On December 1, attorneys for the Scottsdale Unified School District were notified that the Attorney General’s Office had found the district had violated Arizona’s Open Meeting Law.
In a letter to the District’s attorney, Jennifer McLennan, of Gust Rosenfeld P.L.C., the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) advised that it had found “that the Board has violated the Open Meeting Law with respect to its Textbook Adoption Committee, and the Strategic Planning Design Team, and its use of Board subcommittees, and “2 x 2 by 1” meetings.”
The AGO wrote in part:
We find that the District violated the Open Meeting Law with regard to the meetings of the Strategic Planning Design Team (the “Team”). Although the superintendent may create advisory committees to assist him in his administration of the District, the formation and adoption of Board policy is the prerogative of the Board itself. See ARS, §15–341(A)(1).
The Open Meeting Law specifically contemplates that committees, “whose members have been appointed for the specific person purpose of making recommendations concerning the decision to be made… by the public body” should be subject to the requirements of the Open Meeting Law. Here, although Superintendents Scott Menzel spearheaded the Team, it is clear that the Team was designed to – and did in fact – advise the Board regarding matters on which it ultimately took legal action. Further, board member, Jann-Michael Greenberg stated at the June 9, 2020, special board meeting that the Board had “properly tasked the Superintendent with creating the strategic plan. Although not done by official vote, the Board clearly directed the creation of the Team. And the Board ultimately considered an adopted the recommendations of the Team in three phases at public meetings, held on June 22, 2021, January 25, 2022, and June 28, 2022.
To say that the Team is not subject to the Open Meeting Law simply because the Board did not officially create it by a vote would elevate form over substance and defeat the purpose of the Open Meeting Law. See ARS §38-431.09 (A) (“[A]ny … entity charged with the interpretation of this article shall true any provision of this article in favor of open and public meetings.”). Further, this Office has stated that any scheme or device designed to circumvent the purpose of the Open Meeting Law is subject to close scrutiny, and what constitute a violation subjecting the governing board and participating members to the sanctions provided for in the Open Meeting Law.
The finding comes in response to a 248-page complaint filed by Scottsdale resident and Washington state attorney, Chris Evans.
Evans, an international corporate attorney, said on his popular X.com account, “With this AG closing letter, I look forward to greater transparency and openness in Scottsdale. For far too long, SUSD has worked in secret, shutting out parents, in violation of law. The AG has investigated. Now there must be a leadership change.”
One Scottsdale Governing Board member, Amy Carney, recently elected on a transparency and accountability platform, agrees with Evans that leadership is the problem and hopes the public steps up to join her in holding Menzel to account.
“The number of Administrative advisory committees, councils, and cabinets that Scottsdale Unified has is of concern,” said Carney. “It’s vital that we have parents and community members who are paying attention and using their skills and expertise to help hold our district leadership accountable.”
Schemes And Devices
However, superintendents and their compliant governing boards appear to be regularly using schemes and devices “designed to circumvent the purpose of the Open Meeting Law.”
Just this week, Paradise Valley Governing Board member Sandra Christensen, a staunch advocate for transparency, questioned her district’s decision to leave the public out of the process employed to recommend public schools closures.
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Christensen applauded the District’s School Closure Committee’s work but argued that its work should have been open to the public.
“I will say that this committee did a very thorough job on their analysis, however, I would have liked to have more information on how the closures and redistricting recommendations were decided. My concern stems primarily from the manner in which the District handled the process. The School Closure Committee has been meeting for over 8 months in closed door meetings that neither Board members nor members of the community could attend or get updates on potential closures,” explained Christiansen.
“This committee should have been formed as a board committee, not a closed superintendent committee that did not follow open meeting law. Superintendent committees should be administrative in nature only, I take issue with committees that are closed and secretive in nature, especially if they will be presenting their recommendations to the board for a vote,” concluded Christiansen.
Few school districts are as clumsy and blatant in their attempt to keep the public out of public education matters as the Ganado Unified School District.
In October 2023, the Arizona Auditor General found that the 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, making it impossible for stakeholders to attend the meetings in person because the average resident in the District does not have access to the internet so watching the meetings online would have been impossible as well.
“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.
Not The First Time
The latest finding by the AGO against Scottsdale is not the first.
In June 2022, the AGO filed a lawsuit against the District for a violation of the Open Meeting law.
The complaint alleges SUSD violated Arizona’s Open Meeting law while Greenburg was the President of the Board, by knowingly structuring an agenda and meeting so as to prohibit public comment about a proposed mask mandate and other subjects within the jurisdiction of the SUSD Governing Board, knowingly applying unauthorized content-based restrictions on public comment made during a board meeting, and knowingly cutting off or otherwise interrupting speakers during a call to the public.
“The Scottsdale School Board has a history of playing it loose with the law,” Rep. John Kavanagh told the Arizona Daily Independent at the time.