a review of the open meeting and i'm very pleased thankful to mr glenn koocher of the massachusetts association of school committees for joining us and taking us through what i think will be a very good refresher for all the twenty members of the plan welcome and thank you for being with us and i know we're going to spend about the next forty five minutes or so going through a presentation you prepared and i also know you're very aware of the town and  new open meeting law i want you to know there's a support group it's called everybody and a lot of districts are getting still getting used to the new law and that's why you may see is actually traveling around the state meeting with school committees up for the benefit of those may be watching elsewhere we're going to talk about some of the definitions what happens before a meeting during a meeting and then connect in session if you have it what happens after the meeting and a little bit has a concern and we also strongly recommend that if there's any concern about whether the law would be followed or how you would deal with a particularly tricky provision of the op that you could call the attorney general's office the key questions for the school committee and the things you need to ask are you know what do you do to ensure that the public deliberations are opened before during and after me and we all know that when we were on the outside looking in we on it we always wanted more forgiving in what was public and what wasn't but we do support the open meeting law and we support full compliance and while i believe that this is one of the nation's strongest open meeting laws i also  credit the attorney general's office with strictly enforcing the law and doing what we can do to comply with just the stock i want to introduce just a brief concept from robert's rules of water not  quickly that you understand lonnie is the servant of the assembly not the master the chair represents the members who are here and the members who are not here and here represents the people who are here and the people who are not here which is why any legally called public meeting you may think that the cheer is talking more than necessary to repeat the motions or to explain what's going on when you all know what's going on that's because the chair is sort of the  the announcer for the meeting to the folks at home almost like a sporting event and the cheer must also protect people from themselves occasionally you may have a scenario where someone may come to the meeting and inadvertently disclose confidential information somebody who comes with a child a teacher who comes with a student and starts talking about the student's background in public which is confidential  oftentimes the chair needs to shut that discussion down in the easiest of protecting the confidentiality of the child be the privileges that a patient enjoys with a clinical caregiver my age would be your attorney or with your religious leader does not legally exist between elected official and constituent so that that's an area where you where you do need to be a bit concerned to protect people's privacy now under the open meeting law a key definition that you need to know is what deliberation is and deliberation is a it's a deliberation by a public body with respect to any matter within the body's jurisdiction and that's any deliberation even if it's not leading to the conclusion of debate over leading to the inaction of the school committee anything you do to enlighten each other and be considered a deliberation and more importantly that deliberation can take place by any means in other words an electronic communication is is considered deliberation anytime you're talking about public business and any time there's a quorum of the public body you're legally deliberating now you are a seven member five member school i'm sorry i knew that your five member school committee so a majority of you may not deliberate anywhere but in public and you don't all have to be present to violate the open meeting law for example something we always use in training if you were to introduce elementary foreign language instruction i don't know whether you have it or not but even if you did you have it well let's say you didn't and someone wanted to introduce elementary foreign language well that would be a policy question of the school committee and let's say that i happen to be a textbook salesman who sells the best mandarin chinese books that may exist so i go to one member of the school committee and i convince you at dunkin donuts that mandarin chinese is the language you need to select for your foreign language instruction and wouldn't beverly come in for a cup of coffee and she joins in the distin the discussion and i managed to corral you and convince you both that you need elementary foreign language in chinese that's two of a majority not a problem but right later that day at burger king you bump into a slattery and you convince her that mandarin chinese is important you've now committed a serial violation of the open meeting law because a majority has now been brought into the discussion and what's happened is you've excluded the rights of the other two members to even present a counter view before decisions or minds have been made up so that's the theory behind requiring the majority to be present and the danger about conversations you may have about delivering in around public issues when you're not there high school is playing and talk about what a great job the referees are doing but if you start talking about eliminating a football program that's a school department issue and that's that's not only suicide but it's the police it's it's another problem so we talk about when a gathering is not a gathering and you're deliberation does not fall under the open meeting room first of all it's not a violation if people are not deliberating but secondly there are certain exemptions for the open meeting law and they include an on site inspection of a project or program so if the school committee is invited to view an innovation school or a charter school or a model program in another district and you go to the site just to review or if you are looking at the construction progress on a building that's being built that is exempt if you're a public or private gathering that is