School boards often violate open-meeting laws; news media, parents and citizens should hold them accountable

Local school boards are often repeat offenders when it comes to flouting state open records and meeting laws, argues Editorial Editor David Travis Bland in South Carolina's The State newspaper -- and also published in The Island Packet on Hilton Head. Those lawbreakers ought to be held to account by local news media, parents and the state attorney general, Bland writes.

Citing multiple reported abuses of South Carolina's sunshine laws by school boards across the state, Bland calls for greater public scrutiny of the locally elected boards. South Carolina's open records and meeting laws — much like many other states — govern when a board can hold a private session to discuss matters in secret. Such meetings can be detrimental to the wider public, Bland argues.

A South Carolina school board meets.
(Photo by Tracy Glantz, The State)

"The public also would be left in the dark if — as too often happens — the board illegally voted behind closed doors to give themselves raises," Bland wrote. "Unfortunately, the public rarely finds out if their school board is illegally conducting executive sessions because its members bow to a code of silence."

The State sued one local school district after board members, in a closed session, approved paying a former superintendent $226,368 in a resignation settlement. One board member even resigned because of the private vote. After the newspaper's suit, the board held a public vote on the issue. 

A recording and later police report showed that in another school board "an executive session turned into a verbal slugfest" with one member making profane threats against another, Bland reports.

The attorney general threatened a school board in Charleston County with a lawsuit after a group of parents said the board wasn't giving proper notice of what would be discussed at its meetings, the Charleston Post and Courier reported. 

Local media and state officials shouldn't hold back when it comes to scrutinizing local school boards — which so often evade the public pressure of larger elected bodies — because, Bland writes, that pressure will force boards to better serve the public: "The public needs to know what the board is doing so it can criticize decisions. Criticism makes boards better."