(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Judge: DeWitt school board violated open meetings law [1]
['Capital Dispatch Guest Contributor', 'More From Author', '- July']
Date: 2023-07-03
STAFF REPORT ǀ DEWITT OBSERVER
Superintendent Dan Peterson and the Central DeWitt school board violated Iowa law when they conducted a closed meeting more than a year and a half ago, a district judge has ruled.
As a result, the district was ordered to provide a recording of the meeting to The Observer and pay the newspaper’s court costs, Iowa District Court Judge Mark R. Lawson ruled.
“The scope of the meeting was breathtaking in contrast to its stated purpose,” Lawson wrote. “In other words, this was not a minor or technical violation.”
The ruling brings an end to a lawsuit The Observer’s parent company, Sycamore Media, filed in April 2022 that has cost the company more than $18,500.
Peterson and the board told the public the purpose of its Feb. 7, 2022, meeting was to evaluate Peterson’s performance. But, despite spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on legal expenses arguing it had closed the meeting legally, Lawson disagreed.
The judge determined the real purpose of the meeting was to discuss controversial topics “of great interest to the public” that had nothing to do with Peterson’s performance.
“The audio recording and minutes conclusively demonstrate that, in the two-hour closed session, there is virtually no discussion of Peterson’s performance,” Lawson wrote.
In fact, the recording captures Peterson opening the meeting by telling the board he requested the meeting to talk about three things: gender and sexuality issues, instructional materials, and an administrative realignment.
Lawson also issued an injunction ordering the district to refrain from future violations of Iowa’s government transparency laws.
Sycamore Media President Trevis Mayfield said The Observer intended to make the recording public, but after the district lost the case, the district posted a link to the recording on social media, along with a message defending the district’s actions on June 29. The post was signed by Bob Gannon, school board president; Angela Rheingans, vice president; and members Geoff Blandin, Cory Huff and Hannah Perrone. The district’s website can be found online at cd-csd.org.
As Lawson noted in his ruling, the recording captures Peterson and the board discussing issues involving gender-neutral restrooms, legal protections for transgender students, controversial books, parental responsibility, teacher communication with parents, and various other topics.
In the ruling, Lawson also wrote that the “practice of calling a closed session for one purpose and then broadly discussing other topics may have been used before (by the district).”
Sycamore Media filed the lawsuit after its staff came to believe Peterson and the board were not being honest with the public and had closed the meeting under a false pretense.
Mayfield said the newspaper had hoped to resolve the issue without filing a lawsuit, but it became clear nothing else was going to work.
“We publicly pleaded with Peterson and the board to reconsider their position, but they wouldn’t budge,” Mayfield said. “At the same time, when it comes to our organization’s stated mission of advocating for democracy and honest government, we weren’t going to budge, either.”
Randy Evans, executive director of the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, said it is an important ruling.
“Every taxpayer in the Central DeWitt School District should read Judge Lawson’s decision in The Observer’s lawsuit because he has rendered a stinging critique of the abuse of Iowa’s open meetings law by the school board and Superintendent Peterson,” he said.
The closed meeting came days after a controversy erupted in the district over Peterson’s decision to pull specific books dealing with racial issues from classrooms after receiving a complaint.
“It was Dan Peterson himself who made us skeptical that the purpose of the meeting was what they said it was,” Mayfield said. “In his haste to explain why he had pulled books out of the classroom, he posted comments on the school’s website that all but confirmed the real purpose of the meeting was not to review his performance.”
In his post, Peterson told the public the board and a group of administrators had talked openly about the books in question.
The recording of the meeting also captures participants discussing the need to release a public statement to get ahead of the negative public reaction that occurred in response to Peterson’s removal of the two books.
Discussions about books and other such things need to be done in the open, Evans said.
“School boards risk eroding the public’s trust and respect when they try to keep people in the community from hearing these difficult discussions,” he said.
“By reading the complete decision, citizens will see Judge Lawson’s important conclusion that ‘the district’s interpretation of its power to enter into a closed session would allow the exception of secrecy to swallow the rule of transparency,’” Evans said.
Peterson and Board President Bob Gannon did not respond to questions seeking comment about the case.
Sycamore Media is represented by Molly Parker and Sam Jones of Shuttlesworth & Ingersoll in Cedar Rapids.
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