clearly a conference or training or media any kind of a social event it's not designed as a forum for deliberation so if you were at the national school boards association conference in boston next april wore if you were at a social event and you're not talking about school issues you're not in violation of the open meeting law now you may find yourselves as a body at another public meeting and let's say you're all at the select men's meeting because the selectmen holding a meeting on development in foxborough and that is of interest to you all show up at the selectmen meeting but you have to show up and act as a member of the public and participate as any member of the public would be allowed to participate in other words weigh in on the appropriate issues before the select board just as any private citizen might be allowed to participate this comes up periodic lee by the way if a subcommittee of the school committee is meeting say three of you are holding a policy subcommittee and a fourth member wants to come in and observe the sub committee are also covered by the open meeting law just like the school committee is so a subcommittee meeting would be posted and called and if a majority of the school committee then happens to appear at the subcommittee meeting those non sub committee members must act as a member of the public observe and only speak if there is a public comment period for everyone because you don't give up your rights as a citizen but the open meeting law clearly does not want you deliberating with or with your colleagues except in the appropriate setting there are occasions when you can appear before a quasi judicial board that's making a decision sometimes that's the zoning board of zoning appeals it might be the labor relations  commission whatever it might be where you could all go to hear what's happening before you and the town meeting is exempt from the open meeting law in terms of how it effects you if they're not exempt in total from the open meeting law but it would that would  clearly we do miss as you'll see on the bottom of page three there is a supreme judicial court determination that any kind of deliberation via private means whether it's electronically in person over the telephone on skype we suspect even if there's a third person who was an intermediary trying to train the members that could present an open meeting law problem now just a very interesting additional exception if a reporter calls you individually and you don't interview with a reporter collectively you have a right of the freedom of the press to the reporter has a right to interview you and you have the right to speak to the reporter so if the reporter prints a story and said i've interviewed five members of the school committee individually and tentatively this is where they seem to be on foreign language instruction that does not appear to be an open meeting of violations because freedom of speech under the first amendment in the state constitution which is stronger than the federal constitution in every basic right would would rule there there are also some other exclusions that the open meeting law will not fully apply to certainly what's on the agenda and where the agenda has to be placed is subject to the open meeting law but distributing the agenda developing the agenda is not necessarily subject to the open meeting law now the agenda is the property of the assembly usually chair compiles the agenda in collaboration with the superintendent you do have the right to communicate with the chair to give the chair the items that you wish to place on the agenda and i would suggest to you as long as you are setting the table for a public meeting that will not be problematic now if two of you decide to conspire with the chair to keep a fourth person's item off the agenda that would violate the spirit of the law and probably the letter of the law but simply putting the agenda together is not an open meeting on violation similarly distributing the schedule of meetings with a schedule of whenever you'll be discussing the agenda that's designed just to set things up for the public meeting that everyone will know about distributing reports or documents that may be covered at the meeting for those of you have information you'd like to share with your colleagues a couple of things to remember any e mail you send as a school committee member is a public document and less it contains specifically legal econ confidential information if you send a great article around the best foreign languages to learn and it focuses  mandarin chinese send it to your colleagues send it to the board secretary and indicate for your information do not deliberate do not respond and you are covered in that respect let's talk about what happens before and  before the meeting first of all the notice of the meeting must include the name of the body of its meeting the date of the meeting the time of the meeting the location of the meeting and the topics chair reasonably anticipates discussing some districts post the agenda others will post a list of people they believe they will be discussing we recommend a disclaimer on the bottom that indicates that there may be issues that could not be anticipated that would come up at the meeting but we do know that the attorney general will scrutinize carefully whether you could or could not have anticipated something happening obviously flood anticipated parents come to you during public comment period and raise a very serious issue of which you were not aware you couldn't anticipate that some late breaking development from yesterday that reasonably would be excluded you need to post your meetings in a conspicuous legible and easily understandable format in a public place you can certainly do it electronically as well and the posting needs to be up and this is a change forty eight hours prior to your meeting excluding saturdays sundays and legal holidays so if you want to meet monday night the meeting better be posted by thursday afternoon to give you forty eight hours of time where do you post the notice well we strongly recommend you post it with the municipal clerk and post it where it's visible to the public at all hours inside or in the clerk office building you're not a county public body so that won't affect you but as a district public