School Board Secrecy

At its meeting Monday night, the Granville School Board agreed to keep the details of the most recent Kraner negotiations secret. Although they openly discussed some of the points of the agreement that Kraner and Scot Prebles had initialed last Friday, they claimed that the document itself was privileged.

Under Ohio law, the Board can declare negotiations with a third party to be privileged, but they also can declare them open to public scrutiny. Indeed, the Newark School Board distributed copies of their proposed agreement with Kraner before the Board began to consider it.

The previous Granville School Board was often criticized for not including the public in its deliberations. I believe that Board’s failure to open up the talks and its failure to negotiate directly with the Newark School Board instead of with Kraner cost our district dearly.

It seems to me that in this case, with so much public interest and mistrust, the new Granville School Board would be well advised to open up the discussions. After all, what is to be lost by negotiating in public? And, they might hear some valuable suggestions from the rest of us.