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The Centerville school board violated Iowa’s Open Meetings and Records Act when it gathered in closed session to discuss the resignation of a staffer suspected of improper contact with students, a judge has ruled.
The ruling also indicates there was no factual basis for the school district’s claim that the board had legally met in private only to evaluate the job performance of the counselor. The judge noted the counselor had already signed an agreement to quit and that the minutes of the closed-door discussion shows board members discussed many subjects unrelated to the worker’s job performance.
Centerville Community School District Superintendent Mark Taylor did not immediately respond to calls from the Iowa Capital Dispatch on Tuesday.
The court decision stems from a lawsuit brought last year by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and its executive director, Randy Evans, who alleged the school board violated the Iowa Open Meetings and Records Act by illegally meeting behind closed doors. A trial was held in June.
The lawsuit revolved around the Feb. 3, 2023, board meeting at which members voted unanimously to go into closed session, ostensibly to evaluate the job performance of guidance counselor and head baseball coach Ryan Hodges. Under Iowa law, such evaluations can, in some instances, be legally held in closed session.
After the 30-minute closed-door discussion, the board appeared in open session and voted unanimously, with no public discussion, to approve a resignation agreement with Hodges, at which point the meeting was adjourned. Hodges had been on administrative leave since Nov. 30, 2022.
One of the central questions in the lawsuit was whether the board met privately, as the district claimed, for the lawful purpose of evaluating Hodges’ work performance – as opposed to discussing the merits of Hodges’ resignation agreement and related issues.
In his ruling this week, District Court Judge Mark Kruse found that the board, despite the district’s claims to the contrary, did not meet in closed session to evaluate Hodges’ performance.
“In reading the minutes of the meeting several times, it is difficult to find any consistent, or meaningful, discussion evaluating the professional competency of Mr. Hodges,” Kruse stated in his ruling. “The discussion in general terms centered around the terms of the resignation agreement, avoidance of lawsuits, the leak of (information about Hodges’ conduct) and how to handle fallout from the resignation that was expected. From the words used, it was obvious that Mr. Hodges would not be retained … The discussion in the closed session did not directly relate to the stated reason for the closed session, delving into subjects clearly beyond the stated justification.”
Kruse did not impose any penalties against the individual board members for the violation, ruling that he “could not find, by any measure, there was any bad faith on the part of the board. On the contrary, they were put in a difficult situation dealing with a difficult issue.”
The judge added that while ignorance of the law is not a valid defense, the board members had “simply made a good-faith decision based upon what was put in front of them on short notice when confronted with a troubling situation.”
Evans said the Freedom of Information Council filed the lawsuit “because the Centerville Community School District kept students, parents, residents and taxpayers in the dark once administrators put a guidance counselor and coach on leave amid allegations of improper conduct with a student. The Centerville district withheld facts about its actions. It struck a deal to let the counselor quit. School board members reviewed the deal in a 29-minute closed meeting hastily called for a Friday night and then approved it in a one-minute open session that lacked any discussion or explanation.”
Evans noted that under Iowa law, a court ruling that a public body has violated the state’s open meetings law requires that body to pay the costs and attorney fees of the party who initiated the case.
“This will be a costly expenditure that public officials could have easily avoided by meeting in public as the law always permits and as common sense usually dictates,” he said.