body you want to file and post with every city or town if you if you are part of any type of a  collaboration if you are hosting a meeting of a regional school or some regional organization you want to post it in every town but because you're not part of the region most of what you do or not all of what you do would pretty much need to be posted if your town hall hosted meetings on the door of town hall so everyone could see it we could be covert but it is not then we would need to make sure that we have the full forty eight hours correct attorney general's rules to be posted on remote participation the law allows remote precipitation at the school committee chair to the attorney general's issuance of the guidelines and we believe selectmen or the town meeting depending upon your the rules ultimately say they're not out to give you the data you will probably be able to allow people on the school committee to participate remotely either by conference call or by skype or some legitimate means provided that certain standards are established we don't know what they're going to be yet but they will clearly be that the remote participate or has met the requirements set by the regulations and at the provisional regulations seem to indicate that the attorney general wants people to come to the meeting the fact that you you don't feel like getting up and going to the meeting may not be sufficient for the chair to authorize your participation but if there's an emergency if there isn't an expected schedule change if there is illness or accident whatever it might be you could participate from your home provided that you could see everyone and everyone can see you and everyone can hear you and have full access to the meeting recording the meetings are permitted now executive session recording is permitted under the circumstances of the person being discussed having the opportunity to record the session if it meets the criteria that's new you could always record a public meeting providing you notified the public at hand and this is become a real concern with the advent of hidden microphone and smart pens that that allow people to record conversations without you knowing it in massachusetts if you're being recorded you have the right to know it so and let you know about that the other thing of the law indicates about a meeting no one speaks at a public meeting unless they are recognized by the chair that's that's the only rule that set forward otherwise you use whatever parliamentary procedures you like but no one speaks unless the chair authorizes you to speak have changed somewhat they are all established in chapter thirty a section twenty one and we provided that to you you have a handout from the attorney general's office your mass general laws  also specifies this and and i believe you've all seen it and you should all recognize this you may convene an executive session in new or in order to discuss individual a public officer an employee or staff members character or reputation physical or mental health or to discuss the discipline and dismissal or complaints or charges against an individual it is also my understanding that school committees have legally convened an executive session to discuss complaints against other school committee members if you have the   is aware of this and would be aware of this that person would be notified forty eight hours ahead of the meeting exclusive of saturday sundays and holidays when you notify that person that you may be discussing their character reputation physical and mental health whatever might be they have the right to know when the meeting is held they have the right to be present they have the right to speak in their own to be half and they have the right to be represented and if the person being discussed demands it they can force you into public session if they object to an executive session then the session is called if they demanded executive session the decision about whether to convene an executive session is up to you you may want to hold  you make that judgment make that judgment yoursel person who is being discussed in executive session may conduct an audio recording or transcription of the executive session as it relates to them that's brand  new our attorneys would always advise you never to record an executive session because if you're doing an audio record you can't really demonstrate whose voice it is that you're hearing in some comment might be mistreated but now the law has changed so that's important now the person who is representing the person you're talking about may be present but not necessarily participate that would be up to the had said if the individual discussing your character reputation could force the school committee to have to to leave executive session go into public the public but it would be the decision of the chair as to whether or not they would do that no it would be the it would be the decision of the school committee about whether to have the session in executive session it is the decision of the person being discussed to force the as that is correct other purposes of executive session you may conduct strategy sessions for negotiations collective bargaining or contract negotiations with non union personnel now the open meeting law here reflects labor relations law generally collective bargaining is done exactly of session and it's an unfair labor practice to force the unions to negotiate in public you could negotiate in public if both parties agreed but i'll tell you right now that's a very foolish strategy on both parts now that's strategy negotiations and collective bargaining sessions and contract negotiations with anybody else that doesn't have collective barking at the negotiations once you've come to an agreement on the negotiation then you convene in public and approve what you've done however for union negotiations you probably want to have a provisional set of points of agreement and not a contract in writing ready to go because you don't want to have to sign your part of a contract only to have the union rejected in public and then you have to go back to the bargaining table with you having given your positions away and i'm not suggesting that would happen here or that it has but it could if you didn't agree tentatively to a set of principles that you wanted