SCSD Special School Board meeting, 12.11.25

001Ryan, just to be clear, I have the ability to share my screen, correct? So, I can put my PowerPoint up. >> Yes. I might have to make an adjustment, but yes, we can make that happen. >> Okay, that's fine. >> I mean, you can also sh do it there if you want to, but I I'm here. >> Probably better for you. >> Easy enough, >> right? All right. I will now call to order the December 11th, 2025 special meeting board study session. Um, we have all of our board directors uh present and accounted for. Um, we will start with the flag salute. Everybody can please rise. >> I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and

002justice for all. All right. You have before you the agenda for the December 11, 2025 special board meeting uh board study session. There any changes to set agenda? >> I have no change and I'm okay moving to approve the agenda. >> Uh so that is a motion to approve the agenda for the December 1125 special board meeting. >> If that's okay. >> Second. >> All right. Is moved by Director Russell, seconded by Director Olsen. All those in favor of approving the agenda for the December 11, 2025 special meeting, say I. >> I. All those opposed say no. No. All right. So, that passes unanimously. Uh we have one item on our agenda today. It is uh our open public meetings act, public records act, and just overall uh how to be a good board member.

003I will let uh super uh superintendent overnight take it away from here. >> Great. Thank you. Uh there's two artifacts that are in the red folder for you and and the agenda was provided for you as well and I'll just point them out to use as a reference. First is policy 1805, open government trainings. And you'll um you'll notice that on the the third and fourth line down, it outlines that uh all board directors will be trained. Uh in the items that were listed on the agenda by Director Evans within 90 days of taking the office. Um and after that initial training, there'll be a refresher at least every four years. And um I know that some of you did some of this training at the WASA conference. So um that's uh just an additional

004kind of layer and training to to what's needed. The other piece is the open public meetings uh guide and this was pulled directly from WASDA and provided provided for you. So with that um I will turn it over to Charles Leachch. Charles is uh we work with Charles often and just thank him for being here to to provide this training uh here tonight and conversation can go both ways. He can hear us and we can hear him and if there's anything you need Charles uh with the AV I'll help out. >> No, it seems like we're working here. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Um, and you feel free to uh [clears throat] speak up if there's something in particular that um you want to ask me about. Hopefully that's working. It's

005There we go. All right. So, let's do slideshow. Everybody can see my screen. >> It's working on it. >> All right. Okay. So, um, I'm here to conduct a a training for you and and the focus tonight is an overview of the Open Public Meetings Act and kind of public records, including retention. Um, one of the things that, uh, I'm going to kind of cover today is some some basics. For those of you who've been through the WASDA um, kind of I'll call it new board member boot camp or training or what have you is that's always a very effective tool. um the OPMA and and public records just I'll say at the outside and I've got 34 slides here the kind of walk through but it's one of those things that honestly we train

006on these and we train school districts and I've been doing this for 30 years now working with districts and public entities but one of the things that's always particularly um challenging I think for boards is just kind of continuing to operationalize um the OPMA and then also understanding ing the public records act, the P. Um because they are things that dictate certain processes and uh sometimes just as human beings when you're interfacing with each other um it's easy when you have the common goal of of leadership of a school district or stewardship of a school district and management of superintendent who's the body politic if you will. um that uh that there's some things that uh sometimes you may not remember, may forget or also may uh also just have questions about. So, we routinely

007get calls um as a lot of school lawyers do and I know you work with a number of school lawyers that a lot of good lawyers out there who represent school districts, though they're blessed now because of some people leaving the industry um in the last number of years, but there to be resources to help you. Um, and we get a lot of calls about what about this? Um, and sometimes we know the answer and sometimes we have to look it up. So, if you ask a question to me tonight, one of the things certainly I can try and do is also find out the answer if I don't know it um here within the uh confines of of my uh my process. Um, so um kind of what is the OPMA? Um, you know,

008is generally um you know, essentially it's exactly what it says it is, right? the open public meetings act and we all kind of understand that and that's what we're doing right now. Now we're having an open public meeting and uh we're in a place where we continue to talk about uh you know open government and the OPMA essentially is stands for the proposition that if you are all going to get together as a group um as a majority a quorum if you will we can't have a meeting without a quorum that there's rules and the rules are that basically you know it has to be open to the public. So um which creates a little bit of a you know a a process associated with that. Um so the a meeting occurs under the OPMA

009uh when there's action being taken. And so the definition which is here on the slides talks about you know an action is the transaction of official business of the board. So an official action of the board as a body. Um and it includes but is not limited to and the word there in the statute is not designed to be exclusive. um receiving public testimony, deliberating, discussing, considering, reviewing, and evaluating. Now, I'm not going to talk about the last word and taking final action there, but I'm going to talk about the first ones. Deliberate, receiving, deliberating, discussing, considering, reviewing, evaluating. To me, those are thinking words, right? You guys are all basically engaged in a process of taking a look at an issue and considering the issue. So if somebody just walks in and says, "Hey,

010are we going to meet for dinner?" So you're at Wazda altogether and you literally are going ahead and walking together and someone goes, "Hey, are we going to get pizza?" That's not necessarily something that falls under the OPMA. That's not an agenda item. That is a little more housekeeping. That is not necessarily something that is official business. Now, I'm not telling you there aren't people out there that might say it's official business because we have a number of people that are OPMA stewards or consider themselves stewards that may argue that point. But realistically, if you are doing something that is official business of managing and governing as a school board. And then the other one, the easy one here is taking final action, a collective positive or negative decision or the big easy one is

011an actual vote. when you guys call a vote, you have to do that in the open. And even we'll talk tonight about executive session. So if you want to go ahead and take action in an executive session, you can't. You got to go ahead and go out there and stand in the light of day. Now granted, after you might be in an executive session about some topic, say I come to you and we have something we're talking about an executive session might nobody might be left, right? It might be I did I had an interlocal case once where we did an executive session years ago and the executive session was 4 hours long and by the time we got out there and took a vote and this is pre-streaming there was no one around because

012it was like 12:45 in the morning. Um so the ideal is to avoid those types of instances where you're going to have something that late. But the point is we had to go out in the open and do it. Um so a meeting occurs when a majority of you are present. So, if you are going to transact official business, if there's two of you, that is not technically a meeting. Okay? You can't the two of you or if you're walking in the hallway and you're having a conversation, that is not technically a meeting. Um, you know, now if a majority of you are on an email string and you are engaging in deliberating, discussing, considering, reviewing and evaluating or even taking final action, that can be a meeting under the OPMA. So you have to

013be very very careful. It doesn't mean you can't get information. So if for instance it says receiving public testimony if if all of a sudden you know the superintendent sends you a letter out to you all are saying hey I want to update you on this that is not an OPMA meeting event. You're receiving information from the superintendent as part of his job. Now if you all talk about what you're going to do in light of that as a group that would constitute a meeting. So you want to be very careful about how you go ahead and inter interface. The other thing is board created committee meetings are not um subject to the OPMA. So, say a couple of you sit on a board related to something that is not an official public action. You

014go off and say you also go attend the National School Boards Association event or something of that nature. The now to me the litmus test there is are you in a place where you are actually engaging in some government essentially of the district a decision about it. So, one of those things that you need to do as a board member is think about it and go, "Okay, well, maybe we need to talk about this. Let's add it to the agenda or we can set it for a study session or do something in the open and move forward with that." Um, so the the issue of how you have physical location, you know, it co kind of shifted some of our adaptability in this area, not surprisingly. So, meetings must have a physical location where the

