Did meeting held by Alachua County Public Schools violate open meetings law?
Editor's note: Two Alachua County school district staff members involved with facilities were present at the Nov. 14 strategic planning team meeting. The original version of this story was incorrect on that point.
The Alachua County school district may have violated Florida’s Government in the Sunshine and open meeting laws when it held a strategic planning team meeting on Nov. 14.
Strategic planning team meeting days were held Oct. 23 and Nov. 14 at the Santa Fe College Blount Center to discuss priorities for the upcoming school year. The priorities include academic achievement, professional learning, teacher recruitment and retention, and systems and organizational processes.
Both meetings were advertised through one legally required notice, in accordance with state Sunshine Laws. But the meeting notices weren't shared on the district’s website or the Alachua County School Board’s public calendar, as other meetings typically are.
Amy Trask, co-chair of the District Advisory Council (DAC), was notified Nov. 13 — the night before the Nov. 14 meeting — that the meeting was scheduled. Trask reached out to ACPS spokesperson Jackie Johnson for more information and to ask if DAC members could attend.
“The DAC committee is supposed to be a supplemental, collaborative arm to the school board,” Trask said. “It's not supposed to be like an enforcing puppet to be used after the fact. They’re supposed to work in tandem when it comes to planning and what topics we’re going to be focusing on, and so I was confused why we weren’t invited, we weren’t informed.”
The meeting
There were about 30 participants at the Nov. 14 meeting, which included the school board members, school district staffers, the superintendent and principals. They separated into four subcommittees corresponding with the district’s four priorities. No members of the teachers' union were present. The school board members all sat at the same table to discuss academic achievement, Trask said.
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Jacquatte Rolle, the district’s chief of teaching and learning, who was in charge of the session, initially told Trask she was not welcome at the meeting because the board would determine whom to bring into the committees as the process continued, which is why Trask wasn’t invited. No other members of the public attended the meeting.
Trask argued that, according to Sunshine and open meeting laws, she had a legal right to attend. She was then told to sit in an area designated for members of the public: an unlit space in the back of the room separated from the conversations at the four tables.
Unable to hear the discussions, Trask was granted permission by Johnson to pull up a chair and sit alone, a few feet away from one subcommittee table.
However, Trask still was unable to hear conversations at individual tables as well as between school board members, as confirmed by an audio recording sent to The Gainesville Sun.
After attending the meeting, Trask said its setup did not comply with Florida’s open meeting laws. She said she spoke to two school board members — who she declined to identify — who were appalled by the situation.
Florida law states that any inaudible discussions that occur between board members during an open meeting — which is defined as any gathering of two or more members of the same board or commission — constitute a violation of Sunshine Laws.
The 2023 Government in the Sunshine Manual, which is compiled by the State Attorney General’s Office, cites a legal precedent that seems to apply here. It states that a school district’s advisory committee violated Sunshine Law when holding breakout sessions where members discussed business at two separate tables, resulting in members at one table being unable to hear what was being discussed at another table, as well as members of the public being unable to hear what was being discussed in the breakout sessions.
Based on the ruling in that 2018 court case, Linares v. District School Board of Pasco County, a member of the Tallahassee-based First Amendment Foundation said that the breakout sessions held during the Nov. 14 Alachua County school strategic planning meeting almost certainly were in violation of Sunshine Laws.
School Board member Kay Abbitt stated that since all school board members were at the same table, they weren’t listening to discussions at other tables and only participated in their own group’s discussion.
She also said that the meeting area was large and that the four different tables were “fairly separated.” She doesn’t recall any breakout sessions during the Oct. 23 strategic planning team meeting.
Johnson, the school district spokesperson, however, said there were breakout sessions at the Oct. 23 meeting, which operated similar to the Nov. 14 meeting, with all school board members at one table.
Additionally, Johnson confirmed that groups at separate tables discussed their own topics during the Nov. 14 session, and that the groups then reported on their discussions to the entire group afterwards.