to finalize then the contract comes forward it's agreed to in public you sign it it's a public document everybody can see it and you move forward similarly agreeing in principle with those individuals you probably have several employees of the district who are not entitled to collective bargaining and you'd want to agree in principle get everything sort of lined up and then bring the written contract to the public and sign it in public and that also becomes a public document remember every contract every personnel contract in the district is a public document you might do the same thing with your legal counsel for example if you have a contract with your legal counsel on retainer in you to prove that in public as well third were actually fourth security personnel devices screening personnel or device deployment and strategy in other words you don't necessarily want to give away the the pass codes the security devices that you have to protect your building make it easy for the thieves to come in and get what they want that you can clearly general's purpose or intent with the new open meeting and i think yes so if you were convening an executive session and we will we'll get to that but i might as well just skip it for a moment you convene in public for your meeting the chair announces the purpose for which you will be convening executive session after a motion that's made you will vote by roll call to convene an executive session and  majority of the school committee as fully constituted must approve going into executive session so if two of you were sick and three of you were here and only two of you want to convene an executive session you may not do so you need three of five members in fact if two of you had resigned and it was a three member school committee you could not convene an executive session without three to five votes to convene an executive a change into the law i think generally speaking the committee regardless of who's been chair has done a good job complying with everything you've just said i think the one thing that one of the things that we're going to do a little better for the sake of the public is to be a little more specific as to the purpose of entering into executive session to help wherever and when you do that when you specify the purpose for the executive session please make sure that the identities of the people who are entitled to confidentiality are protected and even in the minutes of executive session which must be approved as quickly as possible you may read back information from minutes that you release some people are entitled to perpetual confidentiality and give you an example if if you're discussing an allegation against a teacher jones and you discussed that executive session the identity of teacher jones may remain confidential but a teacher jones decides to hold a press conference and announce that i have been used of this sort of person jones is subsequently indicted for something that you  discussed and it's no longer necessary then the the protection they you no longer exists but in the call of the meeting you want to make sure that you protect the identity of the people who are legally entitled to that and then started going to the interruption but you just mentioned something else that i think is very important and i want to make sure our understanding is right but you said in your discussion just then the executive session minutes need to be released in as timely a manner as possible that is correct and i think that's an area that we could do better in some of its objective because some school committee said held off because certain elements are still confidential for example when the superintendent search committee interviews candidates will the names of the people who don't go forward remain confidential forever unless they identify themselves so you probably want to release those minutes but with the name yeah i think if you if we get to have a saying that before we always just said you know you're nonunion and then whatever the superintendent wanted to discuss with us it's what they had it's outstanding time truth and we just talked to protect yourselves who might want to do that for me so for example tonight's magenta flatiron it says executive sessions for the purpose of discussing negotiations with its bus driver specifically so that's the only association we can ask us tonight that's all you need  call me but we wouldn't be it we wouldn't throw in discussion about any other marketing things not in the less you planned on discussing the implications for other units if the bus drivers are the first contract you're negotiating and they're going to be the example for the others you might want to be able to discuss the implications of what would happen elsewhere so he'd say  discussing with the bus drivers and the implications of the contract as they may apply to any other bargaining units one of the think when it comes to i have to tell you this committee probably has done you're not going to release those minutes and under the law you know you're protected in that until you through the deliberating that they don't have to be released that is true because the minute you also contain your bargaining strategy right many attorneys will tell you it's like something of the right to copyright so i think you know sometimes when things are with out there without intent that we're not through so therefore we don't have to raise that and i think that's where the fine line comes in but i just don't want us to just go off and start reputation glad not to the point we need to invite the alleged criminals into the executive session if you can also consider the purchase exchange release of real property or real stake because you don't if you're if you're considering in leasing an empty building or leasing a building for yourselves you don't want your bargaining position in public you want to be able to negotiate that appropriately the section twenty one  talks about complying with any general last special laws federal grant and requirements that almost always relates to privacy if somebody has a right to privacy like a student or a member of the faculty or if there are medical issues at hand or other things that relate to privacy they almost always come in under a section seven section eight applies to action