Gilroy
– Just weeks after the furor surrounding the Las Animas naming
process settled down, the Gilroy Unified School District Board of
Trustees might have another Brown Act violation on its hands.
Gilroy – Just weeks after the furor surrounding the Las Animas naming process settled down, the Gilroy Unified School District Board of Trustees might have another Brown Act violation on its hands.
Instead of the board designating somebody to negotiate on its behalf with school administrators of the possibility of a 7 percent raise, Superintendent Edwin Diaz took it upon himself to assume that responsibility.
“We never had that discussion to give superintendent Diaz that direction,” said Trustee Rhoda Bress.
While the board then met with Diaz in a closed session to discuss his negotiations with the administrators, known as the Unrepresented Employees, the Brown Act requires that school boards meet in closed sessions only with designated negotiators. These procedures are meant to ensure that the negotiator represents the district’s best interest during talks and that the public has the right to participate in and monitor its local government.
“It’s a complete departure from the law concerning open meetings,” said Terry Franke, general counsel at Californians Aware, a nonprofit promoting open government.
As a result, Franke said, citizens could bring a civil suit against the school board.
“The remedy” for the school board, Franke said, “would be to have the superintendent and board disclose everything that was discussed in that closed discussion.”
Even that, Franke said, might not be enough.
“The problem is that even if they revisited it in an open session,” he said, “it’s very likely they made up their minds in the closed session.”
Bress and the board president, Tom Bundros, took a class last weekend on The Brown Act.
“I not sure I’d characterize it as a violation of the Brown Act,” Bundros said. “It was one off from the process we usually follow and in the future I’ll be advocating that we do change it. It would make it much cleaner.”
