The governing board of an Arizona school district blew through $48,000 on public meetings held outside the reach of most of their constituents and well-outside the district’s boundaries.
According to the Arizona Auditor General, the Ganado Unified School District governing board held meetings at a Flagstaff resort and a Tempe hotel.
The Auditor General found that not only did the Board make it nearly impossible for stakeholders to attend the meetings in person, the average resident in the district does not have access to the internet so watching the meetings online would have been impossible as well.
“The Flagstaff resort is geographically isolated from the district office in Ganado, Arizona, as the resort is located approximately 260 miles roundtrip from the district office. As this equates to an estimated 4-hour drive, public access and attendance were limited by having the public travel this unreasonable distance to attend the meeting, as further evidenced by no public members attending. Similarly, the Tempe hotel is located approximately 530 miles roundtrip from the district office and an estimated 8.5-hour drive. For the July 15-18, 2021, meeting in Tempe, the District included a virtual webinar link on the agenda. However, data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that approximately 60 percent of households in Ganado USD’s boundaries do not have an internet subscription, including cellular data. Therefore, including this link rather than holding the meeting within the district’s boundaries may not have provided sufficient public access, as required by law. Generally, all other meetings throughout the year were held on weekdays at the district office.”
“When we asked District officials about their decision to hold these 3 Board meetings out of town, they indicated that the district held them out of town to avoid interruptions,” reported the Auditor General.
In 2021-2022, a mere 24% of the Ganado Unified School District’s elementary students tested at or above the proficient level for reading, and 15% tested at or above that level for math.
All four schools in the district are considered Title I schools. A Title I school is one that serves a population in which not less than 40 percent of the children are from low-income households.
Overall, the Arizona Auditor General found that the Ganado Unified School District “failed to maintain required accounting records, limiting the scope of our review; limited public access to some Board meetings and wasted more than $48,000 on unnecessary travel; operated its schools far below capacity; and failed to comply with other important requirements putting public monies, student safety, and sensitive computerized data at risk.”
Auditor General findings:
School districts are subject to Arizona’s open meeting laws which require all governing board meetings, including work study sessions, be open to the public with limited exceptions in order to maximize public access to the governmental process.
However, our review of the meeting agendas and minutes for the Board’s September 13-14, 2019, and February 7-8, 2020, work study sessions at a resort in Flagstaff, and the Board’s July 15-18, 2021, work study session at a hotel in Tempe, found that these meetings did not fit any criteria where the public may lawfully be excluded.
The Attorney General’s office publishes an agency handbook that provides guidance to State officers and employees regarding open meeting laws.
According to this guidance, open meeting laws require that “the public body must provide public access to public meetings” and that “this requirement is not met if the public body uses any procedure or device that obstructs or inhibits public attendance at public meetings, such as holding the meeting in a geographically isolated location…”
The Flagstaff resort is geographically isolated from the district office in Ganado, Arizona, as the resort is located approximately 260 miles roundtrip from the district office. As this equates to an estimated 4-hour drive, public access and attendance were limited by having the public travel this unreasonable distance to attend the meeting, as further evidenced by no public members attending. Similarly, the Tempe hotel is located approximately 530 miles roundtrip from the district office and an estimated 8.5-hour drive. For the July 15-18, 2021, meeting in Tempe, the District included a virtual webinar link on the agenda. However, data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that approximately 60 percent of households in Ganado USD’s boundaries do not have an internet subscription, including cellular data.
Therefore, including this link rather than holding the meeting within the district’s boundaries may not have provided sufficient public access, as required by law. Generally, all other meetings throughout the year were held on weekdays at the district office.
The district may have violated the State’s open meeting laws by limiting access during discussion of topics that did not meet the definitions of when the public could be lawfully excluded. This limited access prevented the public, staff, parents, and students from actively participating in the district’s governance. When we asked District officials about their decision to hold these 3 Board meetings out of town, they indicated that the district held them out of town to avoid interruptions.
Although the District notated that the Friday, September 13, 2019, Board meeting held in Flagstaff was a “study session” and “no action will be taken,” the listed presentations were on topics regarding District operations that would have likely been of interest to members of the public.13 We have forwarded our report to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office for further review.