FOI Commission Cites School Board For Violations

By John Voket

Nearly 11 months after Newtown’s Board of Education convened into closed or executive session to conduct a critical evaluation of its then vice chairman Kathryn Fetchick, the State Freedom of Information Commission on February 23 affirmed that the local board violated three tenets of the statute.

According to an FOIC spokesperson, who spoke to The Bee following the decision, the commission plans to upgrade its original suggestion that the school board host an FOI workshop to compelling that workshop be held as a result of the violations.

Ms Fetchick said after the final pronouncement that nobody representing the school district or school board appeared before the commission in Hartford Wednesday. She said the school board will be required to develop public minutes detailing the course of events during the illegal segment of the 2010 meeting.

The FOIC previously determined that the former school board official’s rights under state law were violated by her own board, and, by extension, its former chairman Lillian Bittman, on all of the three contended counts. In that September 30 finding, Hearing Officer Lisa Fein Siegel affirmed that Newtown’s Board of Education violated the FOI law in each of the three instances cited by Ms Fetchick in her April 2010 appeal.

In the complaint, which is technically referred to as an appeal, Ms Fetchick stated that the board and Ms Bittman permitted part of a closed executive session to transpire during which an evaluation and criticism of Ms Fetchick’s performance and actions as a board member was the sole matter of business. This occurred despite the fact that an agenda for the meeting reserved part of the closed session for a “board self-evaluation.”

On the night of the meeting, Ms Fetchick stated that board members Richard Gains and David Nanavaty launched into a “critical evaluation” of her performance on the board. When she appealed to Ms Bittman that her rights were being violated because Ms Fetchick was neither warned of an evaluation of her performance, nor given the opportunity under the law for that evaluation to occur in public, the chairman permitted the closed session to continue.

And while she did not participate, Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson was permitted to remain in the session in violation of the law, Ms Fetchick contended. The FOIC official found the local school board convened in executive session for an improper purpose; the board failed to limit attendance to persons whose presence was necessary; and failed to provide adequate notice of the executive session’s intent on the meeting’s agenda.

Ms Siegel wrote that Ms Fetchick “was the specific target of much of the criticism by two members, who believed that the complainant did not publicly support decisions of the board [majority] and did not defer to the chair as the voice of the board to the public and the press.”

In regard to recreating minutes from more than ten months ago, Ms Fetchick said she was assured that she would be able to review the details to ensure they are accurate by her recollection. If they are not, the FOIC urged her to file a noncompliance appeal, which would bring school officials back before the state panel.

“I don’t have a say in what the minutes will reflect, but the hearing official told me she hopes the [school] board gives me the courtesy of reviewing them before they are adopted,” Ms Fetchick said.

Following the filing of her appeal to the state on the 2010 meeting, Ms Fetchick resigned from the school board and was subsequently appointed to a Republican vacancy on the town’s Legislative Council, where she was also elected to chair its Education Committee.

Ms Fetchick said in the end, she was most uncomfortable with school board representatives representing the executive session violations as “procedural errors.”

“Being on the board at that time, and having verified the language of the FOI statutes regarding executive sessions for the review of a public officer’s performance just a few minutes before they called the illegal session, I know the board understood the specifics of the statutes,” Ms Fetchick said this week. “And after the fact it was characterized as a procedural problem, which it was not.”