The following piece was submitted by Meghan Hennesy and Colleen Schultz, candidates for the Mahomet-Seymour School Board.
The following opinions and statements are not those of the Mahomet Daily or it’s parent company Sangamon Currents, LLC. Sangamon Currents welcomes submissions from candidates as long as they are factual (cited-we do not go in and fact check) and are not slanderous towards other candidates. The publication also welcome letters of support that follow the same guidelines.
Do the ends justify the means?
When we are thrilled with outcomes and decisions that have been made it is sometimes difficult to reflect on the process that got us to that point. But process matters—both when you like the decision and when you don’t.
Policies, procedures, and even the law are outlined in advance to ensure that decisions are made fairly and in an unbiased manner to protect the community and the individuals involved.
Following rules and laws aren’t optional for our public servants. Our elected officials have a responsibility to our community to operate within both the letter of and, we believe, the spirit of the law.
There has been a lot of discussion as of late about transparency in our school district. Both candidates and school board members are claiming to value open communication with the public.
But actions speak louder than words.
On Friday, the school board announced that they have hired a new principal of Middletown Prairie starting next year.
We want to be VERY clear here; we have only heard positive, wonderful, amazing things said about the choice. We believe that this new hire is one in the best interest of the kids, the teachers and the community at large.
We are thrilled with this outcome.
At the same time, it gave us great pause when the announcement was made.
We are delighted with the ends but what about the means? How and when was this hire discussed?
There have been no meetings published, either open or closed sessions, since the posting for this position was made on March 14.
The Open Meetings Act requires both open and closed session meetings to be publicly announced in advance.
How can it be that the Open Meeting Act was followed for the discussion that had to be made for the board to announce a hiring decision?
The press release indicated that he would be officially voted in during the April 15th meeting, but the DECISION to make the hire has clearly been made.
Could the decision have been made outside of a formal meeting? According to their own board policy “…a Board member should not facilitate interactive communications by discussing District business in a series of visits with, or telephone calls or emails to, Board members individually.”
So, if they were following the open meetings act and their own policy, how did this decision get made legally?
And these questions don’t even address the issue of the discussions that should have taken place to discuss how this vacancy would be handled. Who made the decision to conduct an internal only search? Who approved the job description? Who determined the timing of the hiring process?
These general questions are issues that are appropriate to be discussed in public. Other school districts discuss such issues and vote on them in open meetings. For example, earlier this month the Prairie View Ogden school district approved posting a junior high special education teacher opening for 2019-20.
By law, the open meetings act is intended to protect the citizen’s right to know and so the provisions for exceptions (for things such as the privacy rights of individuals) are to be strictly construed against having closed meetings.
Here is the crux of the issue, can you say you are for transparency and then hold discussions and make decisions outside of the view of the public–outside of the meeting notification process required by law under the open meetings act as well as your own policy?
This should be concerning to anyone who feels transparency is important.
We believe it is important and critical for a school board to be transparent. After all, if you aren’t critical of the disregard for process when you 100% support the decision that the process led to, which in this case we do, then you will find yourself in really big trouble when that same disregard for process leads to decisions with which you disagree.