doesn't apply to the school committee applies to possibly your search committee to consider or interview applicants by a preliminary screening committee and the attorney general does not allow the school committee to act as a preliminary screening committee that would be a search committee for someone for a group of people hiring someone that you are authorized to hire so superintendent search committees always come under this provision and it's for an initial screening and interview when you have a declaration that open meetings will be detrimental in obtaining qualified applicants and for that the supreme judicial court has told us if one person tells you that it would be detrimental to that person's interest in applying for the job then you may and then let's say they have three to four candidates they want to send forward those interviews could be conducted in executive session by the school committee know after the search committee has done everything after that it's public so you're only talking about school committees the leaders who sit on the preliminary that is correct and that's why you would never have a majority of the school committee sitting on the search committee and it's really it's good advice on that  flight selected applicants and their names will be compiled it has happened that's exactly right and and i saw your protocol so what you did was you called the candidates and said will you accept the position your name is going forward you understand everything will be public and if you go forward it's all public and everybody out there can help you with your search with you like it or not  confer with a mediator in executive session and that might apply to you if collective bargaining negotiations broke down and you need to engage in mediation it's unclear about other mediation that you might be involved with  dispute with the vendor and might be covered by this provision but this is almost always collective bargaining and you can also discuss trade secrets in executive session you know we might have wanted to evoke tech schools  be innovative things with biotech that might have trade secrets but this is largely for other people that another time let's clarify one of them so one of the things that come out of this is i think in the past in maybe of the old law ok we have you know i would represent three hundred fifteen school committees and i hear from them regularly and there are people out there who sort of make a sport of  meanwhile complaints disrupting the progress of meetings we just do it probably because they can and the open meeting law has given them a vehicle to find reasons to  challenge you also sometimes when collective bargaining breaks down the unions will file a meeting or complaints because it looks great in the media put you want to be offensive and it's very easy to allege something  risk well i was wrong sorry let's move on it is much easier to convince the public into a new to confuse the public than to convince an authority that you've violated the law we talked about the procedure of the roll call the majority of the members and then all the votes be entered into the minutes in the chair announcing that you'll be going into executive session the chair also must announce whether or not you'll be reconvening in the old days school committees would go into executive session or not just school committees everybody can do executive session the public would go home and you cannot of executive session and you might finish the business of the meeting and people would not know that the meeting had ended but superintendent you might be talking about the special director you might be talking about at any one of you might be talking about all the cafeteria workers if there weren't any union  was strategy so in that meeting we go from strategy and we do we and we should vote on that strategy or vote on any event that is still acceptable but if we vote no on anything other than the strategy in a confidential setting but when you're done negotiating before you have a contract in writing that signed you inactive in public can vote on it in public and then the signatures take place and it becomes a p i would not put a contract in executive session i would come to a tentative agreement subject to the production of a written formal contract and then when the written formal contract is there then you can build it public but you will have done the key negotiations ahead of time nice to know if you're like you know it's not even that i mean if you're going to put out a lot ok first of all if it doesn't say that i don't know if we're ever we don't see the consensus or are an understanding that this specifically say in here that just because you've got something in executive session that you have to come out and vote for him in open session i don't think i've ever seen but you wouldn't vote it in executive session you would develop the principles of agreement and then and i wasn't there wasn't i know what went on before a couple months ago but i can honestly say researching it myself that it's hard to follow something that's not explicitly stated it is very hard to follow that it seems to be different from what makes the best sense to you but that's the way the the new law has been written and that we believe it's the intent of the people drafting it and i guess if keith you wanted we could pose that question officially to be attorney general because the attorney general has indicated sent me the questions i would respond to them through the response and then finalize my response we have a few issues that we're still working on  know we'd like we we have a few things pending as well so that may be a question that needs to be clarified once and for all but i would tell you that the opinions of the attorney general once they're issued would be very difficult to overturn because the law gives the attorney general the authority to to create interpretations through regulation requests out of the superintendent's evaluation under the open meaning of his interesting  another subject for another time is the impact of the educator evaluation regulations on the superintendent's evaluation because all educators will be required to have contracts structured about that in your view looking at student performance data and other things however