After being hammered by the public, it seems Vermont’s DOE Education Challenges Design Team has retreated from insisting on closed door meetings.
(And special thanks appears to be owed to the Dover, VT school board for their leading role in this.)
But the rationale for hiding the goings on in our state government is still being upheld:
[VT DOE spokesperson] Remick said it was easy to understand why a finance manager or a superintendent would want to be able to talk about issues without worrying how their comments would be perceived by the public
(Decision reversed: Ed. dept. opens meetings to public, Brattleboro Reformer, 03/13/10)
Uh … no, Ms. Remick, you have it entirely wrong. It’s easy to understand why we shouldn’t trust decisions based upon comments that have to be hidden from view, but it is most assuredly NOT easy to understand why a professional in their respective fields should feel hamstrung by the notion that people are going to make interpretations of what they, the professionals, say.
What we need is a robust defense of the public’s right … not necessarily need … to know, because otherwise we end up re-arguing the above over and over and over.
The argument was that these meetings were intradepartmental, and that the departments don’t appropriate funds or make changes in policy. As Ed Department CFO Bill Talbot said, every other department that has to come up with recommendations for budget reductions under Challenges for Change is having meetings that aren’t open to the public. They way he put was that other department heads walk down the hallway, pull people out of their offices, they go into a conference room, and have their meeting. Since the Ed Department deals with some 280 school districts, they brought in people from outside the department. The attorney general, apparently, agreed.
But it was Windham County Senator Jeanette White that pointed out the crucial difference between the education department and the other departments. At a committee meeting on Wednesday, and in a letter to the education commmissioner, White pointed out that the recommendations of the other departments will be in regard to how they operate; the recommendations of the education department will have a far-reaching affect outside of the department. Their recommendations will likely affect every school district, every school, school budget, school board, and every household in the state. White told me should would fight the fight to ensure the meetings are open to the public.
On Wednesday evening, shortly before a public hearing at which 200 people crowded in to speak, mostly against, state-mandated school consolidation got underway, the commissioner said he’d probably decide to open the meetings to the public but, he said, it had nothing to do with Dover’s letter. 😀