“I want to address the article in today’s Gloucester Daily Times (http://www.gloucestertimes.com/punews/local_story_262025842.html). The article was spurred by an e-mail that Secretary Reville sent to me on February 5 – during the time period in which I was considering the recommendations I would bring to the Board regarding the three applications for new charter schools (Gloucester, Waltham, and Worcester). The article questions whether Paul’s e-mail suggests that my recommendation to approve the Gloucester school was “based on [an] ‘agenda'” (to quote the article’s headline).
I want to be clear to you that my recommendations on the three charter schools were based on consideration of the wide range of input that the Board and I received and the merits of the applications. There was no end to the lobbying I encountered in regard to the three proposed charter schools – lobbying for and against. I spoke with each Board member individually (with the exception of new Board member Michael D-Ortenzio), including Secretary Reville, in the weeks prior to the February meeting. During those conversations I shared with you my considerations for the three applications. Some of you had distinct opinions (for or against approval) on specific applications and made those known to me. I felt no undue pressure from Paul or the Governor’s office regarding my recommendations. At the end of the day, the recommendations I made to you at the February Board meeting were my recommendations alone, based on my assessment of the public input and applications – based on my professional judgment.
Because substantial time has passed since the Board vote and the emotions of the Gloucester deliberations continue to swirl, I want to recap my rationale for the recommendations I made in February. I concluded that two (Waltham and Worcester) of the three applications had failed to adequately address elements that are critical to a successful new school venture. In both cases, I felt the applications had potential if they subsequently strengthened their plans and addressed missing elements. I did not recommend these two applications to the Board for approval, but did invite both applicants to resubmit their applications in the future, contingent on addressing the areas of weakness.
For me, the most compelling aspect of the Gloucester Community Arts Charter School application was not the arts focus, but rather the attention to planning for the core academic components of the curriculum – including English language arts and mathematics. This strength was confirmed for me both in my internal discussions with my charter school office and through the contrast that the Gloucester Community Arts Charter application provided compared to two arts-focused charter schools that I had recently visited.
In the months prior to the February meeting I had conducted site visits to each charter school for which I was considering a recommendation to the Board for renewal with conditions or for revocation. These visits included the Conservatory Lab Charter in Boston and the Berkshire Arts and Technology (BART) Charter in Adams – both schools that have been in operation for a while, both schools that feature an arts focus, and both schools where academic performance is not as strong as it should be. Both of these schools had come to realize that their founding mission, which was focused on arts-infusion, was insufficient to ensure a strong academic curriculum for students. Simply providing a high-quality arts experience does not ensure that students develop language, mathematics, science, and social studies knowledge and skills. Both the Conservatory Lab and BART Charters were in the process of becoming more deliberate about the non-arts components of their curriculum. In both of these cases I was convinced that the schools were sufficiently redressing the deficiencies in their core academic program. I recommended to the Board, and you approved, renewals with conditions.
It is precisely the intentional focus on ensuring a strong core academic curriculum in addition to the arts focus that I found most compelling about the Gloucester school. The founders of the Gloucester Community Arts School demonstrated this to me in their application. Internal discussions with the Department’s charter school office confirmed this observation. I was convinced that the Gloucester school would be less likely than the two existing arts-focused charters – BART and Conservatory Lab – to be in a position several years after their founding where they need to revamp their approach to the core academic curriculum. In my estimation, the Gloucester Community Arts School presented strong potential for a viable, high quality school that demonstrates that an arts focus and core academics can be thoughtfully integrated. It is for this reason that I recommended the approval of their application.
One more observation about my recommendation to you: You will recall that I was quite concerned in February – based both on the input of Gloucester opponents of the school as well as on deteriorating state and federal fiscal conditions – as to whether our public schools would be adequately funded. It is for this reason that my recommendation to you included a fiscal trigger – that the Gloucester Community Arts Charter would be allowed to start up only if the Commonwealth met its foundation level funding obligation to Gloucester. Not all Board members embraced this trigger, although it was ultimately included in the resolution that authorized the school.
I remind you of this last point because, like the decision to recommend the Gloucester school for approval, the fiscal trigger represented my best professional judgment about how to proceed with our (the Commissioner’s and Board’s) statutory and regulatory responsibility in regard to the implementation of charter school policy in Massachusetts. In short, my February recommendation to you regarding the Gloucester Community Arts Charter was not the result of pressure or political calculus: it was my best professional judgment grounded in substantial consideration of the merits of the application and the input I had received.”
Mitchell D. Chester, EdD
Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
75 Pleasant Street
Malden, MA 02148
Phone 781/338.3100
Fax 781/338.3770
Please see Page 17 of the [Attorney General’s guidelines on the Open Meeting Law. http://www.mass.gov/Cago/docs/Government/openmtgguide.pdf%5D
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p>”Telephone meetings” — discussion by telephone among members of a governmental body on an issue of public business within the jurisdiction of the body — are a violation of the Law. This is true even where individual telephone conversations occur in serial fashion.
