School board meets in special session Monday, May 16

Agrees on timeline to fill board seat, then engages in very long discussion on what to do about Mike Meiers' threat to sue them. Can't decide.

I.

Harold Garfinkel was a somewhat obscure sociologist who became well-known in the 1960s for what he called “breaching experiments.” His idea was that one way to understand the role of unstated norms and the implicit rules that govern how we interact with others is to break those rules and observe what happens. If an acquaintance in the hall waves and asks how you are, instead of responding with the typical, “Great!” or “Fine,” you might instead say “How am I with respect to what? My health, finances, job…” and see what they do. Or, when it’s your turn in a game of tic-tac-toe, rather than find an empty spot on the board for your mark, you nonchalantly erase the other player’s X and put your O in its place and wait for their response.

It turns out that a small percentage of people will seamlessly adapt to the changing rules or appear otherwise indifferent (who are these people?), but most, as you might expect, become either confused, agitated, hostile, or flustered as they attempt to cope with a social situation that they thought operated according to one set of rules (and that they assumed the other party was operating by as well) but which now appears to operate according to a much different set of rules.

If the rules of the game suddenly change, some begin to wonder if it’s a game at all. As the unwitting participant in the tic-tac-toe experiment angrily responded, “Is this a joke!?” Some will try to remove themselves from the now confusing situation entirely, like the acquaintance in the hall who responded with, “Look! I was just trying to be polite. Frankly, I don't give a damn how you are.” Others may try to gently point out the rules you are breaking partly to be nice but partly to ease their own sense of dissonance or confusion. And you could imagine that still others might try to re-interpret their previous actions as being within the bounds of the new rules all along.

This is one way, I think, to interpret board member Mike Meier's threatened lawsuit against the school board and the three-hour conversation it spawned during Monday’s Special Meeting. By hiring a lawyer and sending a list of demands that he wants the rest of the school board to meet or else, he has thrown a wrench in things. Rained on their parade. Walked into the party and unplugged the stereo. And now everyone else is trying to figure out what’s going on.

Mr. Meier appears to see it this way himself, as he suggests at one point during the meeting: “I’m seeing no need for litigation if we can get to root causes. And sometimes threat of litigation is what's needed to get people to come to the table.”

He thinks the board is dysfunctional, or headed that way, and during the meeting he draws several parallels between what he sees today and the negative consequences of similar actions he’s witnessed over his 18-year tenure as a board member. Referring to the legality of actions taken by former Board President Steve Doman before he resigned, he says:

The idea that different lawyers say different things, well that is correct. And 18 years ago, different lawyers said different things, and the board’s counsel said one thing, but the finder of fact, the county corporation council said something else and found that the school board then was living in a culture of non-compliance with the open meetings law. And that was a very sad day.

Much of the 3+ hours of conversation was explicitly about the list of proposed changes and actions he would like the board to take to resolve these dysfunctions. But I think implicitly, it was also a negotiation about competing sets of rules and norms and an attempt by individual board members to figure out what the new ways of doing business meant and how to interpret their past actions in light of them.

To their credit the board remained mostly unflustered, non-combative, and seemingly earnest in accepting his criticisms and moving forward. This is not to say the conversation was bloodless, or unemotional—there were some tense exchanges, and there may have been tears. And, of course, a board member did remove himself from the situation entirely.

I’ll provide a few examples of what I’m talking about below, but first I need to set the scene.

II.

The meeting began with the board setting a timeline to fill Steve Doman's vacated seat after he stepped-down as President and resigned from the school board in response to what he described as a "threat" to him and his family. Ultimately, they decided to appoint a person to the vacant seat by June 27th, and they will decide on the exact application process for prospective board members at next Monday's meeting on May 23rd. This part of the meeting was mostly perfunctory and took less than fifteen minutes.

The next part regarding Mr. Meier’s threatened litigation filled the remainder. To briefly re-summarize what led to this point:

Last year, FOX6 submitted an open records request for all voicemails to school board members. They were looking for parent complaints about covid mitigation policies. Mike Meier complied with the request, and while FOX6 did not find anything interesting related to covid mitigation policies, they did find a voicemail from a former board member who expressed concern about a lack of transparency and due diligence regarding a $170,000 contract that the school district had entered into.

In December, the board went into closed session to discuss a personnel matter but the conversation eventually veered, according to Mr. Meier, into criticizing his overcompliance with open records requests. Mr. Meier said they shouldn't be discussing this in closed session, and afterward told a reporter that this discussion had violated open meetings laws. Steve Doman then informed him via email that talking to a reporter about violations of open meeting laws that occurred during closed session was itself a violation of board confidentiality rules and removed him from the policy subcommittee. Mr. Meier retained a lawyer who sent a letter to the board in early-May laying out this sequence of events and threatening litigation for violations of open meeting and public records laws unless the board agrees to some changes.

