The school board will hold a public work session on district facilities and student performance Wednesday, rather than a “mid-year retreat” on those topics as originally announced on Friday. The switch came Tuesday after a state official interviewed by the Pelham Examiner said the topics on the agenda must be discussed in open session.
In a new meeting notice issued Tuesday at 3:29 p.m., the school board said it will convene a brief business meeting at 4 p.m. Wednesday in the Pelham Middle School library, followed by a work session in room 105E of Pelham Memorial High School to “continue its review of student performance data and discussion about district facilities.” The district will not be recording the work session, so anyone who wants to hear the trustees’ thoughts on plans for major facilities improvements and expansions as well as student test data will have to head to room 105E. (Get there early. It’s a classroom.)
The first notice on the meeting, which was issued on Friday, billed the session as “a mid-year retreat.”
The Pelham Examiner contacted Kristin O’Neill, deputy council of the New York State Committee on Open Government, about the retreat, and she said in an interview a discussion on facilites and student performance data is “public business and those conversations need to be held within the context of an open meeting.”
“The Open Meetings Law doesn’t contemplate retreats,” O’Neill said. “That word is just never used in the Open Meetings Law. There’s nothing. Basically, the Open Meetings Law states that anytime a public body gathers for the purposes of conducting and discussing public business, it’s a meeting that must be held in compliance with the Open Meetings Law. There’s no exemption for something that an entity wants to call a retreat.”
“When you start calling anything you want to discuss a retreat,” she said, that “defeats the purpose of the Open Meetings Law.” The Committee on Open Government is an independent program housed within the New York State Department of State that is responsible for overseeing and advising citizens and officials on the Open Meetings Law, the Freedom of Information Law and the Personal Privacy Protection Law.
Once School Board President Jackie De Angelis was sent the statements from O’Neill for comment, De Angelis and the district changed the meeting type and De Angelis insisted it was always open to the public, though she did not comment on public attendance Monday when replying to an Examiner email that stated the meeting should be open. Also, the work session is not being recorded or fed live on YouTube as Pelham school board work sessions usually are.
De Angelis said in a statement emailed by a district spokesman to the Examiner, “After your inquiry and discussion with legal counsel, we’ve changed the name of the meeting from retreat to work session. As we shared previously, the board of education will convene on Wednesday afternoon to reflect on its priorities for the school year—specifically around facilities planning and student academic outcomes. Consistent with open meetings law and our commitment to transparency, the time, location and topics were shared with the community via public notice, which will be updated to reflect the change. Whether a retreat or a work session, discussions about public business, including tomorrow’s work session, have always been open to the public.”
The board of education had already set its own precedent on the public nature of both topics, holding a presentation on student performance at its Nov. 6 business meeting, reviewing a district facilities survey and five-year capital plan from architects at KG&D during a Sept. 18 work session and hearing an update on the facilites effort at its Dec. 4 business meeting. That facilities is public business was made clear from the architects’ report—which sees the need for as much as $96 million in repairs and exapansions at Pelham schools—and by yesterday’s closure of Pelham Middle School after equipment on the roof leaked into several classrooms.
‘To Keep Buildings Open and Running All Winter’
At the Dec. 4 school board meeting, Facilities Director John Condon provided an update from a joint meeting held by the board’s facilities and finance committees during which KG&D architects and committee members discussed the district’s needs for heating systems, roof and masonry repairs and other work “to keep buildings open and running all winter.”
American Disabilities Act (ADA) “compliance at Siwanoy is 35 years past the passage of the ADA and is on the agenda,” said Condon. “Improving air quality and ventilation in various buildings and air conditioning goes along with that, potentially.”
With projected enrollment increases at the elementary schools, said De Angelis, there is an “opportunity to right-size the schools, particularly Siwanoy and Colonial, and move away from basement classrooms and have more classrooms of a standard size.”
That would mean expansions at both buildings. In the KG&D presentation on Sept. 18, the architects recommended a two-story addition at Colonial that would include classrooms above a cafeteria and a two-story addition with an elevator at Siwanoy that would create new Kindergarten and fifth grade classrooms and a separate cafeteria facing the playground.
“Siwanoy Kindergarten classrooms are two-thirds the size of standard Kindergarten-size classrooms,” said De Angelis. She also called for a solution to “a capacity issue at the middle school and high school. The district will have to provide more classroom and cafeteria space and updated science labs that are more state of the art.”