015public can attend. um at this point, but it doesn't have to be within the district boundaries. Technically, um you can go ahead and have a meeting at WAD. Oftentimes, a lot of people will do that. Um you may attend via telephone or Zoom. The big thing is is there's a real time communication. Um now, you have if you have a meeting that is being held via Zoom for whatever reason, say it's an emergency format, say there's something going on, you have to provide an option for the public to listen at no cost. You can't be on a platform where it's required they pay for access. Um and you have to give notice of how they can access. Um we got really good at this during co right because we were all separate and we'd have

016these virtual meetings and everyone would be in virtual world so to speak. But this is a process we have to um the other thing about the OPMA is you can't tell people the conditions upon which they attend the board meeting week. Um, you cannot require people to sign in and provide names or addresses. You cannot, this was an issue we had with uh with co we were doing all virtual is people would show up and sometimes they wouldn't want to put their screen name up and there were some school boards like well I want to know who this person is and you're like well no if they aren't interfacing they're just watching they're allowed to do that and they aren't disrupting. Um, you know, you can go ahead and impose generally conditions reasonably necessary to

017protect public health or safety or to protect against the interruption of a meeting. Uh, you know, for, you know, one of the most obvious things sometimes that people do, we'll talk about public comment a little bit more here. Um, is you can limit public comment. You can go ahead and say we're only going to do three minutes uh per person. Um you could have there's no rule against having law enforcement present if you think someone's going to be a disruption. Um but you cannot just because you're worried about someone disrupting take the meeting and set it someplace where public will not have access. Um you have to have some specific articular um things. Okay. So one thing I want to talk about um is the public comment part too. Um, some public entities because of

018just some of the disruption from public comment, if you have a particularly disruptive person, have taken steps to change how they do public comment. The the first rule of public comment is you must give someone an opportunity to comment um in a public comment fashion of something that is going to be board action. So if in a meeting where board action is going to be taken, you are going to take a vote, you have to let someone have the opportunity for public comment on the the item that's being voted upon, you can limit public comment to things that are only on the agenda. So if I want to come in and I want to talk about how I have a problem with how you guys have constructed the bus turnaround at your elementary school or

019something like that, it's not on the agenda. That doesn't I don't necessarily have the right to do that. Now, as an entity and the board of an entity and elected officials, you may want to hear public comment from anybody about anything, right? Um, you want to hear what they have to say, but you do have the ability to go ahead just to keep you on track and also to go ahead and make sure that you're uh on the agenda. If you have someone who say for instance is causing disruption with public comment um or violating rules of talking about people in a disruptive way, violating FURPA, there are there's kind of a touch. It really kind of depends on what they're saying of your ability to cut them off, but certainly you can stop them

020at 3 minutes. You can ignore them. You don't have to necessarily engage in them. Um, one thing that some school districts have done is we've switched under the statute to say we're going to take written public comment instead of verbal public comment. Um, if you do that, you have to give people adequate notice to giving public comment. And you have to post when you're going to go ahead and receive things by and then you have to distribute it to all the board so they can see it so someone actually gets the opportunity. No one has to read it into the record, but you at least have to provide them that opportunity. So, you want to be in a position where you're adhering to the opportunity to engage in public comment, even if they aren't necessarily

021standing in front of a mic, right? [clears throat and cough] Um, so the other thing too is is sometimes um because of circumstance or if there's a disruption, you can adjourn a meeting and then re and basically once the disruption is passed, you can um start it up again. You have to give not if you're going to adjourn a meeting and re kind of set it. You have to give notice to anybody who wants that notification. That's required. So you can't you can't go ahead and say we're gonna have a meeting and then make a decision we're going to adjourn the meeting and move it to someplace else. So people can't go ahead and see what we're doing or what we're doing in terms of government. Um you are allowed to do that. Um you

022basically have to give 24 hours notice. Uh if you're going to adjourn and do that, you also need to go ahead and do that if you're going to continue the hearing. give notice so they know when and where they need to be. 24 hours is kind of the notice for written submitt for public comment. Um so that's one of the reasons I think it's in the statute. Um so let's talk about just regular meetings. Uh just general concepts. Um you know you have a schedule. It's included in your board policy. You have to have a regular meeting at least once a month as a public entity. Um you have to again allow public comment in some fashion if you're taking final action on something. Um you can't uh you must offer the opportunity for public

023comment um basically before adopting policies that promote um education of students or will promote effective efficient safe management or operation of the district. You have certain things people are allowed to make public comment on. Um, the big thing about public comment is whenever you want to stop someone from engaging in public comment, this is kind of the general list of of considerations, you want to make sure you understand that's a that's a quasi public forum or public forum. So, you have first amendment issues. So, you can get sued for people engaging in conduct uh where you don't like it and then stop them from talking. Right. So, you want to be very very careful. Um, and that's just the fashion of of how it works. Now, um, you don't have to accept public comment that

024renders the orderly conduct of the meeting unfeasible. That's a judgment call and you have to be really careful. Um, a lot of board meeting case law was handed down over the course of COVID in a lot of communities and this was on the federal level where people were trying to stop people commenting either pro- vaccination, antivaccination, they were getting very angry with masking mandates and there's case law where there's a balance essentially on what people uh can be prevented to say. Unfortunately, they can say things that are pretty nasty. Um so you kind of have to have a little bit of an understanding of your community and your process and how to deal with that. Um you know the one thing you can do is if you have not given someone essentially the quasi public

025form or public form of making a public comment you can stop them from talking. So if somebody just stands up and starts talking during a board meeting when say you have something you're discussing as a board publicly or someone's making a board report, you are in a position where you can stop that person from interrupting or disrupting. That's the public comment is not when they want to have it. Um you don't have to put public comment at any particular time. Um you generally should put public comment before final actions taken if it's on the agenda and they want to have comment on it. But um you know I've seen people actually do it after um or do it before public comment a lot of times is put uh you know kind of depending on the

026length of the agenda when you want to get it done because you are going to go ahead and want to give them an opportunity to be heard. Just to clarify real quick, Charles, just real quick, I want to clarify for our board. That's the reason we have two opportunities for public comment is because our open public comment is after our consent agenda. So, we open it up so that public can comment on our consent agenda specifically and then we have just our open public comment. But that reason right there is you have to give them the opportunity to speak before you take final action is why we have those two opportunities built into ours. Um, so just to clarify that for for our specific >> So so you you allow two opportunities to come. That's

027interesting. >> We do because our consent agenda is above our like we could fix it, but it it works fine the way we do it. But because our consent agenda is above our open public comment section, we allow them the opportunity to speak on things in the consent agenda specifically. >> Yeah. I see I know people that have done it where they'll put the public comment right at the very outset to cover everything and then do consent agenda later right before board comment. Um and the one thing there's no rule that you have to give an opportunity for someone public comment to get the last word. So when you do board if you do individual board comments or something of that nature, you know, you don't have to let I kind of recommend against having

028public comment after board comments because you know what one of you might say something that's going to inspire commentary or you know also it's your chance to address any public concerns or or you know kind of say what you uh what you feel. Um so uh the other thing is is that if someone cannot attend physically due to a disability uh and you are allowing public comment um you have to facilitate their opportunity to provide uh public commentary you know which could be remote comment. It's got to it's subject to feasibility. They can call um you also could allow them to zoom if you want um or even submit something in writing but just something to keep in mind. Um so the one thing that you can kind of u stop the con the considerations

029under the OPMA is executive sessions and executive sessions essentially are a separate kind of carve out of uh so you'd have an open public meeting you'd start it and then you could say we're adjourning to a noted executive session for particular reason. Um the statute basically uh applies there are nine statutory reasons that apply to school boards. um and you essentially announce it and uh and how long it'll last. Um you know, it's kind of a a little bit of an inconvenience, but you have to because people need to know. If you go to an executive session, think it's set for 15 minutes and the board or whatever reason you want to discuss it, you have to go out and say, "Okay, I'm going to open the door. We're announcing we're continuing the executive session