To be clear, there is some dispute about what was discussed during this closed session. Specifically, during the meeting Monday night, acting-president Sharon Muehlfeld said, “I don't recall the same sequence of events.”

In any case, while the letter from Mr. Meier’s attorney suggested he would agree not to sue the board if they accepted his proposed solution, as the discussion began on Monday night, Mr. Meier made clear that “things have changed since that letter was authored,” and that he could no longer promise not to sue even if they did agree to take his proposed actions.¹ He also handed out a revised copy of his proposed resolution to board members which asked that the board:

Eliminate the Policy committee. This was a subcommittee that Mr. Doman secretly appointed several board members to after removing Mr. Meier and which Mr. Meier claims was meeting privately without oversight or public notice.

Mr. Meier's contention was that these actions demonstrated that the board isn’t competent to effectively manage subcommittees, and that they should therefore stop using them. Some disagreed. Dr. Jessup-Anger thought that without a subcommittee, policy discussions and activities would overwhelm the board and keep it from accomplishing other business. Sharon Muehlfeld thought it was worth ironing out the problems with the Policy Subcommittee rather than eliminating it completely.

Ultimately, after much discussion there seemed to be broad agreement that the Policy Subcommittee would be paused—rather than disbanded—while the board clarified its goals and how it would work, including a potential addition to the bylaws that would require the president to notify the full board of his appointments.

Legal training for board members. This training would cover their legal roles and responsibilities as Board members, how to comply with open meeting and public record laws, and the correct way to get advice from the school district’s lawyers.

While the first two are straightfoward, the last item was motivated by what Mr. Meier saw as a certain naïvety regarding how board members would get and use legal advice. As an examples, he cited an instance where Steve Doman asked legal counsel if he could appoint members to the Policy Subcommittee in secret, she said he could, but, in Mr. Meier’s view, while that is technically correct, all the meetings have to be public so there's really no point in doing this since everyone will find out anyway. This was a little confusing to me, but it did lead the lawyer representing the school district to suggest they could prevent this particular problem in the future by simply amending the appropriate bylaws.

Speak with one voice to the Superintendent. This emphasized that the only way the Board should give direction to the Superintendent is via a formal vote on official motions.

Mr. Meier wanted this because Superintendent Means had previously expressed frustration that individual board members often gave conflicting instructions.

III.

For the most part, no one really seemed to disagree about this last suggestion, but the surrounding discussion did appear to demonstrate exactly the dysfunctional norms Mr. Meier was worried about, and he took the opportunity to point this out again. And again. And again.

Example 1: While several board members agreed in the abstract that the board should give clear, unified direction to the superintendent, it also became clear that they were much less sure what this means in practice and appeared resistant to the idea that the way they had been going about things before was wrong (See video).

Fraley: As Mr. Meier said in his opening words, this is something that should be happening. My understanding is this is happening. […]

Meier: The idea that number three is not a problem now, I do not agree with. On frequent occasions Dr. Means has said to me that he feels caught in the middle. How can that be? Because no directive from the board [should put] him in the middle. So there must be different board members saying different things to him, and he feels a need to comply or try to comply with all of them and therefore feels caught in the middle when I know as a fact of law the board has not spoken unless we agenda an item and call the roll. […]

Fraley: So I think we’re actually in some ways saying the same thing. I want to ensure that this is happening. And if Dr. Means is feeling pulled in different directions then that is a problem, and that may mean we need a process to say, Nobody goes to Dr. Means unless they email the president, copy the president, or whatever that is. […]

Meier: If I may, I think there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how little individual board members can tell Dr. Means of what they want. It […] can go astray. Easily. […]

Muelhfeld: We are able to give the superintendent direction without a vote. I mean, we can discuss some topics and agree on how we want to move forward, and that’s been done before. Again, as long as the majority of us have consensus, and the superintendent can act on that. So I mean, I think there are just multiple different ways to do it.

Meier: I would disagree with that. To give directions without a vote? That’s dangerous. [Gives an example.]

Hoag: But do I understand, I mean we can—I was under the impression that we could call Dr. Means with questions and have a conversation with him […]

Example 2: As the board turned to discuss the letter from Mr. Meier’s attorney and his proposed resolutions, Board Member Jenny Hoag read a statement she’d prepared and says she thinks the board is doing a poor job working together as a “team.” However, Mr. Meier points out that the board is not so much a team as a body of elected officials with constitutionally proscribed responsibilities and obligations to the people that elected them.

