EL School Board Members Warned Not to Violate Transparency Law, as Statements Are Released

Following Kath Edsall’s resignation of the presidency of the East Lansing Public Schools Board of Education Monday night, it remains to be seen who will be elected to that role by the seven-member body at its next meeting on Monday, Feb. 13. 

But, in the meantime, legal counsel to the school board is warning the trustees to heed Michigan’s Open Meetings Act and not deliberate matters outside of public meetings. Disclosure: As explained below, the warning apparently came because of ELi’s reporting.

Three statements from Monday’s meeting have now been released.

Trustee Monica Fink made the motion Monday night to remove Edsall from the position of president, a motion that led Edsall to resign the position rather than facing a vote. Fink read an explanatory statement that included objections to how the board has in her view failed to undertake proper deliberations in public. 

Fink has now released the statement to ELi to share with the public, along with a similar statement she read when she made a failed motion to also remove Terah Chambers from her position as board vice president. (No one seconded that motion.)

The 10 former school board members who read a “letter of support” at Monday’s meeting have also provided the text of their statement to ELi. That statement made no reference to concerns about transparency, but at least three of the signers have raised the issue before, as described below.

The board’s legal counsel is warning the board to heed Michigan’s Open Meetings Act.

At Monday’s meeting, after Edsall resigned her position, Trustee Debbie Walton followed up asking whether the board should elect a new president then and there. But Edsall said the matter should be handled at the next meeting instead.

ELi noted in reporting on this, “Putting off the vote will allow board members to confer with each other individually in advance of that vote.”

Some East Lansing Public Schools trustees have long used this practice of “canvassing” votes outside of meetings. Canvassing involves asking one-on-one outside of meetings how a colleague is planning to vote.

Canvassing outside of public meetings is a practice the Michigan Open Meetings Act (OMA) Handbook says is legal. But it is legal only “so long as no decisions are made during the discussions and the discussions are not a deliberate attempt to avoid the OMA.” 

Governmental deliberations and decisions – including by elected local school boards – are supposed to be done in public.

Superintendent Dori Leyko told ELi by email on Tuesday, “Our legal counsel reached out to me after reading the statement [in ELi about board members conferring outside of meetings] and alerted me of case law where even round-robin one-on-one deliberation may be a violation of the OMA. I shared the information with Board members right away and advised them to refrain from deliberating at all outside of an open meeting.”

The history of Fink’s frustration goes a long way back, and the concerns were shared by predecessors.

In her statements on why she wanted Edsall and Chambers removed from their officerships, Fink noted many instances in which she tried to push discussion only to be met with silence, left to be the sole “nay” vote. 

For example, Fink tried repeatedly to question and change the hiring policies of the district in an attempt to hire a more diverse teaching staff, a long-running problem in the district about which board members keep saying they care. But Fink has gotten nowhere on that.

Committee assignments – determining which trustees will serve on the board’s policy committee, the finance committee, and so on – are being made with no open discussion and no votes. 

Sometimes committee meetings have also happened with virtually no notice to the public.

And the elections for ELPS school board officers provide another example of how decisions on votes have often appeared to observers (and critics) to be pre-decided.

When it came time to conduct the election of officers this year at the Jan. 9 meeting, Chambers presented a slate that was quickly voted through with no alternatives and no discussion. That slate included Edsall as president and Chambers as vice president.

Fink tried to object to the preparation and presentation of the slate, seeking to force discussion and deliberation. But again, she made no headway. 

The scene recalled what happened with the election board officers in January 2020. 

In that case, Edsall brought forward a slate of officer nominees, including nominating herself as treasurer. No one discussed the nominations or offered alternatives; it was all over in about two minutes. (To make matters more controversial, then-president Erin Graham started the meeting early, and a trustee who arrived just after the legal start-time missed the vote.) 

Asked then by ELi how she would explain the un-deliberated and unchallenged success of her motion on the slate, Edsall told ELi in a statement, “Because I am the most awesome person at knowing who should hold which position, my slate was supported by the majority.”

That year, Trustee Nichole Martin was playing something like the role Fink has been playing recently, objecting to the out-of-view canvassing that was leading to what appeared to be predetermined votes and objecting to the alleged mistreatment of minority-vote trustees. 

At the time, Martin issued a statement saying, “I believe that the spirit of democracy has totally been lost amongst the East Lansing Board of Education.”

