Harvard School Committee Completely In the Dark

What happened in Harvard, Massachusetts, recently is a perfect illustration of problems with the Open Meeting Law’s effectiveness and the failure of some public official to grasp the importance of open government principles. According to Gayle Simone, a reporter with Nashoba Publishing, the Worcester County District Attorney’s Office found that the Harvard School Committee blatantly violated the Massachusetts Open Meeting Law when it excluded the public from a significant portion of its evaluation of the school superintendent and kept no written records of its private interviews. The DA ordered the School Committee to conduct the evaluation process in open session in the future. As if the blatant violation was not enough, apparently the School Committee chair, Stuart Sklar, did not tell the other Committee members about the investigation until after receiving the DA’s decision. So, not only was the public’s right to know violated by the School Committee’s initial actions, the Committee members right to know was violated by the Chair’s actions. Now they know how we all feel when we are denied access to information to which we are entitled.

The real kicker, however, comes at the very end of the story. Chair Sklar reportedly said “that in speaking to the school department’s legal counsel, he believes the Open Meeting Law varies from county to county. ‘We should have state guidelines, not county for county,’ he said.” Someone should tell the man we already have a state Open Meeting Law and regulations that apply to every community. It is the statute that the Harvard School Committee violated. Obviously, the Harvard School Committee needs Open Meeting Law training as soon as possible. It’s too bad the DA’s Office could not order that.