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From: S Bushart
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 8:23 AM
Subject: Eanes Community Update #10
March
20, 2006
Dear
Eanes Friends,
Because
all of our Eanes ISD Board of Trustees' meetings are governed by the Texas Open
Meetings Act, our district is required to make either written or audio
recordation of all open meetings of the board available to the public.
Unfortunately, Eanes has no records for at least eighteen such meetings (see
list of dates below).
WHAT THE LAW SAYS:
The Texas Open Meetings Act (Texas Government Code Chapter
551) is the state law governing the public meetings of governmental bodies,
including all open meetings of the EISD Board of Trustees which is defined as a
governmental body. Further, the Texas Government Code* states that records
for all open meetings of governmental bodies such as our school board must be
maintained and made available for public inspection.
I
submitted a request to view the records of board meetings held after May 2004,**
and upon review of the documents provided by the district realized that records
from several board study sessions were missing, all of them "board study
sessions." Open board meetings, board study sessions are posted and open to the
public--and must be recorded. The study sessions are important because our
trustees deliberate on topics important to our children and to our community
during these meetings. The dates for those eighteen meetings with the missing
minutes are:
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6/14/04
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6/17/04
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8/9/04
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8/23/04
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9/13/04
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10/18/04
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11/8/04
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12/6/04
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12/13/04
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1/10/05
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1/18/05
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2/7/05
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2/15/05
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3/7/05
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3/30/05
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4/18/05
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4/25/05
On May
17, 2005 I sent a correspondence to Dr. Wellman expressing my concern that these
records were not available for public inspection. When she failed to respond, I
sent a follow-up letter dated June 1, 2005. Our superintendent continued to
ignore my request. Fearing that the district's failure to maintain public
meeting records (written and/or audio to include deliberations) may be a
prosecutable violation of the Texas Open Meetings Act, I addressed my concerns
directly to the EISD Board of Trustees on June 24, 2005.*** It's now been at
least nine months--and still no response.
Questions for consideration
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Why weren't records kept for any of these open public meetings?
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Why hasn't Eanes responded to these three separate formal written concerns sent
nine and ten months ago?
- As
failure to maintain records of these public open meetings violates the Texas
Open Meetings Act (Government Code 551) and Eanes board policy BE (LEGAL) , what
can we do to ensure that Eanes is in compliance with both?
There
are many parents, community members and teachers who are unable to attend
thedistrict's open meetings because of conflicting work and school schedules. I
encourage Eanes ISD to insure that all open board meetings including study
sessions are recorded as required by the Texas Open Meetings Act-- and made
readily available to the public on the Eanes ISD website. As we are fortunate
to already have an "Open Government" page on our district's website, this would
seem the easiest and most logical place to put such information.
I also
encourage the Eanes ISD Superintendent and/or Board of Trustees to enact a
policy and/or procedure that directs posting of all official public meeting
records on the district website within a reasonably defined time
period following each meeting.
Eanes ISD administrative employee Dale Whitaker is Director of
Communications. In addition to her work on the
district website, she generates EISD press releases to the news media (see
attachment
RESPONSE PLEASE)****.
Increasing
the public's access to the records of all our school board's meetings,
deliberations and actions taken will provide a better understanding of our
district's priorities, policies, and fiscal decisions, and indicate a good faith
effort on the part of our administrative staff and governing body to comply with
the laws governing the Texas Open Meetings Act.
Wishing
all the best for our students, our parents, our teachers and our taxpayers,
Susan
Bushart
EANES ISD CONTACT
INFORMATION:
Dale
Whitaker, Director of Communications:
dwhitake@eanes.k12.tx.us
phone: (512)732-9002
Nola
Wellman, Superintendent: nwellman@eanes.k12.tx.us phone: (512)732-9001 fax:
(512)732-9005
Board of
Trustees: trustees@eanes.k12.tx.us
________________________________________________________________
*
See
attached
excerpts from
the Texas Government Code.
**
Identified by EISD as ORR #1097.
***
See all three attached
correspondences.
**** See
attachment
"RESPONSE PLEASE."
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