030for 15 minutes." You don't need to all go back into a different room and do it publicly. someone can go out there and make the announcement. Um the the there's basically a variety of of reasons why you can do an executive session. Um and I'll talk about a couple of them here. Um the big thing about an executive session is a detailed record of the executive session should not be made. There is no minutes of an executive session. There is no transcript of an executive session. um you have the ability in an executive session to go ahead and make uh your uh kind of decision without the worries of of public consideration. So essentially your process now again you're not taking final action you're more discussing and debating and taking input and everything else but

031there are particular things that are protected there um they're different than the OPMA uh open public meeting um you know you cannot generally go in uh to a executive session to talk about personnel generally like things of salary or who are we giving raises to or classes or things um you know it has to be specific to a consideration or an issue. The most one of the most uh common ones is to receive and evaluate complaints about a public employee. Um evaluate the qualifications of an applicant. Um obviously not someone who's standing for election. You don't get to them going to no executive session for that. Um or to evaluate or review the performance of an employee. Now, the one thing you need to be mindful of if you're receiving and evaluating complaints about a

032public employee, there is a exception essentially that allows a complaint, the person who's a target of the complaint to actually be present for that to actually talk about it. Um, normally what happens is that if you've put it under the performance of an employee, they don't have the right to sit there. Um, so it's it's one of those things that that kind of is dual purpose reasons for an executive session. Um, one of the things that kind of is an age-old sort of idea is that if you had an attorney like me present, you could just do an executive session. And I still go to public entity meetings I have in the years where I'll they'll be like, "We need to have you there." And I'm like, "Why?" "Well, we need an executive session." I'll

033be like, "Well, me just being there doesn't make it an executive session." There's actually rules about what I'm there for. Um, and you know, the big thing there and kind of the touchstone of it is in litigation or facing potential litigation. And it can't just be conceptual of, you know, we might get sued for this someday. It actually has to be we have someone who says they're going to sue us or we believe there's um a high likelihood that this potentially will result in litigation. Um, and that doesn't necessarily mean there's a nefarious purpose to having the executive session. It just means someone somewhere who has the right to sue and anybody can sue that can pay the 250 and initiate a lawsuit or make a claim or a decision may lead to increased exposure.

034Um, congratulations. You live in the state of Washington and you all exist in a district in the state of Washington which is one of the most latigious states in the United States. It is registered like nationally by anybody that does litigation as literally the word is a judicial hellhole. That is literally the rating Washington has, believe it or not. Um [laughter] because they're they're unlike every other state of the union except maybe California, even Oregon, they have caps and immunities. Washington is one of the few states, one of 14, I think, that has absolutely no caps or immunities for public entity existence. So, um you can get sued for a number of things and you can't just say we can't sue us. Can you hear me? Okay, Frank, >> I can hear you, but um

035this was what I was concerned about. It says the meeting's going to end in 10 minutes. So, I'm going to set up another link and >> we can take a break and why don't we take a break and you can just send me another link and we'll start up again because we'll be gone for, you know, 35 minutes and then we can plug on through till morning. Okay, we're not gonna do that, but [laughter] but I will generate another link and send it to you right away and then um I'll let you know when we're back. >> Sure, that's fine. All right, so let me let me uh so we I say I have seven or eight minutes here and then if uh if the curtain drops or the hook is drawn on me and

036I'm pulled off stage, then we'll just come back in after five minutes. Okay. >> Um so uh potential litigation. So the big thing here is to meet the requirement is the district has been specifically threatened with litigation. you reasonably believe litigation is going to be initiated or you're discussing the probability of litigation or the legal risks associated with the proposed action or current practice when public discussion of the litigation or legal risk is likely to lead to an adverse legal or financial consequence. Most executive sessions with lawyers fall under three. I mean, you might have a lawsuit we're talking about that you're protected, but the reality is you want to be able to talk about it without somebody listening to you in a public meeting and going, "Hey, that's a great idea. I think I'm

037going to sue you for that." Um, so you want to protect the conversation to some extent. Um, you also under the OPMA can have special meetings. That's any meeting that is not a regular meeting. Um, and essentially I don't this could even be a regular special meeting and basically you have to give special notice to it. um you know any any media outlet can file a request to be notified. You have people that you notify. You just kind of post it. You post the notice um on the website agenda. That's normally the best way to do notification. Um and you can't take final action at a special meeting on any matter not on the original notice and agenda. So, the idea of a special meeting oftent times is we're going to find out stuff, we're

038going to learn stuff, we might talk about stuff, but we aren't going to take final action. Um, and you can't do that unless you give notice. Um, a lot of times is you have them to do an executive session and that's drawn because of the availability of you and the availability of someone like me um to go ahead and have a conversation. Um the kind of I guess not coincidentally with the floods and everything else. I know there's some districts that are actually having emergency meetings. You have the um the ability to call a emergency meeting um if the time requirement of 24-hour notice is impractical and sorry practical and would increase basically the issue. So um it's very rare but obviously when you have an extreme circumstance like say the storm you need to

039make decisions immediately. So, you literally could walk in and go, "We're doing a meeting right here, right now." Now, if you do that, you want to have a minute. You want to post it and let everybody know about it. But if it's dire um and anything impacting student safety or property, you know, in terms of you don't want to lose the high school, say something's going to happen because of, you know, a flood plane, um you need to go ahead and make those decisions. You have to be careful on the agenda in an emergency meeting. You can't go ahead and go, "Hey, let's do this, too." you know, you have to do it specific to what the nature of the emergency is. Um, so, uh, regularly scheduled study sessions, you know, that's one of those

040things that generally you want to note the regular meeting policy if you do that. Um, otherwise you have to go through the special meeting notice. That's normally when you go to like WASDA, you're all together, you're kind of hanging out and you're like, we're going to get together and talk about what we've learned or something. Um and uh board retreats um you know they can follow the special meeting process. There's no exception for them to be held in in private or an executive session. Um they are specific to your operations. Some people have people that want to go and sit in on a a a board study session if it's off at you know Campbell Resort in Chalan. I mean I guess technically but a lot of people have better things to do. you don't

041have to necessarily stream it um for a board retrieve. Um and okay, so the other thing what is then I might get cut off here and we can come back to it. The OPMA does not apply to things that are not OPMA meetings. Um what is a private or closed meeting that is not a board meeting or an executive session? Labor. You have a collective bargaining session. You are talking about a grievance. You are discuss discussing or interpreting a collective bargaining agreement. You're talking about strategy on collective bargaining. You're hearing something under your employment policies. Um you are talking about a mediation you're doing with a grievance or reviewing counter proposals. Those are not public meetings. Um and the anything that falls under the administrative procedure act that basically says you have to have a

042meeting as part of an appeal process. So that could be something related to an appeal by an employee or something of that nature. And lastly, the big one, quasi judicial hearing. So if you hear an appeal, appeal of a student matter, appeal of an employee matter, that is not a public meeting. Now, someone might try and make it that way. There are some ways they can't under federal law, but if some say my kid goes off and lights burns a garbage can at the high school and I appeal the discipline all the way up to the school board because you expelled him or you did something um and everybody like somebody goes, I want to go there or you know the other kids involved or some other people are just fascinated by it and they

