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Open meetings violation will cost school district 3,258 • Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Open meetings violation will cost school district $113,258 • Iowa Capital Dispatch

The Centerville Community School District was ordered to pay $113,258 after a court found the school board violated the Iowa Open Meetings and Records Act.

Last month, Appanoose County District Court Judge Mark Kruse ruled that school board violated state law when members met in a closed session last year to discuss the resignation of a staff member suspected of inappropriate contact with students. Kruse’s ruling arose from a lawsuit filed by the Iowa Freedom of Information Council and its CEO, Randy Evans.

This week, Kruse awarded the board attorneys’ fees and legal costs in the case, giving the school district 15 days to pay the board $113,258.

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In his September ruling, Kruse determined there was no factual basis for the school district’s claim that the board had legally met in private only to evaluate an employee’s job performance.

The judge noted that the employee, a school counselor, had already signed an agreement to resign when the meeting took place and that minutes of the closed-door discussion showed that board members discussed many topics unrelated to the employee’s job performance. counselor.

Centerville Community School District Superintendent Mark Taylor has not responded to calls from the Iowa Capital Dispatch about the September ruling. District officials said Wednesday that Taylor was in meetings and unavailable for comment.

The lawsuit revolved around the Feb. 3, 2023, board meeting in which members voted unanimously to begin a closed-door session, ostensibly to evaluate the job performance of guidance counselor and head baseball coach Ryan Hodges. Under Iowa law, such evaluations can, in some cases, legally be conducted in closed session.

After the 30-minute closed-door discussion, the board went into open session and voted unanimously, without public discussion, to approve a resignation agreement with Hodges, at which time the meeting adjourned.

One of the central questions of the lawsuit was whether the board met in private, as the district claimed, for the legal purpose of evaluating Hodges’ job performance, rather than to discuss the merits of Hodges’ resignation agreement and related issues.

“In reading the meeting minutes several times, it is difficult to find a consistent or meaningful discussion that assesses Mr. Hodges’ professional competence,” Kruse stated in his ruling. “The discussion generally focused on the terms of the resignation agreement, avoiding lawsuits, the leak (of information about Hodges’ conduct) and how to handle the consequences of the expected resignation.”

Evans has said the Freedom of Information Council filed the lawsuit because the board “concealed facts about its actions. An agreement was reached to let the councilor resign. School board members reviewed the agreement in a hastily called 29-minute closed meeting Friday night and then approved it in a one-minute open session that lacked discussion or explanation.”

At the time of Kruse’s ruling in September, Evans said the board’s actions would result in “a costly expense that public officials could have easily avoided by meeting in public as the law always permits and as common sense typically dictates.”

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