She gave several examples of decisions being made seemingly in advance without any transparent explanation from the majority voters. 

Trustees Kate Powers and Hillary Henderson backed Martin, with Henderson saying, “There is good reason for Nichole to be frustrated.” 

Martin was not re-elected to the board, while the other two voluntarily stepped down. All three also signed the group ex-trustee statement presented Monday night, although that statement did not address the issue of transparency concerns.

It’s worth noting that ex-trustees are allowed under the law to meet about, deliberate on and produce statements whenever they want. But the OMA restricts the extent to which current elected trustees may release such statements about intended actions without first meeting in public to vote openly on them.

Yet on Jan. 24 of this year, trying to calm down the level of public ire, a statement was issued in the name of “We, the East Lansing Board of Education.” 

Superintendent Leyko presented it at the Jan. 30 meeting as representing “Our Task from the Board of Education.” She indicated the district’s administration was taking its direction from this Jan. 24 statement.

But the matter never came to a public meeting before being issued. And Fink said in her prepared remarks about that Jan. 24 statement, “I was unable to provide input.”

Fink has also raised concerns about the silence with which parents, teachers and students have been met.

In her explanations of why she wanted Edsall and Chambers removed from their officerships, Fink provided a long list of instances in which parents, teachers and students came forward to the board with concerns only to be met with silence or near-silence. Edsall alluded to this on Monday when she noted the board has a policy not to engage with public comment except to address misrepresentations. 

But the policy not to engage is entirely board-chosen – a policy embraced by the board, not required by law.

Fink’s statement on Monday referred to a request in 2021 by the editorial board of Portrait, East Lansing High School’s student newspaper, for the board to participate in a town hall on concerns about racial justice, equity, LBGTQIA+ health, staff support, environmentalism and more. Even with all these topics that normally resonate with many trustees, the students’ request went unanswered.

In May 2021, Fink criticized her colleagues for what she called “21 days of silence” following the revelation of a highly controversial series of assignments about slavery given to MacDonald Middle School Students – a matter that led to a teacher being put on leave and the administration investigating.

Fink’s statement on Monday also alluded to numerous instances where speakers came to address concerns about violence and safety. She gave examples from the Nov. 11, 2021, board meeting, when a parent and teacher union representative came forward with such concerns.

Fink’s statement notes that, at that meeting, Chambers said she was “deeply uncomfortable with the community discussion around violence.” Fink sees this kind of rhetoric as a dangerous way of shutting-down critical conversations.

On the occasions when they have publicly broached the topic, Chambers and Edsall have both looked to forestall discussions about school violence, sometimes saying discussions of school violence represent “dog-whistling” – that is, racist discourse. 

For the school board election last November, ELi surveyed community members on what questions they wanted ELi to ask candidates. A clear pattern emerged around issues of safety and violence. ELi consequently crafted and put this question to candidates: 

“People in the East Lansing schools’ community are concerned about the safety of students, teachers and staff in our schools. They are also concerned about incidences of violence, fighting and bullying. What safety measures do you believe are needed to create safer learning environments in ELPS?”

In her response, Chambers wrote: “Let me take the rest of my space here to push back against the ‘dog whistle’ political use of the racially coded word ‘violence’ in this question. There is so much I love about this community, which is why I have invested so much in supporting our amazing team of students, teachers, and administrators. However, we can do better than this question and the political messaging it represents.”

Edsall sent a text to me, as Publisher of ELi, writing that the question, “plays to the white people who want cops back in our schools to keep the Black kids under control.” I responded that she could say that in her statement. She chose to provide no answers to ELi’s questions to candidates.

At last Friday’s listening session and Monday’s special board meeting, some shared the concern that conversations about violence and safety could have racist undertones. But at both sessions, several Black members of the community – students and adults – made clear they want the matters addressed openly and promptly and they’re tired of what they see as delays and obfuscations.

The statement from the 10 ex-trustees calls on the board to create a new advisory committee on school safety. 

The group envisions the committee as being similar to the Advisory Committee on Sex Education and the Advisory Committee on Mental Health.

The board has not yet taken action on creation of such a committee. If it creates one, the board will have to decide who will get to choose the members of the committee and its charge. 

Regardless of what the board decides about who holds that power, such a committee would be subject to Michigan’s Open Meetings Act. 

Editor’s note: This updated version of the story corrects the reason Nichole Martin left the school board: Trustee Martin was not re-elected to the board.

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