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See Harshbarger v. Board of Selectmen of Lexington, No. 88-3644 (Middlesex Superior Ct. August 18, 1989) (order granting summary judgment).
Attorney General’s guidelines on the Open Meeting Law.
The Commisssioner of ESE is not enumerated as one of the nine members by MGL:
Source: http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws…
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p>From minutes, it appears that the board has 10 voting members. I assume this excludes Commissioner Chester and Secretary Reville. It’s odd that they are listed as members, but that might be a longstanding practice so that their comments can be better referenced in the minutes.
Source: http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/mi…
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p>You may make a point that the Commissioner serves as the secretary and is therefore an officer of the board. However, it is clear from both the minutes and behavior that this is an administrative role. Many boards and committees throughout the state have hired secretaries, but this does not make them members.
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p>You may argue that the Commissioner participates in discussions. True, but so do Superintendents in school committee meetings. Yet such participation does not make them members. In fact, I would be surprised if individual members of school committees did not have discussions with their Superintendents outside of public meetings.
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p>In summary, it doesn’t appear that the Commissioner’s role to the BoE is under the jurisdiction of OML. Therefore, there is no violation.
You assume that Mr. Reville is not a member of the board, and you are wrong. He is a voting member.
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p>Serial deliberation is illegal. If, in this case, the Commissioner went beyond providing information and facilitated or transmitted this serial deliberation, it would be no different than if the members were the sole participants. The commissioner’s relaying the opinion of Mr. Reville to one other board member would be enough to establish a violation.
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p>The law prohibits deliberation outside of a public meeting, and if someone files a formal complaint with the Attorney General, we would get a reasonable determination based on this mail and other facts pertaining to the meeting and the vote.
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p>I would be surprised if the folks in Gloucester didn’t file an Open Meeting complaint before the close of business today.
In the February minutes that I linked to in my prior response, a designee is listed for Secretary Reville in the members list. I know of no provision where an official can appoint a designee to function in their stead. Do you?
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p>This combined with the vote tally led me to believe this was a non-voting membership.
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p>Yet, in the minutes from January, we see votes taken by 8 members. Again if it is assumed Commissioner Chester is not a member, then that means Secretary Reville voted.
Source: http://www.doe.mass.edu/boe/mi…
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p>However, the Secretary’s membership on the board is irrelevant to your argument. One can only violate OML if you are under its jurisdiction. Until you can show that Commissioner Chester is a member of the board, there is no violation.
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p>I agree that if the Commissioner were acting as a conduit for Secretary Reville, that the Secretary may be in violation of OML (where he used a person rather than a telephone to establish the serial quorum). Indeed, I attended a OML training session with the Middlesex DA’s office, and that very question of acting as a conduit came up. No case law on it yet, I don’t think.
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p>However, the excerpt you’ve highlighted from the Commissioner’s letter states that the Commissioner shared his own opinions and the members shared theirs. This is not a serial quorum. To again put this in terms of a local example, a superintendent could call each member of the school committee to discuss an issue on the upcoming agenda. A violation applies only to member action.
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p>In the end, I see your point pablo, but I don’t think the Commissioner’s letter is enough to prove it.
His designee voted to approve the Gloucester application. Reville missed the meeting that included testimony and the final vote. Maybe he had his oil changed or perhaps a haircut. We all have priorities!
None of Chester’s “cover my ass” commentary changes what Reville wrote. His email is disgraceful.
When I first saw that this post was going to be about a response, I was going to comment that I’m glad we were going to hear the other side of the story. Instead Mr. Chester is getting accused of violating open meeting laws because he (God forbid!) talked to people he works with! I have definitely come to the conclusion that our laws in this regard are too strict. Do we really need to say, “Don’t get together over lunch; don’t even think about picking up that phone; don’t write a memo or email unless you want you’re worst enemy to see it and interpret it however he will”? It’s starting to feel like a high school dance with chaperones constantly hovering to make sure couples didn’t get to close. Now if the BOE has to vote on charter approval THAT absolutely should be done in open session, and the agenda should allow time for public comment on the matter before the vote is taken. Let’s be honest, though. The bulk of horsetrading and negotiations in government takes place behind the scenes, and I think we need to gain some perspective and rethink this whole concept.
You have to admit this email shows that the charter process, which can cost a district millions per year, is nothing but a political cramdown and has little to do with the veracity of the proposal. This in and of itself shows that they system is broken and arbitrary and should be scrapped.
One wonders when Deval will say something. Is he still the Governor? When does Doug Rubin step in and say a few things to settle down the rabble?
He is currently consulting for Steve Pagliuca’s Senate campaign.
ASAP. It’s an emergency.
What is it with you and 3 ratings? My pointing out a simple fact is “worthless” now?
is Italian for Gabrieli. I wonder if Pags is going to buy Gabrieli’s used Loserbago.
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