WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The state attorney general's office this month cleared members of three local school committees of charges they violated Open Meeting Law but advised them to change their practice.

 

The complaint stemmed from a series of meetings and communications in 2015 and 2016 between then-Tri-District Superintendent Douglas Dias and the then-chairs of the school committees at Mount Greylock, Williamstown Elementary School and Lanesborough Elementary School.

 

In a letter dated April 6, Assistant Attorney General Kevin Manganaro wrote that since the three chairs did not, in and of themselves, constitute a "public body" for purposes of the Open Meeting Law, no violation occurred.

 

The chairs of the three committees do make up 75 percent of the Tri-District's Administrative Review Subcommittee that, however, by Tri-District agreement, requires all four members to constitute a quorum.

 

"None of the communications referenced in the complaint included all four Subcommittee members, nor did they include a quorum of any single public body," Manganaro wrote. "Because the meetings and emails referenced in the complaint involved three Subcommittee members — less than a quorum — we find that they did not violate the Open Meeting Law."

 

However, Manganaro followed that by saying the practice of the three chairs meeting with the superintendent, "may create the appearance of improper deliberation."

 

"[W]e advise the parties involved that the best practice is to hold all discussions during noticed, open meetings going forward," he wrote.

 

The complainant said this week that he is satisfied with the AGO's findings.

 

Richard Cohen of Lanesborough, who at the time of the incident and the complaint was a member of the Mount Greylock School Regional School Committee, had argued that the three committee chairs constituted a "Chairs Committee."

 

"The secret meetings of the Superintendent and Chairs from October 2015 to May 2016 contributed to, and delayed the resolution of, significant district governance problems — to the detriment of students and employees — that eventually came to the public's attention in the fall of 2016," Cohen wrote in an email this week. "The Superintendent and Chairs stopped meeting secretly in May, after my complaint, and the strongly-worded admonishment by the AGO should prevent such actions in the future."

 

At Tuesday's meeting of the Mount Greylock committee, Steven Miller requested that the OML complaint be put on the agenda for the panel's May meeting. Afterward, committee member Carolyn Greene — Mount Greylock's chairwoman at the time of the complaint — declined to comment on the AGO's decision. The topic was not raised at Wednesday's meeting of the Williamstown School Committee, which includes Dan Caplinger, who was chairman at the time of the alleged violation.

 

In other business at Wednesday's Mount Greylock School Committee meeting, the committee discussed potentially following the example of Lanesborough Elementary School and tying the junior-senior high tuition rate to the published per-student cost of a Mount Greylock education as reported by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

 

Interim Superintendent Kimberley Grady noted that Mount Greylock's current tuition agreements with Hancock, New Ashford, Stamford, Vt., and Readsboro, Vt., have tuition rates very close to the DESE figure, so a policy similar to Lanesborough's newly implemented policy would not come as a shock to Mount Greylock's partnering towns.

 

School Committee member Al Terranova bristled at the suggestion that the district needed to change its policy.

 

"I get the impression other people think that the School Committee has been neglectful in its charge and it's our fault," Terranova said. "That's an unfair charge. We care about the taxpayers as much as anyone else cares about the taxpayers. We should say, ‘Wait a second. We negotiated a fair deal.' "

 

Terranova also said he did not think the DESE figure necessarily was an accurate number.

 

"You can probably put 20 different people in a room and come up with 20 different numbers," he said.

 

The committee did not take any action on the recommendation. It did approve its 2017-18 academic calendar, which sees the students start school on Sept. 5. At Miller's suggestion, the committee added a note that the district reserves the right to "take back" days during the planned April vacation in order to make up for snow days if next winter is anything like the winter of 2016-17.

 

Thanks to snow days in the current academic year, the final day for makeup exams this year is June 28.

 

Graduation will be held as scheduled, on June 3 — a reminder of why seniors love snow days more than other students. But because Mount Greylock's gymnasium is undergoing renovations as part of the building project, the school will hold its commencement at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts' Amsler Center at 11 a.m. that Saturday. School officials had discussed holding an outdoor graduation but decided not to take a chance on the weather, Principal Mary MacDonald said.

 

Mount Greylock's committee voted unanimously Tuesday to gift some fluorescent lighting to the Town of Adams. The light fixtures, from the school's former exercise room, would not have been moved to the new building and likely would have been put up for sale as other items — like extraneous lockers — have been or will be. Instead, Adams will use them for its emergency shelter, the School Committee learned.

 

Finally, the School Committee decided to change its practice with regard to public hearings to present the school budget.

 

Traditionally, Mount Greylock has held two public hearings — in a special School Committee meeting in Lanesborough and at its regular meeting at the junior-senior high school.

 

But after reviewing the practices of other regional school districts, like Central Berkshire (Wahconah), Mount Greylock Chairwoman Sheila Hebert of Lanesborough suggested that the committee switch to a single public hearing at the school. The district would continue to present its budget to the Finance Committee in each member town, as usual.

 

The vote to cut one of the public hearings was approved, 5-0-1, with Miller abstaining.