The part of the room designated for members of the public — if any other than Trask had attended — was away from all four breakout groups.
A guide from the Florida Department of Health related to Sunshine Laws says to avoid inaudible discussions at meetings and to refrain from “quiet discussions that can only be heard by the people at the table or the person next to you, while at the meeting.”
Likewise, a Sunshine Law presentation by Volusia County states: “Discussions that occur between board members in an open meeting that cannot be heard by others violate the Sunshine Law.”
Johnson said that Rolle never told Trask she was "not welcome." Rather, Rolle informed Trask that she could watch and listen while sitting next to the school board members' table.
When Trask voiced concerns about not being able to participate, Johnson said she and Rolle told Trask that members of the public would be given future opportunities for participation or comment.
"It's important to note that not all meetings open to the public require an opportunity for public comment," Johnson wrote in an email to The Sun. "Members of the public must be given an opportunity to comment before a board vote, but we are nowhere near that point in the strategic planning process."
She also said Sunshine Laws only apply to elected officials. And since the school board members were seated together and the one member of the public in attendance — Trask — was able to sit next to them, within earshot of the breakout groups, there was no violation of law.
School Board Chair Diyonne McGraw said the same, stating the breakout groups were “no problem at all” in terms of legality. She noted that all board members sat at the same table and each individual group presented its findings to the group at large later. Additionally, community input will be considered at future meetings, she said.
McGraw said each of the four groups plan to meet individually, and those meetings won’t be open to the public but will include some community members. The group meeting the school board is in will be advertised in advance, as required by law, because two or more members will attend, she said.
In terms of strategic planning, McGraw said it has not been undertaken at Alachua County Public Schools to this degree before, and she aims to include a diverse selection of community members to gain multiple perspectives.
She emphasized the importance of student achievement, mentioning the achievement gap in Alachua County, and said everyone’s primary goal is the quality of education for all students.
“This is the first time school board members have been able to interact with administrators and principals,” McGraw said. “Your different departments throughout the school district, we’re all coming together.”
Other concerns
While advertisement of the meeting abided by Sunshine Laws, the meeting was not advertised on school district websites and social media pages, the way other school meetings are. Trask said that was not in keeping with “the spirit of sunshine,” and could have been the reason no other members of the public attended.
Superintendent of Schools Shane Andrew told Trask the reason the meeting wasn’t further advertised was because, in the past, when they had advertised a prior meeting on social media, “almost no one showed.” Trask took notes on the exchange.
Andrew also apologized for Trask feeling ostracized from the group but did not advocate for her to join a subcommittee table during discussions.
“I told him that that really wasn’t a good reason to violate the sunshine — like the spirit of sunshine,” she said. “I told him the way that I was being treated wasn’t ethical, or acceptable, or professional, and I asked him what message this sent to the community if the message is: You’re only worth sitting in the back of the room with the lights off — by yourself — completely away from all of the conversations. That's what you're worth. You're worth nothing.”
Trask said the four priorities, which were chosen from surveys completed by parents, weren’t fully accurate, as the surveys did not include all schools in the district. A parent herself, Trask said her children’s elementary school was not a selectable option. She only saw high schools as options, and other parents reported the same issue, she said.
Members at the meeting, which ran from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 14, participated in yoga at 11 a.m. to re-center themselves and shake off stress. Trask left at noon and said the committees discussed vague suggestions, failing to produce substantive materials despite efforts from board members Sarah Rockwell and Tina Certain.
Trask told Andrew that she planned to file an ethics complaint with the school district's director of human resources in the coming weeks if issues — including why the DAC wasn’t invited and how she was treated by Rolle — weren’t addressed. She hopes that her complaint will spark an investigation into why the meeting was not better advertised and how the district can ensure the public has a meaningful voice.
She plans to formally object to the Sunshine Law matters after further research.
This article originally appeared on The Gainesville Sun: Questions raised about Alachua County Public Schools meeting.
