Kiefer: Message from access counselor about EVSC actions got missed in 'thousands of emails'

EVANSVILLE — Dismayed by EVSC's unilateral decision to shutter Harwood Career Preparatory High School without public discussion or school board vote and call it a "staffing decision," Ann Ennis started asking pointed questions.

The former school board member watched in dismay again almost three months later, when the current board made it official with no public discussion, and without mentioning Harwood’s name.

Board members voted to change Harwood Career Preparatory High School’s designation with the state from a school to a program. The vote came as one of 13 consent items on the board's meeting agenda. They were read off in quick succession and the board ratified them unanimously. It was all over in minutes.

Citing another example in August of what she called a consent agenda that didn't leave sufficient time for public comment and consideration, Ennis took her biggest step yet: She made a formal complaint to the office of the Indiana Public Access Counselor.

More: EVSC denies it's closing a high school that soon won't exist in its current form

Counselor Luke Britt's advisory opinion came down last week: The EVSC school board violated the state's Open Door Law with a consent agenda that included items "not appropriate for a consent agenda."

"The Open Door Law (ODL) requires public agencies to conduct and take official action openly, unless otherwise expressly provided by statute, so the people may be fully informed," Britt's opinion states. "As a result, the ODL requires all meetings of the governing bodies of public agencies to be open at all times to allow members of the public to observe and record the proceedings."

Britt's advisory opinion is just that — an opinion. It doesn't carry the force of law, the counselor said Monday, "but it does have some weight if the complainant (Ennis) or anybody else wants to try to get it enforced in court."

Chris Kiefer, school board president and recipient of the formal complaint, denied that the board uses consent agendas to slip through action items that deserve more public scrutiny.

"You know, we check with our attorney," Kiefer said. "We do everything above board. There are no hidden meetings.

"A consent item is like an action item. (EVSC Superintendent) Dr. (David) Smith covers the entire consent item that’s up for vote, the board has an opportunity to discuss it, and then we vote on it. So there's no hidden agenda, hidden meeting. We vote on consent items, we vote on action items, and we do it in front of the public."

Kiefer said the school board holds "town hall meetings" with a few board members and EVSC administrators that begin a half-hour before full school board meetings.

"People can come and they can ask questions, whether it was about Harwood or whatever it is," he said.

Britt made another finding of violation against the EVSC school board, one for which Kiefer said there is a good explanation.

"This office advised the school board of (Ennis') complaint on August 21, 2023," the public access counselor's advisory opinion stated. "Despite several subsequent attempts to solicit a response, we were unsuccessful in obtaining an answer from the Evansville Vanderburgh School Board."

Public agencies are required by state statute to respond to formal complaints lodged with his office, according to Britt's opinion. Britt told the Courier & Press that almost all of them do.

"We send out 200-300 invitations to respond a year, and this happens maybe two, three times in a year," he said. "Less than a percent, I’d say."

Britt said his office twice reached out to the school board for a response to Ennis' formal complaint. The public access counselor's office used the email address for the board that Ennis provided on her complaint form — Kiefer's EVSC work address.

That was the problem, Kiefer said.

"I did not see it. It was made out to, ‘Dear sir and madam,’ and, you know, I get thousands of emails," the school board president said. "I’m asking (EVSC attorney) Pat Shoulders to reach out to let them know if you send something in the future please send it certified mail, so they know I received it.

"But I did not see it, or we would have responded."

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Public Access Counselor rules that EVSC violated Open Door Law