She says (See video):

I would, however, like to share some observations I’ve made in the short time that I’ve been on the board. Over 5 weeks, I've seen private board emails shared with members of our community and media within hours of being received by the board. It's obvious that people who end up with these communications intend to use them in a way to disparage the board. I’ve observed a board so weakened by two years of community criticism and in-board tension that there’s no sense of team. I’ve been shocked and sad to witness a member of our rank quit due to concerns about safety and another threaten litigation. And all during this discontent, there’s no communication between members. No sense that we are in this together, only feelings of mistrust, isolation, and weariness. This is not how healthy groups function.

To which Board Member Frayley adds:

One of the things that's been really hard about this moment for us as a board is we can't talk amongst one another and still stay within legal requirements. And that is really tricky when you're trying to form a team, because what I really would love is if we could all get together in a room and just hash some things out without feeling like the whole world is watching for you and waiting for you to say one wrong thing that will then be jumped on or misinterpreted.

Then a short exchange between Meier and Hoag:

Meier: […] Under the public records law there are very few private board emails. There are things that are confidential, this is true. I think the board needs to gain an understanding of how open to the public many things are that we write down. [Provides an anecdote about his early experience as a board member.]

Hoag: I do understand that there are things that are shared and can be shared. I think as somebody watching this happen, there’s very specific people who seem to be getting our emails within hours of them being sent out, which I think begs the question why that’s happening. And also to the point, we’re not allowed to talk about policy together, but when a member of our team quits because they feel threatened and nobody reaches out to say, Hey are you okay? how are you doing? I think that describes a team that’s not functioning.

Meier: […] The idea of team is conceptually important but the idea of, as I state, our constitutional and legal roles…those concepts aren’t always the same or don’t exactly overlap. And there’s a lot of things the board needs to learn—I wouldn’t say all board members—about elected legislative seats which is what we have …and what that means in a world where we are voted to office in a political process.

Example 3: Finally, after two-and-a-half hours of Mr. Meier repeatedly emphasizing that individuals board members cannot speak for the board and that doing so is misleading and confusing, Dr. Jessup-Anger begins:

Jessup-Anger: I hope, Mr. Meier, what you’ve heard is [that] the board is, I think, supportive of components two and three of this—

Meier: Correction, you’re supportive. The board—we’re not moving tonight. The board acts, the board supports, only when it votes. This is an example of what I mean. You’re speaking for the entire board here […]. Well I’m on the board too, and I haven’t voted on what the board supports, so…

Jessup-Anger: May I continue?

Meier: Yeah, yeah, you may continue. […]

IV.

Ultimately, no one could quite come to a resolution that satisfied everyone. The rest of the board wanted Mr. Meier to promise not to sue them if they agree to his proposal. He says maybe he’d agree not to sue them about the things he already knows about, but he’ll need to talk to his lawyer. Dr. Jessup-Anger says trust is needed if they want to move forward. Mr. Meier responds (See Video):

[T]he board was told of the secret appointment at the end of April and the president who made those appointments received 5 votes to return in office. That was discouraging. And I didn’t understand that vote. But there had been all this divisive past with respect to the operations of the board, and so now that an actual complaint is at hand, suddenly it’s a different tune. Your words now aren’t consistent with your actions of the past and that makes trust difficult.

In the end, the lawyer retained by the school district offers to write up what they agreed to during the meeting and send it to Mr. Meier so he can speak with his lawyer about his options, after which the board will meet again. If things go well, the board can approve a resolution, and they can begin the training that Mr. Meier would like to see occur once the replacement for Steve Doman is appointed.

Overall, though I am pretty sympathetic to the difficulty of “working in public” where you feel constrained in your ability to speak freely lest a hostile public twist your words or take them out of context, I think Mr. Meier is mostly right that the rules—about open meetings, public records, the board’s relationship with the superintendent—shouldn’t be ignored or interpreted in ways meant to minimize potential embarassment or fit better with one’s preferred style of communication. They can’t be ignored even when doing so would make it easier to accomplish things everyone agrees need to be accomplished. Because ignoring them when you find them to be inconvenient ultimately undermines the trust of the public that places you in that position to begin with. But maybe that’s my own bias as a member of the public showing.

And Harold Garfinkel might be right that social machines are just like regular machines—you can learn a lot about how they work by stressing and breaking them. The downside, of course, is that you end up with a broken machine. And now you have to fix it. Thankfully, in the case of the School Board, the lawyers are here to help.

1. This was the focus of some debate as the night wore on with a few board members wondering why theyshould adopt his proposal if he’s going to sue them either way. Mr. Meier’s argument seemed to be that (1) it doesn’t matter if he agrees not to sue, because anybody else could file a similar complaint, and (2) that he doesn’t know what other things the board has hidden from him that he is not aware of, so he’s not willing to give up all his rights to sue. The school district’s lawyer was also present during the meeting and offered a potential middle-ground which I’ll discuss at the end.