Indiana

IPS Skirts Open Door Law

By Abdul Hakim-Shabazz

Well, I have to give it to Indianapolis Public Schools, while they are not the brightest bulbs in the socket, they did manage to get around the state’s Open Door Laws and illustrate another reason why the taxpaying public has no confidence in them.

You may recall my blog post last month about a Michigan group that was filming an IPS School Board budget information session for a documentary and they were thrown out by IPS Spokeswoman Mary Louise Bewley for being “disingenuous” even though they did not cause a disturbance nor intrude on the meeting.  The Education Action Group later filed a complaint with the state’s public access counselor’s office.

Public Access Counselor Andrew Kossack  released an opinion saying while  the school district did not violate the state’s open door law because there was not a quorum of board members present.  Kossack did say that if IPS were to hold ” serial meetings” without a quorum of its members it would run afoul of the law.

The Public Access Counselor did not let the District get off scott free.  In his opinion, Kossack noted the following.

It is disturbing that two members of the public were apparently singled out for unspecified “disingenuous purposes” and asked to leave a meeting that was otherwise open to the public and relevant to the public’s business.

I frankly think it’s a little more than disturbing.  Oh well, there’s always next week’s school board election that will hopefully take care of that issue and some IPS employees as well.

Full post as published by Indiana Barrister on April 28, 2010 (boomark / email).