the new law specifically overturned the supreme judicial court decision in a in a recent walen case about what happens and  the superintendent's evaluation is not considered a confidential personnel document because it is created by members of the public body  superintendent's evaluation generally the members would submit their there are evaluations to a central individual any discussion of the superintendent's professional competence must be in public you may discuss the superintendent's character reputation physical or mental health executive's session but professional competence has to be discussed in public and then once the evaluation is done the evaluation and the individual contributions of the members that were submitted in writing would be available to anyone who wishes to see them they would be public documents the public is allowed to scrutinize the board's judgement of the people it evaluates and that's a big change from the previous interpretation after the meeting your minute scary thought you are minutes are public as soon as the meeting ends in draft form so with the board secretary has hand written minutes of the meeting at the end of the meeting today could any documents used at the meeting should be referenced because they would have to be available to the public if the public wanted to see them you would need to have a discussion and a summary of the topics that are included this does not need to be verbatim it doesn't need to be in deep detail but it does need to give the the people at home an opportunity to understand what was taken up at the meeting and of course motions ma votes taken would always be recorded any decisions made and any other actions taken would be recorded in the minutes the difference here is that that documents reference documents referenced would need to be identified and that the minutes would be immediately available to people who might want to see them and certainly the formal official minutes would be available in formal and efficient form as soon as they were done understand that but if there's a problem understanding what's going on i thought we had the right to vote whether or not we want to admit it's all we wanted videotaped i think it's i think we need to ask be turning our nasa because it is good at that point i mean this is worth number one and if we have a clear cut copy of exactly what went on that readings that certainly it's at anybody's disposal just to suggest that what you say may not seem as clear to the people watching the tape as maybe when they appear in writing the lyrics to most songs are indecipherable but if you see the lyrics on a sheet of music you know what they are i'd say that that's a fair analogy to the minutes of the meeting  you might say the school committee discussed the building conditions at the jones school and the the fact that the building may not meet code as opposed to identifying every single thing that was raised that was problematic that the building people need to know then here's what you talked about here's why you talked about it and what you did about it by your emotions and actions to obtain the reports that you discussed at the meeting with the materials that you discussed with the minutes they can file a freedom of information act freedom of information act request with you and you have ten days to turn it over if you believe that the information is confidential and should not be turned over it's up to the person seeking the information to file for the complaint the secretary of state's office on public records supervised visits to get that material from  the public records at your meeting would include your minutes notes recordings which cereals used and any documents in exhibits at the meeting they would be available and some from the people that want  public records exemptions and processes that relate to them certain information about public employees is public and some information is  not applications and supporting materials are not public records resumes are included in the public record for people that the school committee would have the responsibility for h performance evaluations are not public documents their confidential personnel documents except in the case of the superintendent the theory being that the chief executive officer reporting to a publicly elected  should have a public evaluation and that's the decision of the legislature certain information of course can be indefinitely withheld that includes personnel files that includes medical records and personal information  stuff that is attorney client privilege information that they have received from or submitted to the office of the child advocate and certain north forcemeat investigatory meeting materials that could  disclosed prejudiced the enforcement of law the secretary of state's office was exempt those but what's public contracts collective bargaining agreements job descriptions and salaries not the payroll because that would include confidential information like social security numbers and numbers of dependents but individual salaries would be available to the public executive session minutes as we talked about  would be withheld until it's no longer necessary to keep them confidential and then they would be released to the public certain things may be withheld in their entire it is appropriate to maintain that level of confidentiality we talked about the ten day period if there is a complaint the school committee has reviewed the minutes and they're no longer exempt or if they didn't school me may review at the next meeting or within thirty days whichever is shorter it's important to get those executive session minutes at least before the school committee  clarification about what can and cannot be released if you have a complaint with the attorney general's office the attorney general will receive complaints the complaint has to be filed with the public body within thirty days of the alleged violation then the public body responds to the attorney general once the attorney general is aware of it you have fourteen days to respond and the attorney general  do a phone in career you may do with hearing and maim pose a civil penalty against the school committee i don't think you're going to be as wimpy trot you won't be liable personally as much as you would be as a of