes are approved without any discussion, but not Monday evening.

It would seem that no one actually took the minutes from those meetings (but did take notes). It was also explained at the meeting, by Dr. Hicks, that notes are not necessarily the same as minutes…

Now our administration is retroactively trying to “cover it’s a** and manufacture minutes from a meeting 4 months ago. Both Hicks and our financial consultant thought that this might actually fly.

After many questions and concerns about open meeting violations, missing information from the “minutes” of the meeting, our board actually did do the right thing and did NOT approve the minutes.

What was missing from the minutes, you might ask - all the discussion of the controversial “Betsy Kipper clause”; the clause that allows the REA president to be compensated from the district while performing union duties.

But what the takes the cake though is the arrogance of Hicks and Co, as proven in the following statement from the April 3rd document:

Dr. Hicks reviewed the bargaining authority granted by the Board and explained that a tentative agreement had been reached with the teachers’ contingent on the Board acceptance of Dr. Hicks’ interpretation of bargaining authority.

What concerns me about the preceding statement is:

1. Dr. Hicks came to a tentative agreement with the REA even though it seemed that the board had not yet accepted Dr. Hicks’s “interpretation of bargaining authority”.

2. If there truly was a tentative agreement, should they (the board and administration) be meeting in closed session and discussing it? It would seem that once a tentative agreement is signed, all discussions should be done in an open session. I was told (by reliable sources) that this is the law. Do we have any legal experts that would like to weigh in?

For some reason, I feel this issue will rear its ugly head again...