043want to watch it. They don't get to. All five of you can show up hear that appeal. It has nothing to do with anything. You can tell me after the hearing is done. Hearing being a liberal word where people maybe present their argument. Maybe you just review the documents. You turn to me. You as a group say, "How do we decide?" We vote. Yeah. Uphold the discipline. No, you tell the lawyer generally. Um or it could be just one of your employees. Write up this decision and then the board chair will sign it and that's the decision. that is not a public meeting um and is not an executive session. It is something completely different. That is probably one of the biggest misperceptions by a lot of board members in the state of Washington. Um

044and it's probably because some of the WASDA model policies that have been adopted actually talk about the board being taking action and it's not the same thing. And one of the biggest things we worry about in those is you have furer protections. You do not want in a public meeting to talk about students in specific unless you're giving them an award, right? That's the only thing you want to talk about. Our kids did really well at the, you know, the state championship or the drama or the band or our grades or, you know, I went, one of you's reporting on I went to at the elementary, I saw a science fair. That's different. But if you're going to talk about negative things about a student, always be very cautious when you're in a public setting

045of a public meeting. Um or you might get an appeal of discipline or something of that nature. So [clears throat] the other thing is honestly as a board member, you want to steer clear of it because like this is one of those things where I tell kind of board members to stay in their lane is if you get interested in a particular action involving a student because you might know the family, they might come to you and talk to you. Say you go and ask the superintendent or one of the administrators and and the report about an incident. You got to be really careful because that appeal comes before you. And there isn't technically a rule that says you should go ahead and recuse yourself. But obviously that's something to consider. You just need a

046quorum to hear quasi judicial matters. You do not need all the board. Um, I've even had families stipulate to two board members making the decision because they wanted to have it heard and they couldn't get something set within the time allowed. Um, so, uh, the OPMA, one of the things the consequences for violating the OPMA, um, obviously is that someone can sue you for a violation of the OPMA. Um, and then there's technically a civil penalty. Um and the key here and is $500 to $1,000. Um 500 for the first one and thousand for the second offense. So obviously the statute contemplates I guess there were some people that were violating it more than once because they gave you a little bit of an escalation um and attorneys fees and costs, but the thing to

047keep in mind is knowingly violated. There are a lot of people out there even despite the fact they went to a training at Wazda for an hour that they are ignorant or don't fully understand the implications. So, one of the things that's happened in cases, people come and say, "You knowingly violated." I've had people, they're like, "Well, I didn't really understand it." And they weren't they weren't found of knowingly violated. They were just, I guess, not paying attention would be the best way to to say it. The big thing is if you're making a decision, if you're engaging in deliberative process, um probably the biggest implication if you have a violation of the OPMA is the assertion that any action taken is null and void. So that's why you really want to be very clear

048when you're do [clears throat] >> Sorry about that. Miranda, our our um the how our public comment is generally set up as we do the consent agenda where public comment but they don't have to pre-sign for that, >> right? It's just anything in the thing. You can only talk about things that are in that consent agenda section. >> And I'm trying to remember back from my memory when we do have an action item like a first reading or some other item, does do those occur before or after public comment? And if that would be a public comment, >> we're not taking final refer final action. Okay. >> So, it wouldn't be until the next when it becomes a consent agenda. >> We're only taking item we're only taking final action on items that are in

049our consent agenda. If it's in the schoolboard discussion, that's usually like a first reading or it's something that we're talking about that we maybe want to take action on later, but those those aren't um generally things that we're taking action on. We're just discussing them and that is after our public >> okay >> and then the If we pull an item out of the the the consent agenda, we do vote on that as a separate >> item. >> Yes. >> But I would assume that that's still covered under what Charles is suggesting. >> We asked them if they want to ask if they want to talk about any of the items on our consent agenda regardless of whether we pulled it or not. So they have the opportunity to talk about any item on that.

050>> Okay. regardless of whether we pull it to discuss it or not. >> And and we've been fairly open as a as a as a board to taking public comment on a wide range of of topics. >> We have no control over in the actual open public comment section. There's zero control or limits on what they can talk about. The only thing that we ask is if they're trying to do it online, they have to let us know two hours in advance. Um and then if they uh sign up here in person, um it does ask like what do you want to talk about? Um I don't know that if they didn't fill that in, we'd be like you can't have public comment because you didn't fill that in to that extent. >> And I

051think the only reason why we even had that was because when we've had a ton of public comment, we tried to >> like organize so that every every topic [clears throat] gets a little >> Yeah, I think I appreciate what how we do it. But I think what I was picking up on and maybe that's part of the discussion maybe misinterpreting that that Charles is suggesting that the open comment if it's outside of what the board agenda or board topics are and that's not necessarily a requirement to offer that public comment. >> No, I think you said that that you don't have any control over what they say in their open public. We can't tell them that's not on our agenda. So if it's not on our agenda, we can't talk about it unless it's

052in like our items brought up by the board. But like I can't say Jennifer Allen, you can't talk about that in your open public comment because that's not on our agenda. That's they're not held by those same standards that we are. That's why we don't engage with that author is because it's not honored like potentially not honored >> and and I think that's good to have this discussion because that's that's where you know I I hear and hear something misinterpret. So that's that's good to have a better understand. >> Yeah. That's why we tell them like hey man we're not going to talk like we're not gonna conver like we don't if there's you know an appropriate response and somebody will follow up with you but like we don't talk back to them during that

053section >> because we are >> that part that part I've picked up on over the years >> we are bound by our agenda we are >> right >> I mean the whole whole point is they get to watch the sausage being made they don't get to participate Hey, Charles. >> Hello. >> Back again. Here we go. >> Okay, >> I'm back on. >> You're ready to go. Thanks. >> All right. Here. I'll go ahead. It's the free version. >> Right. Current slide. Let's go. There we are. Oh, very exciting. >> All right. Let me there. Okay. So, um the big thing is, you know, violations null and void. Normally what happens if someone is raising an issue about the OPMA violation um districts will just turn around and engage in a meeting to remedy it,

054right? I mean so if somebody comes and is raising a concern about an OPMA violation, you know, our recommendation typically is you want to go ahead and cure it. Um so you just have someone I mean you don't want to be sued for it unnecessarily and have a bunch of stuff. You just want to fix it. um demonstrating a level of good faith I think goes a long way in that situation. So all right. So now let's talk about the public records act um which is a little bit different because the OPMA is something that dictates structure um in terms of how you operate in your governance whereas the public records act is part of kind of the uh the requirements of open government in a in I would say a a larger sense of

055showing uh to the public what they want to know essentially about operations and it is altogether more complex I would say than the OPMA. Um the public records act as well um is something that continues to evolve and is often something that people don't agree on interpretation about. So um that's one of the things that is a process of learning often times and really depends on you know uh who is telling you what and and what advice uh you're receiving. Um the bottom line is that the overall mandate of the public records act and the P is that all public records maintained by basically public entities um should be made available uh to all members of the public. Now that is the general mandate. The specificity of doing that is very difficult um and is

056a burden. Now the big thing here is what is a public record? So anything that is essentially created um by anyone who is in the course and scope of their role uh as in the district prepared, owned, used or retained by basically the district and which contains information that relates to the conduct of government or the performance of any governmental or propriety fun proprietary function essentially is a public record. So you can have records that may that exist that may not they may be confidential. They may be protected. They may be something say for instance that someone goes ahead and uh a teacher has notes involving a student um that they don't show to anyone else and they might never be shown to anybody else. That technically still is a public record. Um and the

057big thing here is the statutory definition. It's kind of ungainainely because it says writing even though technically it can involve all sorts of stuff beyond traditional written records. Um now with digital recordkeeping it's gotten a lot more arduous. Honestly, one of the problems with being public entities um is the issue of the evolution of electronics because it used to be when you had a public record, it was yeah, we've got a file cabinet, we've got papers, we can make some copies and we'll charge you some money to make those copies if you really want all 400 pages. oftentimes they would make people uh you know or offer rather come in and look at the records because it's easier than us going ahead and and copy them all. Um the problem now is when you have

