MILLBURY – First it was the legality of an executive session.
Now, Tim Krugh, a member of Lake Schools Board of Education is questioning the validity of meeting minutes.
At the Feb. 21 school board meeting, Krugh asked board President Brad Blandin who prepared the meeting minutes for meetings held in January.
Blandin said they had been prepared by Sheri Materni, the superintendent’s secretary, and he had corrected and added to them.
According to Ohio Revised Code, the district’s treasurer shall record the proceedings and it is not appropriate for her to assign the duties to someone else, Krugh said.
If the treasurer is not at the meeting, the board needs to appoint a temporary substitute, he said.
The standard meeting minutes need to include the date, time, names of those in attendance and those unable to attend, and decisions for each agenda item.
What should not be included are excessive detail, personal comments or verbal exchanges, he said.
Minutes from the Jan. 13, 16 and 24 meetings are not acceptable minutes and violate all of the Ohio School Board Association’s guidelines, Krugh said.
“They are written in adversarial and editorial manner and are written to support the arguments and positions and the feelings of the author and to disparage … the disagreeing board member,” Krugh said.
“This is why revised code … requires the school treasurer and not a board member to prepare the board’s minutes,” he said.
In the minutes from the Jan. 16 special meeting, Blandin noted the absence of Krugh, and rather than count him as “absent,” the records show Blandin reported Krugh had “informed the Board during the workshop on 1/13/2024 that he was unwilling to consider a potential reconfiguration of the new elementary building to pre-k – 5 under any circumstance and would not attend any meeting to discuss or learn about such a potential reconfiguration.”
When Treasurer Maria Robinson was in attendance, the minutes were concise and correctly formatted.
The minutes cannot and should not be approved, Krugh said. He moved to table the minutes in question, but the motion died for lack of a second.
The board voted 4-1 to approve minutes from its special meetings of Jan. 10, 13, 16, 17 and 24.
This is the second time this year that Krugh, who is starting his 20th year on the school board, questioned how the board was operating.
An executive session was held in January to discuss changing the district’s new elementary to a PK-5 building.
Krugh, who did not attend that meeting due to a prior commitment, called the meeting illegal and a clear violation of the open meetings act.
At a Jan. 24 special meeting, Blandin cited security arrangements and safety as outlined in Ohio Revised Code to explain why the meeting was held in executive session.
There was concern over the safety of special education classes traveling between the elementary and the middle school, he said.
Blandin said the Ohio Revised Code explains an executive session can be held to discuss “specialized details of security arrangements …”
Krugh argued that there is no basis in Ohio law to discuss that topic in executive session.
The specific code states “details relative to the security arrangements and emergency response protocols for a public body or a public office, if disclosure of the matters discussed could reasonably be expected to jeopardize the security of the public body or public office.”
