An Editorial Opinion of The Citizen Newspapers— Until some email correspondence between The Citizen and the Fayette County School System’s public relations department, the system was set to violate public trust by allowing a committee to meet in secret on changes to elementary school boundary lines.

That correspondence is detailed in a document below, a two-sheet publication that was delivered to many thousands of the county’s students to carry home to parents.

A last-minute change of heart by the system allowed the media and citizens to attend what had been intended initially by school officials — particularly Assistant Superintendent Sam Sweat — as a closed meeting.

At that meeting the committee received data and other information compiled by a $200-an-hour consultant hired by the Board of Education with public tax money.

That data will be used to form the committee’s opinion on redrawing the attendance lines for all the county’s elementary schools, which will translate into a recommendation to the Board of Education on the redistricting issue.

To be fair, no board of education members attended the meeting. But that did not lessen the fact this committee has been charged with performing a function specifically reserved to the school board itself.

By virtue of that power alone, Georgia law (and the state constitution) require these meetings to be held in the open.

We can understand the system bureaucrats' public relations instinct in wanting to quash the painful openness of the redistricting process.

But parents (and other taxpayers) deserve to know what “facts” are being used to determine how to change the school boundaries while the process of redrawing the lines is still fluid.

Perhaps the worst of this entire situation is the pronouncement of Assistant Superintendent Sweat that the closed committee process was “transparent.”

That’s all warm and fuzzy, but the fact is that instead of being transparent, closed-door secret meetings put the parents and the taxpayers in the dark.

The secrecy was at the recommendation of consultant Kelley Carey, who doesn’t want partial data being shared in the community.

The key phrase in the system’s rebuttal is the following: “The intent was never to ‘hide’ information from the public but to allow the process to unfold in a positive, productive manner before unveiling the proposed boundaries to the board and superintendent at a series of public workshops.”

The system’s officials apparently are clueless about the irony of their government double-speak. Here’s a translation of their excuses to conduct public business behind closed doors:

“This information will confuse you and may upset you. We know best, so we will tell you what you need to know when we determine you need to know it. And we will make sure the information you get is positive and shows us in a good light.”

Is that the Fayette County School System’s idea of “positive” “transparency”?

We have a different bias. We like government to conduct itself in the open, where we who pay for it can see everything that’s going on in time to influence the outcome of the final decision.

Even though it is the recipient of the lion’s share of all Fayette property tax dollars, the school system is the most closed of all our local governments.

The only “news” you will hear out of them will be relentlessly “good” news. They have a full-time public relations function, a 24-hour-a-day cable channel that features only “good” news, and a “good news” machine that churns out tens of thousands of copies of rebuttals to anyone who dares challenge the party line that “everything is getting better and better every day in every way.”

But the real news about our school system is not always good. And the school system is not always eager for public accountability. Thus The Citizen’s “threat” to take legal action to enforce the people’s right to know.

We ask the man in charge of the system — Superintendent John DeCotis — Is this what you intended? Is this the way your subordinates are expected to behave toward the public that pays them? And are closed meetings and officially-hand-picked school representatives your idea of "transparency"?

The public that foots the bill for your salary and the salaries of every one of your subordinates looks forward to hearing from you about your definition of "transparency."

We say: Keep government accountable. Keep it in the open. That’s the way local government should be conducted.

[The document below was sent home with many Fayette elementary school students last week. It is posted on the Board of Education's website (www.fcboe.org).]

Clarification to articles in The Citizen regarding elementary boundary redistricting

Aug. 22, 2007 – “New School Zones to be Drawn in Secret” stated that the voluntary citizen advisory committee, whose job is to come up with a proposed elementary redistricting map to present to the Fayette County Board of Education for consideration, will redraw the lines in secret without the press or public present.

The reporter failed to mention the reasons school officials cited for restricting the meetings to committee members. These reasons were stated to the public and press during a boundary meeting on Aug. 16.

First, the data being used by the committee may change from meeting to meeting as additional information is gathered. Any data released to the public in the early meeting stages of the committee most likely will not reflect the data that will be used to create a proposed boundary map.

In order to avoid misinformation being disseminated to the public, committee members agreed to meet as a committee only.

The second reason for this type of meeting was to allow committee members the privacy to speak openly and honestly about their views on how the boundary lines should be drawn.

The intent was never to “hide” information from the public but to allow the process to unfold in a positive, productive manner before unveiling the proposed boundaries to the board and superintendent at a series of public workshops.

In the third paragraph of the article, the reporter states, “Sweat told the committee, which features one member from each school, to use the side door on the school board building to enter the meeting.”

Again, the reporter failed to mention that Sweat (Sam Sweat, assistant superintendent of operations) told the committee to use the side door because the next meeting would be held in Room 2, which is next to the side door.

Instructing the committee to use the side door was for their convenience and not an attempt to enter the building unnoticed as implied in the article.

At the end of the article, the reporter mentions that committee members will update parents at each school about what is being discussed.

This is an important part of this process. The intent is to be as transparent as possible so that the public understands the decisions the committee members make and the data that supports those decisions.

When seeking accurate information about the boundary process, the public is encouraged to talk to the boundary representative at the school or schools in their community or visit the elementary boundary redistricting page on the FCBOE website.

Aug. 29, 2007 – “Schools Open Up Meetings to Redraw Elem. Lines” states that “After a threat of an open meetings lawsuit from The Citizen, the Fayette County School System has decided that Thursday night’s meeting of the redistricting committee will be a public meeting.”

On Aug. 22, 07, Public Information Specialist Melinda Berry-Dreisbach received the following email from John Thompson:

On Aug. 22, 2007, at 1:46 p.m., John Thompson wrote:

Melinda,
We have just had our afternoon staff meeting. Cal wanted me to tell you that he expects we will be able to attend next Thursday's meeting about the boundaries. Our legal sources are telling us this is an open meeting, and not allowing the press to attend would constitute an open meetings violation. Cal also wants all the documentation the consultant supplies to the committee as soon as it is disseminated. Failure to do so, in his words, would result in a lawsuit against the school system by The Citizen.
John Thompson

Sam Sweat consulted with legal counsel Phil Hartley and was told that the closed meetings were not a violation of the Sunshine Law because the committee was not appointed by the Fayette County Board of Education. The committee is made up of volunteers selected at each individual school.

Although the school system had no legal obligation to do so, the decision was made to open the meetings to the public after Sam Sweat consulted with the committee to see if they were fine with the media and public observing their actions.

On Aug. 27, 2007, Melinda Berry-Dreisbach sent the following email to John Thompson:

John:
As per our legal counsel, the boundary committee meetings do not fall under the Sunshine Law for open meetings since neither the Fayette County Board of Education nor the superintendent appointed the committee nor would be present at redistricting discussions.

The reason for restricting the meeting to committee members was so to create a forum where they would feel comfortable to speak openly and honestly.

We understand that redistricting is a sensitive issue for the community and we want the process to be as transparent as possible.

Sam Sweat checked with some of our citizen committee members and they are fine with the media observing the meetings.

Any materials disseminated to the committee are subject to Open Records Law and will be made available to the public.
Melinda Berry-Dreisbach, Public Relations
Fayette County Schools

Boundary representatives will inform parents at each school about the actions of the boundary committee following each meeting. When seeking accurate information about the boundary process, the public is encouraged to talk to the boundary representative at the school or schools in their community or visit the elementary boundary redistricting page on the FCBOE website.

[The above document was posted online at the system’s website (www.fcboe.org) and also was reproduced as a hard-copy two-sheet document that was handed out to several thousand students in elementary schools around the county.]