058proprietary frameworks such as Adobe or Outlook or Word, let alone social media, you have just a lot of aggregate records. So you're getting more and more and more and it's more of a system burden. And this is one of the struggles that that we face. Um the there's no question that the nature of the public records act though is it's it's part of the mandate of being a public entity. Um and it can include a lot more and so we have to go ahead and kind of operationalize this again to use that word. Um the public records act under its title it shall be liberally construed. So there is a presumption in favor of access to public records. Um and this is to asssure that the public interest is taken care of. Now that doesn't

059mean that everything happens and the priority of your delivery of instruction and management has to do with the P before all other things. That's not what it says. Um though people that typically want the information want it for particular purpose. They want it because they are concerned about something involving their family. They want it because they're a member of the media. They want it because they don't want to pay. They don't think you're doing a good job of stewardship of their taxes or they have an agenda in their own personal viewpoint that involves the district. Um, but you have to take action to go ahead and comply with it. Um, now you get a public records request that comes in. Um and the big thing here is what is a request definition and uh who

060receives a request? Now a public records request must be for identifiable records. A a request for information is not a public records request. So if someone shows up and says I want to know what you did on this date or I want to know how you made this decision or I want to know that's not necess I want to know how many people are in the high school. That's not a request for public records. That's a request for information. Now it is generally more favorable to provide the information because then someone's going to turn around and go I want all the records that tell me the population of the high school and then all of a sudden you're in this place where you're creating greater system burden. Um so you know a request for all

061or substantially all records in the existence of the district is not a valid public records request. There was a public records request that was to a city city a town I think it was a town it's because it was smaller um years ago that said I want all the emails in the in the in the town for the last 15 years. And they went and the court was like no that's not a public records request. You can't just ask. That's just that's just ridiculous. That's punitive. You have to actually have it be related to a particular topic or something that we can glean kind of what is being targeted. Now, if I say I want all the emails that existed in six months because I want to find something because of something I believed or

062a year, that might be something. um we have public records requests that that will go ahead and and be so broad that it'll involve a million records uh or pages or something and it takes a tremendous amount of time. But bottom line is when you do a records request >> this is not a zoom. This is just a second you there. >> Oh, did you lose me? >> One moment. >> We can hear you. >> This is just a plug for the capital levy. Charles, just a minute. >> Yep. >> You need to pass. >> And you can hear me. Okay. And you can see my five business day letter slide. >> no, we can hear you. We can hear you. If they're all right with you continuing while I get the visual back up,

063that's fine. >> I am okay with that. >> Yep. >> I can I can tell you because it's pretty much I mean they're I'm not putting a lot of content on the slide, but I can and I'll send the PowerPoint to you so you can post it, too. Um >> you're back on. Go ahead. >> Okay. If I do, I can also reshare. So, I apologize about that. So, >> you're fine. >> uh. So, okay. So um in terms of your uh so a public records request can come in um a public records request and I don't have it necessarily in a slide here. It can be in any form. So it's one of those things where sometimes traditionally for a lot of periods time we would say you have to make the public records

064request to this person. So this is where training is critical for administrators and other people in buildings. So, if I'm a parent in, you know, a particular school and I'm I want to get a a certain records and I write a little post-it note or I deliver a letter or send an email to the assistant principal asking for records, that could be one of two things. It could be a request for records under FURPA as a parent and I have a right to get that technically within 45 days. Um, even though Furba is from the 70s and they've never updated it and there's no enforcement mechanism on it. Um, but secondarily, I could also be making a public records request for records that don't fall within FURPA. Um, so records that might have exemptions and

065you'd redact things out. So um when you get a request in whenever that request that basically starts the clock running which also can start exposure to a to a district. So when a request comes in normally what happen is you'll send it to your public records officer um who in this case is Evan Caldwell for you guys. Um, I can tell you that I have a lot of districts that have weak pro people and having someone who understands and appreciates the public records act and has experience with it as a pro. Um, and this is me editorializing is worth its weight and gold because you have districts that have people that don't follow up, don't do the best they can. they get they get logged, you know, bogged down and they can't do it. A

066lot of the case law, which is basically the result of lawsuits and appeals in the state of Washington, is born of public entities not having good public records officers. So, they don't track, they don't maintain, and they don't follow up. Starting with the requirement that once you get a public records request, you have to acknowledge it and send basically a letter. We call it the five-day letter. and where you go ahead and you have five business days after the receipt to either produce records. Sometimes it's like I just want a copy of this one thing, two, deny it, we don't have any records about this, or three, provide an estimate for when the records will be provided. Or four, seek clarification and provide a reasonable estimate for when records will be provided. Now, basically, you're

067going ahead and saying, "We're going to let you know normally by a date certain whether we have records and we'll let you know when we're going to produce them." So, you basically the kind of the touchstone of it is really you have to let them know when you're going to get them something. That's really what it's about. Um, you can also technically provide an agency link on a website to records um in response like if board policy or something like that if somebody's looking for that record. That's an easy way to do it. Um the other thing that comes up though is when you receive a request as an entity. So the district is the person that receives the request. So that's the body politic of the school district. When it's received, the district needs

068to preserve possibly responsive records within its control. So um and that's operative where it's within its control. Now, so that doesn't mean that automatically when a records request comes in that every record that is the possession of everybody within the district, you know, that if it doesn't exist after that that someone deletes a cash or whatever through a normal process, that doesn't mean it's been a lapse because what it means is you need to preserve the records as best you can while you conduct a reasonable search. Um, if you have things that are set because of your computer setup for memory to auto delete or say you have the most common thing would be let's say I want a video of a bus. Your video systems have overwrites right 30 days. I get a request

069in for video. I have to identify it. If it's auto overwriting then there's nothing you can do about that. And there's also an issue of okay, are you going to jeopardize your ability to have auto overwrite and supervise students on a bus and look at that video because you're trying to pull the hard drives to preserve uh video from two months ago, an issue I recently had with the district actually, and we're like, "Sorry, we can't we're not going to pay $100,000 to preserve drive, so we don't have the money." Um, so there's a balance there, but you have to try do what you can to possibly preserve responsive records. Um, the big thing is you have to give a reasonable estimate. So, um, in the response, it used to be we would say, this

070is a long time ago, we will get back to you on when we're going to get back to you and we're going to wait and we're not we'll give you an installment and our first installment is going to be 12 months from now. Well, over the course of the case law, some people and some public entities utilize this as essentially a shield against compliance. Um, you know, we need to be very much aware of that. So, um, one of those things that for the the P in terms of the reasonable request is if you have you've received notice of a public records request for you uh involving board governance, you need to be very much aware of how those records are maintained and how you are going ahead and facilitating that response. um the providing

071a first inst first installment date um you know is part of that process. Um you know the big thing that you need to understand too is that as a board member you want to work with the pro to go ahead and have an idea of how do you get them records? How do you work with them to help fulfill the role so they can have a reasonable estimate? If things get in the way, you can go ahead and uh revise that. Um an agency does not need to meet its estimated time of responding as long as it's trying to be reasonably thorough. Um so reasonable search is the term. So the district doesn't it's not the district's obligation to run everything down. If it's in in the possession of a particular person, including an elected,

072um the district is is within its rights to rely on a reasonable search um within its control as well as others out of control. Um so that's the kind of touchstone here and part of that is where are records stored that are related to that. So um you as a board need to understand that the people that are in the district operations and dealing with public records act there is not an easy way to go ahead and immediately respond to all public records you have to be in a place where uh as a pro you're understanding how are we storing things that may vary by building that may vary by location that may vary uh throughout the district. Um and the big thing is you have to go ahead and provide records without unreasonable delay.

