By Stacie Galang, reporter, The Salem News, Salem, Mass.
The Peabody School Committee in Peabody, Mass., had picked up the habit of conducting closed-door meetings without ever releasing those minutes publicly. So in April, I verbally asked the school district to release their executive session minutes from the last year, and then I waited.
The School Committee would take three months to hand over their minutes to The Salem News and when members did, they included only one-third or 10 of their 31 meetings starting from February 2009.
When I requested the minutes over the phone the week of April 26, I was initially told they would be forthcoming. Months would pass, however, and the excuses just kept coming.
I was initially told a School Committee member responsible for some of the minutes needed time to type them up.
“We expect this will be done in the very near future,” said Superintendent C. Milton Burnett in a June 8 letter responding to my written Freedom of Information Act request a day earlier.
In early July, I was informed the same committee member refused to release her portion of the minutes until she had them approved by the board, not that approval is required.
By July 20, our attorney Robert Bertsche filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, e-mailing a copy to the school attorney. One of our reporters handed the complaint to the superintendent the same day.
After the committee approved the minutes at their July 20 meeting, I phoned the following morning and was told the superintendent’s secretary was unavailable to compile the minutes for me.
Another week would pass. I received the minutes July 27 and was disappointed to see so few meetings included.
The minutes themselves revealed small, but telling, details about the superintendent’s pay. He had been given an additional $1,400, which the committee described as merit pay, behind closed doors.
While committee members apparently debated whether he should receive a raise or not, the public was never granted the opportunity to hear their reasons.
No more minutes have been released since.
For more on the story, please read here: http://www.salemnews.com/local/x1936217026/School-chief-given-secret-salary-boost