Another Springfield School Committee meeting was called off within minutes, after most of its members opted not to attend.
The Ad Hoc Committee, charged with overseeing the superintendent search process, was missing two-thirds of its members Wednesday. That led to its chair, Christopher Collins, keeping it short – just under three minutes.
“Since there is no quorum here, I will ask that the feed be stopped and that we will be rescheduling this meeting for Monday at 5,” Collins said.
The City of Springfield is in the process of finding a new superintendent before the current head of public schools, Daniel Warwick, retires at the end of the school year.
The process has led to much debate and discussion since February, with disagreements now growing into acts of protest.
At least four members of the school committee did not attend the full regular school committee last week, citing a decision to not add two proposed items to the agenda.
One item involved adding a student to the screening committee that’s reviewing applications for the superintendent role.
The second involved letting said screening committee view and consider all 11 applications for the job, rather than just the five who met the posting’s minimum requirements.
According to School Committee Vice Chair Joesiah Gonzalez, the screening committee had “voiced concerns about not being able to view all completed applications for consideration, to preserve public transparency.”
“We heard them loud and clear, and we're trying to do that,” Collins told reporters, referring to the student-related item. “The other issue is much, much more complicated and there are a lot of legal ramifications, as you'll see when you review this.”
The student-related item was the only thing on Wednesday’s agenda – voting to recommend adding not one, but two students from the SPS Student Advisory Council to the screening committee.
However, the application item was the subject of legal opinions issued by the law firm assisting in the superintendent search – Bulkley Richardson. Collins came to the meeting with a stack of copies, which were shared with the media.
The opinions were sought after Gonzalez initially requested the two items make the ad hoc and, later, full school committee agendas.
Among them, the law firm found “several potential legal ramifications” if the committee retroactively allowed applications that didn’t meet the minimum requirements for the job to be considered.
It’s something that could “invite litigation,” including from those who chose not to apply for the role because they believed they did not meet the minimum requirements.
The opinion goes on to suggest restarting the search process would avoid some possible legal issues, though that in itself could cause problems.
According to Gonzalez, restarting the search process is not out of the question, especially since, he says, the time for amending the process may have passed.
“It would appear that this process, perhaps, needs to be restarted, and we need to just restart this whole search process all over again,” he said Thursday in a phone interview.
Speaking with WAMC, Gonzalez says he is standing firm on the issue, while voicing disappointment over the use of Bulkley Richardson by the school committee.
“The utilization of a law firm - our law firm, by the way, it's not the law firm of one individual or two, it’s for the whole school committee - to use it to render legal opinions against colleagues, I think that's beyond us, I really do,” he said. “I think that in itself is disappointing.”
The law firm also issued legal opinions on a potential open meeting law violation.
The firm reviewed whether an April 4 email from Gonzalez to school officials violated the state’s open meeting laws.
A copy of the email was enclosed, and shows Gonzalez telling the ad hoc committee he was inclined to introduce the two agenda items, with both listed in the message.
Another member of the committee, Barbara Gresham, was included in the email and replied “I am in support of the two resolutions.”
Collins later responded and stated the email trail violates open meeting law, noting members cannot deliberate by email.
The legal opinion appears to back Collins, noting that even if the original sender did not intend to engage in deliberation and only sought for motions to be put on the agenda, “the email could be interpreted to mean that the committee member was in support of the motion itself.”
The same appeared to apply to Gresham, who’s email, the opinion acknowledges, could have simply been in support of placing items on the agenda.
When asked about that, Gonzalez says the legal opinion does not reflect the totality of the law, particularly as it relates to open meetings.
“What they failed to do, in their legal opinion, was to go back into the Mass General Law and the open meeting law in specific, and cite the totality of that law - the totality of that law provides exception for information to be disseminated, and items to be disseminated for the purposes of setting a meeting agenda to a quorum of a public body.”
As for future actions with the school committee, Gonzalez says the slate of school committee meetings scheduled for next week is likely to include a pivotal step in the superintendent search.
“I think that the definitive moment of this entire matter, I believe, will be dealt with on Thursday, at the full committee’s meeting at city hall,” the vice chair said.