073Um this is a topic that comes up with a lot of school boards uh because the cost associated with the public records act um whether you and you talk about levies and bonds and budgets. Unfortunately um responding to public records acts takes money and it takes time and it takes staff. Um our firm for instance does a practice of helping districts uh respond to public records act and that practice unfortunately is quite large because districts don't have the infrastructure to deal with it and that costs a lot of money. Um so and that reason they have to do that is because under the case law and construing things under the public records act you need to be in a place where you're responding uh with some uh you know activity and dexterity. you can't just

074wait. So the the tech stone is basically an installment every 3 months um at a minimum if not sooner. It doesn't have to be huge, but you have to go ahead and try and and look at it and fulfill it. And people can tell you they have a priority of what they want now under the the case law. And that's just part of being uh compliant with the Pas trying to respond to that instead of producing just any record that's convenient. Um, you know, when districts are are judged on their public records response, um, whether it was reasonable, the courts have looked at the number of other requests, the need to qualify requests, the use of installments, the necessity of third-party notification, and the volume of responsive records. So, there are a lot of things.

075If you're really busy with a lot of things, you as a as a school district are not going to have an an issue. um with just providing what you can. Um but if you are not busy and you aren't prioritizing P compliance, then you're going to have a problem with the court. Um and when these cases occur in litigation, they are heard by a judge. They aren't heard by a jury. They're basically a judge looks at your operations and decide whether you did stuff reasonably. It's more motion practice um and application of the law than generally uh something like a litigation where there's a jury and we have to prove uh certain things to them. Um how do we go ahead and uh not produce records? Well, there are exemptions and there are a lot

076of like 160 something at this point and basically there's a lot of different ones. Um but again the Pasly construed and exemptions must be ter you know narrowly construed. When in doubt we tell people to disclose. There are some exemptions that are mandatory and that's furpa. So student information educational records are the one thing that are probably the most uh most of uh most of the stuff we deal with relative to students. But there are a lot of exemptions and they may not be as expansive as you think. Um, and here is the big thing that we've changed and you need to understand this from a cost standpoint is you can't just withhold an entire record. It used to be people would go ahead and believe they could have a record and because something in

077it was exempt like a student name or something that we could go ahead and hold it. Um, by and large at this point the the mandate is redaction of the name and production. So even uh and there's even case law where you have video. So say for instance you have a video of something happening on a bus and as a board member you're like boy this is something that is not look it's not a good look. We had some some bus driver not supervising a bus or we had a staff member interfacing with someone on a bus that's problematic. There's no way you're protecting that and there's because there's students on the bus. There's no way you're able to block out the face of the employee. There's there might be some considerations, but you know

078the word the the rule a picture is worth a thousand words applies in a lot of contexts. So you have to understand that you are just as much beholden to uh the issues posed by digital evidence, digital video. Um, and if there's something in there that's relevant, if you can redact the face, which we can do, say a special education student or a student entirely blur them out, that's going to get produced. Um, which goes to you as a board member when you're making decisions or rather giving input in employment decisions, say for instance, to the superintendent or human resources, always ask yourself, this is a kind of an aside, what is the evidence that we have that's video and everything else? because we might maintain that and there might be a public records request

079related to something. It could be on the front of the news getting publicity online going viral and you thought you dealt with it six months ago and all of a sudden everyone is coming at you. Uh, a couple of districts have had issues and the boards had issues because they were like, "Wait, we went ahead and gave some discipline to this person or and it turns out then you have half your population of stakeholders coming to board meetings over running public comment saying why in the heck did you let this person continue to teach?" So, when you receive reports on employees or concerns or investigation, one of the questions I would recommend you always ask because of the public records act um and the implications possibly for production of video or other things, hey, do

080we have anything in here? We need to just understand it's out there. Um if it's related to something like that, you can't purge it. By and large, it's it's a record that'll be retained in some fashion for some time. So, um so, uh let's see. Um the three big these are the exemptions just so you understand the nature of what can be exempt as a board. Um personal information and files for employees um appointees or elected officials over you. You guys are elected officials. So the district can't fire you. The district can't discipline you. um you can get censured by motion of each other and to say you're not being appropriate, but the ultimate thing for you is recall. Um and that's this the district doesn't have anything to do with that. So in terms

081of the information that we have, uh we have basically there's a right to privacy that is applied. Um student privacy is the big touchstone. So that's one of those things that is anything that is basically personal information stored in a student file. Could be discipline files, medical files, academic files. Um the existence of them in the district as a student and directory information like name, you know, what school they're attending. That's generally not something that's going to be protected um to the degree that Furpa will protect things. Um, and then obviously communication between attorney and client. So stuff to and from your general counsel, to and from someone your litigation council, that's protected. But those are the three big things. There's a number of exemptions obviously that apply and there's a bunch that don't necessarily.

082Um, one thing I want you to understand, there is not an exemption that applies uh, as clearly as some people believe that while something is being investigated, it is exempt. That is something that constantly comes up in our practice for public entities where someone says if something is being investigated, it's going to be exempt uh, until it's finished. there is if it's related to discrimination and certain categories where it can be exempt while it's being investigated, but there are a lot of investigations that are not protected by that. So, you need to be mindful. Um, and people that participate in investigations are allowed to have their names redacted and get noticed. Um, but that's by statute now, but you have to understand that by and large, the ability just to wholesale protect information related to

083an investigation is not something that's accurate. So when do you get sued uh under the public records act? Um essentially you can get sued in superior court by a requesttor. It has to be the requesttor within one year from the date of the last response or the end of a public records request. Um the P exposure is something you need to be aware of that has carries with it attorney's fees. So people might go ahead and prevail on a small portion and they still may make an argument that they get all their fees covered. So it is a financial exposure. Um, the big thing under the P that is also concerning is that there is a penalty that can be awarded per day per record, and that's 0 to $100 a day. Um, and they

084typically are counted from the day that the record was wrongfully withheld, which is something that's determined by a judge, uh, until the day it's, uh, provided or ordered to be provided. Now, um, here's the trick, which is, okay, Charles, 0 to 100. What does that mean? Well, it doesn't really have a lot of guidance because they obviously someone who wants money from you is going to say every page is a separate record, but there's case law that says a group of records can be a quote unquote record. So, it's hard to predict what the exposure is going to be, whether it's each page or whether it's a group. Say it's a group of emails. Say it's a group of documents that are all related. Um, but 0 to 100 also gives the judge discretion of

085zero. I'm going to award zero. Okay. Well, that's a great award. We like that, right? As a district, we don't have exposure. 100. That's bad. We don't like that. Let's do the math on that. We withheld 11 records and it's 25 days. $100 a day. That can add up really fast. If it's a year, it can add up even more. So, the exposure really can get really, really bad. Um, it's totally within the discretion of the judge. So, it's designed to facilitate compliance. It's designed to basically realize there's a big stick out there and there can be a carry if you have things you want to produce and you need to produce. Um there's basically the way that the P litigation works is there's factors when they look at penalties and this is basically kind

086of a list. So the one thing you need to be aware of here is one of the um basically mitigating factors. Here's a list. A lack of clarity in the request. The prompt response or legitimate follow-up. So the district trying to handle it. the agency's good faith, honest, timely and strict compliance with P procedural requirements, proper training and supervision uh in of agency personnel, reasonleness of any explanation for non-compliance, helpfulness of the agency to the requester, and agency systems to track and retrieve public records. The bottom line here that I just want you to have a takeaway here as a board on mitigating factors. All this has to do with how you as a district handle public records. These are not specific to a request when you look at it. It's how you generally approach

