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Paper challenges school board over closed session
by Anna Meadows, Wake Weekly Associate Editor
The Wake Weekly last week accused the Franklin County Board of Education of holding illegal closed meetings to discuss redistricting plans.
An attorney advising the board, however, said the closed sessions were allowed because the board was meeting to discuss a lawsuit filed in July to force the redistricting. Suzy Rook, associate editor for The Wake Weekly, momentarily stopped a meeting from going into closed session last Wednesday with a formal objection. At the heart of the dispute is whether discussions of how the county is to be carved for redistricting are permitted for closed sessions. Michael Crowell, an attorney hired as a consultant in the redistricting lawsuit, contended that the closed session was necessary. "It was not the school board that initiated this litigation, but now that the board has been sued and threatened with additional litigation, it must decide how to respond, and it must do so without announcing its strategy publicly to the plaintiffs," he wrote in a letter to Rook after the meeting. The Wake Weekly contends that redistricting is a general policy matter that must be discussed before the public. "Any discussion of district boundaries is not only of great public interest, but a matter that must not be discussed by the board in private," Rook told the board. "Advice from (Crowell) and strategies to settle this lawsuit may be privileged, we agree, but discussion of the drawing and placement of new district boundaries is not," she added. "I'm sure that the people who filed this lawsuit never dreamed that the board would take the redistricting process away from the public arena," Rook said after the meeting. "If the board was redistricting as it was supposed to do after the last Census, that process would not be done in closed session -- and neither should this," she said. "Just because a redistricting suit has been filed does not mean the decisions about how the county is divided should be carried out behind close doors." Wake Weekly publisher Greg Allen said the board is too broadly interpreting the open meetings law. "If the board and its attorney think they need to discuss this matter in private, there must be something they want to hide," he said. "If not, there is no logical or legal explanation for them to avoid public discussion." The Board of Education will hold a "special-called meeting" with the opportunity for public input and comments on two separate redistricting plans at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 2, in Louisburg Elementary School.
Last Updated On: August 28, 2003
Copyright 2003 The Wake Weekly