misplaced judgement by the board that thought they were doing something illegal and turned out not to be he would almost never see a chair saying i don't care what the law says we're doing this in executive session and  and get cited that that just never happens but if it did i'll bet there'd be a cash penalty involved and as remedies if you do violate the open meeting law of the attorney general could notified that part of the meeting will overturn the action of the meeting anything taken require you to comply and full require you to do would do all the work if you did something without adversely affected an employee you might have to provide that employee with back pay for inappropriate sanction you know all school committee members are required to attend orientation to be open meeting so that's that's not unusual in the civil penalties could be a thousand dollars each violation so the key is full disclosure of the meeting demonstrate that the board acted in good faith to get the advice of your legal counsel if you are acting upon the advice of your municipal council or your legal counsel you doing what you did because your attorney told you to the attorney general is going to consider that seriously before deciding whether you intended to violate the law and that's why i think in your case the attorney general has not issued a severe sanction against their you or school committee or for that matter any other than i'm aware of except to suggest you need to do this differently in the future so you know what happens at the meeting did you know what deliberations are about all we've reviewed minutes we talked about the meet the record of the meaning and we talk about executive meeting role but that is the basic element of it and we're very proud of the school committees that have really done a good job complying with the open meeting law and the attorney general has not issued any fines against school committees has simply indicated that through your best intent you may have violated the open meeting law and this is what do you need to do next time and as we tell everybody just look forward build look back the tree general was not in a position to talk about high performing school committees that focus on student achievement and whose kids do very well but i can do that so i congratulate you on being an exemplary school committee and  that's not what you intended when you're not sitting in our meeting you're not actually knowing what copeland yeah i do just say that reasonable people will see the same set of circumstances differently and i just have to live with that typically it's a departure under the new day and i think we want to be crystal clear before we have we have two courses of action on a lot of these fine questions these i say fine i mean mary questions i'm for one we can write them to the attorney general and ask for an official opinion number two if we don't like the official opinion based on the law we could petition the legislature to to deal with the law we are specifically interested in getting the legislature to deal with the question of whether or not a school committee can act as its initial screening committee for the selection of the superintendent the attorney general doesn't allow it because that is the interpretation of the law we believe the interpret we believe the intent of the legislature was different and we may be pursuing that particular question so my question for you then creditable and bruce but here ok is chairman what is the quickest way to facilitate that to draft a question for the for the to think that's what's hard about things that are passed through the legislature because when you go back and look at the intent and what the final interpretation is and what their draft from laura you know a lot of times when it comes down to winning five hears you always go back to what was the intent and that's how the decisions are made how sweet the sound of one's own words coming from another source what do you think i tell the department of education where constantly apps no regulations exceed the authority given to always that want to get to get the clarification but spin speaking as someone whose legal education comes from watching television i will tell you i agree with you but i have to say that the attorney general letter of the law as it was written and i think the you know was it peter stuyvesant said to the man on the gallows i didn't say this was theer i said it was legal and i think the attorney general is interpreting the law as it's written and it might be for us to prevail upon the legislature to give us a little more flexibility on the collective bargaining negotiation so that because there is just the one thing we mention it if it if it doesn't specifically say so you might not even realize that you're not following the their interpretation because you don't know they have one so then you calling me they tell you what their interpretation is and then if you just happen didn't happen to call about that you would even realize they had one just so i think it can be possible even going into the future that there's an area that isn't specifically addressed that you don't know you should ask so sometimes it's the questions you don't know you should and that's why you'll simply get an instruction you've interpreted it differently from us we think you're wrong don't do it again area so i think you've got it i suspect that there are a number of other districts who might find themselves in the very same position you did without knowing it so maybe we can you know will warn them about committing a cited for meetings that had to do just out of curiosity wait the attorney generals took liberation and definition of what they intended with the open mean when did when was that information released gave us a sheet that stated this is that so that's what i'm a little i'm a little unclear we know the law i was changing we thought we were in compliance come to find out we may or may not be based on their interpretation so when did they that's curious for help other districts which is terrific and one thing i never question is this committee's intent and we're fortunate i think that everyone on this committee and i say this as the newbie in the group acts in the spirit of what you talked about so we've learned some things