087the public records act. These factors are designed to help you comply as an agency with the P to anybody and that's the intent. Now on the flip side, they're aggravating factors. Basically says you didn't take it seriously. You delayed your response. You aren't complying with the process of the P. You don't have training and supervision by the right people in district. It's unreasonable to have withheld it. Negligence, recklessness, wanting, bad faith or intentional non-compliance, dishonesty, the public importance of the issue to which the request is related where you should have known this was something to take seriously and actual personal economic loss to the requesttor um resulting from the agency's misconduct. That doesn't necessarily apply to school districts as much like it does for say a city or town doing zoning or things of that

088nature. If you'll recall, uh, you know, Cleellum got hit hard on development fees. Um, part of that was because they were engaging in retaliatory behavior and that part of that came out of kind of the the resistance to being accountable and trying to be honest. Um, and the other one is basically the judge looks at it and goes, "Man, you need to be penalized and this doesn't happen again." So, the aggravation factors are basically you aren't taking it seriously. So these are both um a a listing of issues. Um so one of the things that when they obviously look at it is okay well as a board member how does it work where you have personal electronic devices and accounts. You have district staff that have phones that they get you know you don't pay

089a stipen for all your staff to look at emails related to work right I mean very few districts do that except for certain people um because it's not economically feasible. Well, um, so if you are using personal email, personal phones, text messages, or you're on social media, and I'm posting as the principal to the public. Guess what? I'm in a situation where am I getting nuked again? >> 10 minutes. >> All right, 10 minutes. Let's see what I can do. Let me see if I can crank on my Zoom account. Um, so, uh, basically district related social media posts on personal accounts where I'm holding myself out as someone. So, I say I am the principal and I'm posting on my personal account in in official capacity, quasi official capacity. Now, if I'm talking about

090something publicly that I'm allowed to have an opinion as a person on, as an individual voter or resident, that's not a public record. So, there's a lot of different things. Now the issue you have is that okay there are public records there are public records that are in the possession of a personal individual um whether an employee or whether it's an elected official um anybody it's technically not on a district controlled or owned device. So it's technically subject to disclosure under the P. So we have to go ahead and figure out how that works. And there's a case that came out of the Pierce County um superior court involving uh the pro former prosecutor who basically had texts on his own phone and it was a lawsuit and as a result of that case called

091Nissen. Um, we have a process wherein we let the person know that we have received this and they have to go ahead and look through their own um stuff and we and provide messages to us as a district and we review that just as we would any other record. Um, and if someone looks at their own materials, because we don't have the right to go through it, um, unless they want us to or allow us to as an entity, um, they they file an affidavit under the law saying, I attest that I did these search efforts and I didn't find anything or I found this. Now, sometimes one person will come on on like say two teacher, I had two teachers once, one teacher produced everything, the other person didn't have anything because their account

092had been corrupted. Well, that doesn't mean automatically they violated the public records act and we were able to glean that there were communications because we're able to produce one side of the conversation. Um, but essentially the access is controlled by the individual. There's a balancing act here of privacy and privacy interests. So something to keep in mind. Um the the bottom line in terms of kind of how let me come back here. How this works is there is a certain amount of compliance that's asked for and expected of individuals that is not within the district's control or degrees of control. But this is one of those areas that because personal devices, cell phones, computers, and tablets or peeds, personal electronic devices are used, there is so much more out there to access that we need

093to uh to [clears throat] look for. Um, and this is one of those areas that's kind of the deep end of the pool on the P. the the courts have not created a a mandate for people who work in public uh entities to automatically allow access of a public entity yet because of the privacy issues. I mean, if you regardless of your politics, one of the things that's happening right now is the the the administration back in DC is talking about requiring people who come into the country to allow access for five years of personal social media and privacy. people are having a conipion fit about it because of the implications on personal privacy and expression. So there's a balancing test here. Um so you want to be careful about compliance there because we don't

094want bad facts to make bad law. So I'm going to talk about records retention so you understand one of the things that's required. This is pursuant to your policy as a board too is that there's an RCW that dictates retention, preservation and destruction of public records. Um, you know, bottom line is public records really are public property. Technically, each agency or public entity, including you as a district, are custodians of it. And records are ultimately the property of the state. The state, Washington Secretary of State, Washington State archives dictate how long you keep things. Um, and the one thing you want to understand is everything is a public record, but sometimes things just are, you know, they get thrown away. They get they're they're gotten rid of. Um, certainly deliberately mutilating, destroying, concealing, erasing, or

095obliterating or falsifying public records is a crime. That's well established. So, you can't just go in there and run a magnet over the servers for whatever reason because you want to not have any public records. But on the flip side, there are best practices on records retention. This is not the minimum. This is kind of what's recommended by the state. And that's knowing you as a district how each type of record needs to be retained, knowing what you have, knowing the formats, keeping them organized, data security is important, and then looking at records being kept for the required time period. Um there are retention schedules, okay? And that is set by something called the local government. We call it the core manual, common records retention schedule. And that is dictated on every type of record.

096And it's not dictated by what it is. Whether it's an email or it's a hard copy or it's a video, it's dictated by what it is. So records you keep forever, transcripts of students, right? Um you may have some employment and and financial records you keep forever. You may have some that notes of teachers you get rid of after a year. You may have records related to certain things that you did that you get rid of. Board minutes are something you keep an extended period 3 years, one year, 2 years, 6 years. The core manual is 221 pages long. If you ever want to go to sleep, I recommend you go ahead and bring it up online and start reading through it because is literally one of the most boring things you'll ever read. It

097is very difficult to operationalize and districts struggle with it because of the electronic aggregate data. You keep on adding emails every day and people are like, well, you should just get rid of them. Well, if your system has limits, you might get rid of them because you have to. But by and large, going through and deciding what something is and getting rid of it takes a heck of a lot of time and effort. Um, this is why you may have records on one thing you didn't expect you kept and you might have gotten rid of other ones. Technically the guidance is to destroy nonarchchival records and transfer archival records to the Washington State Archives at the end of the period. Um but and the probably the ultimate thing is maintaining backups in case of disasters.

098Say you flood out right like what's going on here and everything else. Um so the one thing I will say about uh records retention is you have to have a plan. generally it's run for the most part by your uh you know your business side and also your tech side. Um but it's one of those things that you want to make plans especially in light of what's going on today that you have things. Um so the one thing I will also say and this is my kind of final slide here is I'm not giving you legal advice technically. I'm here to do a training that's educational and informative and certainly on a case-by case basis it would be something that we would say is subject to um legal review and and specificity. But um bottom

099line is that the world in the Olympia has dictated you have to spend money on public records act compliance and that includes records retention, records management and that's inconvenient, expensive and annoying to to some people. to other people. They take it very seriously and think it's a great thing. It's something that has to happen. You have no choice about it. >> It it sounds like too, Charles, that it as us as board members, we also need to have that conversation with our administrative staff on, you know, the record retention and and the policies and the things like especially for somebody like myself who's brand new coming on is um you know, I know that the email right now, my official email is on a server if if that's if that's backed up, you know, what

100are those type of things um that I I have that comfort level knowing that >> we have backup and offsite backup. >> You guys also right now a lot of the cloud backups now are being utilized. So you actually have remote. It used to be you'd have like a hardened server somewhere in a closet. >> We actually are backup, but then we have an offsite. We actually have an offsite backup. I'm not going to talk about Fantastic. No, that's right. >> Yeah, >> don't do it. >> There's some requirements, too. The law law did some stuff that you're allowed you're supposed to because they understand the implications of it um with student educational records. There's no question that aggregate data and the fact you keep on adding adding adding adding adding um is is a

