Community Correspondence to the Board January through March 2023

Apr 2, 2023

Last year the BOE stopped reading Board Correspondence at BOE Meetings, robbing the community of important perspectives from parents, students, and teachers. This year the BOE stopped including this correspondence as part of the minutes, only orally reporting on the correspondence and often with a spin on the subject matter.

This is an example of how the Business Administrator is increasing the OPRA burden – taking information that was once publicly presented and making it only available through OPRA.

As a result, we have begun to OPRA this correspondence and will provide community members with enough information to conduct their own OPRA Requests.

In one case, information about a student and in another an employee was provided to BHCW. The Business Administrator categorized an email about our concerns about having received this information as a request that the District is “under-redacting” during a BOE Meeting (lol).

We hope the District will figure out what it can disclose publicly (the amount of money spent on Dr. Varley’s Defense) and what it shouldn’t (student information and the Superintendent’s opinions about employees).

January and February 2023 Board Correspondence Topics:

-Questions Regarding the Cost of the Superintendents Legal Defense
-BOE Agenda and OPMA Concern (timely posting)
-Opposition to the OPRA Custodian Position
-Concerns on Availability of Executive Committee Meeting Minutes (or lack thereof)
-School Safety/Police In Schools
-Unanswered Questions Spanning 1-2 years

March 2023 Board Correspondence Topics

-Hockey Finals Transportation
-Budget
-DEI Conference
-Questions Regarding the Cost of the Superintendents Legal Defense
-Legal Bills