101great expense item and it's one of those reasons where if you do a get a public records request, you might say, "Okay, we've got to go back for you know 15 years and there's different formats and everything." thing. I mean, technology is a great thing, but technology also is an incredible burden and it's very complex to navigate. Um, >> what it's worth, John, whenever you have a public records request, if it is in your school email, Evan will let you know like, hey, if it's in your school email, I've got that. Like, you don't have to worry about that. What he's looking for from us is text messages. Anything you have in your personal email that you maybe didn't put in the right email on accident, your social media stuff, text messages. um as a

102as a like when I take notes in a meeting, I put my initials and I date at the top and then I hand it to Stacy on my way out the door so that she can hold on to that for me um and and do my appropriate retention of my written notes um for me. >> I'm happy to bring Charles back on if there's other questions. >> Um I don't think I have anything for this session. I don't have any other addition. >> No, I think it's more >> This guy does. >> Okay. >> How comfortable would you be with a phone call? >> Okay. >> Yeah, because I don't think he has anything left to present. So, I don't think there's anything in the slides. >> No. >> Hi, I'm bringing you on speaker

103phone as opposed to the video. >> Okay. Go ahead. >> Yeah. I have some questions on OPMA and since what is a public meeting and or not and there's been some criticism on this issue of for example I think this has been okay uh all five board members at Glaza have been together at meals including between sessions and even in the evening I assume that's okay is it >> yeah as as long as you're engaging and deliberate if you're socializing and it's related to something. Normally what the districts will do is they'll provide notice everybody's going to this so they know you're doing it. So it's not it's like a board retreat so there's notification of that. Um but the expectation doesn't change like well we've had uh public records requests of people go you

104were at you're at Wazda I think you guys might have talked about something. do want copies of all the text messages behind between all the board members and they're all about where are we going to dinner, right? Or who's who's meeting in the lobby when, >> but realistic that's part of your board retreat. So, it's kind of a record related to that. No PMA violation. >> Yeah. Also, for my second law to meeting, which is in Spokane, that'd be a great idea if we all go with a van instead of airline to save a whole bunch of money. Is it true or not? >> You just don't you just you have to be very clear you're not going to do anything that's deliberative. And I mean going in the band I know some people that

105are like I don't want to put a quorum in a band. Well, >> you know they'll basically say somebody we have to rotate two people two people one person or one person's the front of the soup or you know I mean there's kind of ways you you want to build confidence so you aren't doing something but you're certainly say for instance to you have a conversation with Ryan in his office you're allowed to do that and you can talk about ideas and things. You aren't disengaging in board process by doing your job as an elected and he works for you know each of you is an elected official that's independent of the district per se. The idea is when you get together in your governing body that's where the issue is. >> Okay. So as

106it turned out just two of us were were willing to drive so we did so that took care of that issue. Uh another one. Yeah. What about other meetings besides at WASDA uh or district meetings but not just at uh for example there was a nonprofit organization at a a session for board members on board member responsibilities and three of us did go uh separately sat in different parts of the room and one left early and two of us were left at the end and went up to talk with ask questions of the speaker. Somebody found out about that in the public comments period. Uh said we had violated the law, reeled off RCWs and I think filed a written complaint with the attorney general. How about that kind of situation? >> Uh it would

107depend on what the nature of how it was advertised and it would depend on kind of how people were attending it, what the purpose of it was. Um if it was educational to everybody else and it's kind of an outreach. saw three of you guys go to an art show and you're there, that doesn't necessarily mean you're having a board meeting, right? Um, but if you're going to something that is, you know, the three of you are, you know, it depends on whether it's like something like this where it's a study session and you're going ahead and discussing something or whether it's something that's that's has a different or broader purpose. So, I'd want to know more details and and talk about it. Certainly, it goes to the point that someone could perceive it as

108being different and say, well, you know, you should you should do this event a different way. But if somebody is being brought in to a larger population and you happen to go there or you're a member of the community and you're going to say there is a board member per se, I mean there's a lot of kind of areas of gray there. Um so you want to just be mindful of of the perception can drive people's reality. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Other questions? >> Hey Charles, one of I did get to do the boot camp. um being a brand new member, one of the things that I recall is discussion about serial type meetings where perhaps you become a central um conduit between a quorum basically. you yeah you can you can have even

109if you do an email string and basically you're all kind of you know it's it's a progressive kind of well I'll talk to this person you talk to this person and I'll I you can create a through just email a constructive OPMA violation by engaging in a deliberative process and that's where it goes to that kind of consideration where people will look at it in context and go yeah you had a meeting you're having a meeting that's an LPMA you can't just go ahead and do an email string Right. Um, if you if I go ahead and you you and I are on a board together and we have a conversation or we have an email about something, that email is probably it's a public record first and foremost, but if it's an OPMA violation,

110if we are all I talk to someone else and you talk to someone else, it's all of a sudden the four of us. That's a quorum. And we're engaging in a deliberative process. We aren't necessarily taking an active vote, but we're kind of deciding how we're going to do it or what we're going to decide. um for lack of a better characterization that's that's an issue of a of a serial uh contact that creates an a violation. So um it really to me that the witness test is you're g if you're gathering information on your own to make an informed decision. But if you are collectively as board members engaging in an active discussion about something that you're going to make a decision about um that's part of the deliberative process and and um you

111have to just be very careful about a quorum and that's how you can do it indirectly with email. >> I appreciate that that Charles. Thank you very much for for uh presentation tonight. >> You bet. Glad to do it. >> Any other questions? >> Okay. Thank you very much, Charles. All right. Thank you very much for your service and sorry I couldn't be in there in person and hope everybody stays dry. >> Yeah, same with you. Appreciate it. Have a good night. Thanks. >> You too. Bye. >> Did we have any further discussion as as a group on this or is it just fairly I found it very informative. Um it was kind of a reinforcement of what I got from Wazda. So I appreciate it very much. >> Uh yeah. No, mostly just we

112wanted to make sure we were checking that box that we all did our our legal training after we were elected or reelected or a refresher over time. Um and and to have that that presentation for ourselves. Um so I don't if there aren't any additional questions I don't believe we have anything else that we would need to discuss. >> Yeah. just last year there was a whole bunch of public records requests a blitz and um I've been advised including by Evan to not create public records unnecessarily I didn't understand what how significant that was and then to preferably just do everything the district meal email account it's all there it's easy to find whereas I had scattered I had text messages and and emails in my personal accounts and uh uh spent hours and hours

113and hours and hours you know tracking down and you know staying awake late at night couldn't sleep know it's really a stressful thing and so so I should have paid attention to heaven in the first place and it was simplified his job of mine both yes >> so things like phone logs your text messages like if you share things on your social media as an official person, all of that stuff. Like you got to remember where you where you created that public record to go back and find it. >> So, it is a best practice to just use your [laughter] your district's email for the >> something I'm very conscious of. It's something I very very much want because I think that's what people deserve is to have that openness. So, anything anything along those

114lines. And one more thing from Evan and that was that the judicials interpretations really seem to go way beyond the law in a bad direction. And so very considering very very broadly what's a public record. is like about anything. And for example, I wound up supplying all of my cell phone records which happened to in one package PDF include my all my phone calls, my sons, his wife's and didn't know it was going to happen. My ex-wife and so that was native and down to take out the other ones. But still, this can go crazy. >> Broadly constru. I'm done as far as official meeting if you're >> all right. In that case, if there is no further business, we will adjourn. >> Thank you. >> Thanks everyone for being here. >> Yeah.