School Board Leads City 2 to 1 in Creating Brown Act Violations

Gary Silbiger

Recently, Culver City’s School Board has overtaken the City Council in recent violations of the State’s Brown Act by a 2 to 1 margin. But don’t fret – there’s still plenty of time remaining for the City to regain its lead.

For years, the Culver City School Board has had a policy (Board Bylaw 9323) of not allowing public criticism of school employees at its meetings. Not only does this contradict the teachings of students in their classes, it also flies in the face of the State’s Open Government law – the Brown Act. So when a Culver City resident criticized a District employee last summer, Scott Zeidman, former School Board president, told her she could not say such things. That time, though, there was loud rumbling from those believing our rights needed strengthening. Free speech, after all, protects both the things we like and those we don’t. That’s why burning the U.S. flag as well as statements from groups many of us despise are protected.

The School Board sent this Constitutional issue to its attorney, who agreed that criticism of school employees is lawful, yet thought that when this happened, a secret closed session would be called to discuss the complaint. Let the public hear and participate, or else this new proposal will also violate the Brown Act.

The District’s attorney started fooling around with other aspects of the School Board meeting resulting in an unconscionable and illegal proposal involving many topics. This item has appeared on several School Board agendas, but due to other lengthy agendized discussions, has not been fully discussed or voted on. It is time now to have that dialogue.

The District’s proposal would place an artificial cap of 20 minutes on the time allocated for any topic. Yet, we know that controversial issues can take hours of testimony, as have recent discussions about capital improvement projects, and the public has the right to comment and persuade our elected officials. In another section of the proposal, the Board would limit public discussion to any item within the jurisdiction of the Board. And located within another part of the proposal, members of the public could have to make their comments near the beginning of the meeting, not at the time of the item being heard. Yet, anyone taking the time to come to a School Board meeting should be given his or her opportunity to speak. There is no need to limit the speakers; the School Board must encourage – not discourage - public participation.

Another controversial part of the District’s proposal is if a committee made of 2 School Board members allowed public comment, no public participation could be permitted once the topic came to the full School Board. Again, this limits discussion because not all members of the public pay as much attention to the 2 member meetings as they do to the School Board meetings and the proposal could have changed from the time it was listed on the 2 member committee agenda.

And what should be done when a member of the public is “disruptive”? The School Board proposal allows the clearing of the meeting room and continuing their meeting. It would have been helpful to have the term “disruptive” defined. The solution, however, is to ban the very disruptive individual if no other less intrusive responses are successful, not to evict all members of the public.

The second clear violation of the Brown Act by the School Board took place at its July 26, 2011 meeting consisting of only 3 School Board members. On the consent portion of the agenda – defined for only routine matters – the District included a highly controversial architects contract, without public bidding or receiving other proposals. In its haste, the Board had not yet determined the amount authorized for the athletic complex. Contained within this swirling secret “agenda” was an agenda item that simply states, “Approval is recommended for the contract between CCUSD and Westbrook and White”. Really, that’s all it says.

The Brown Act requires public notice of each meeting through posting of the agenda containing a brief general description of each item. That agenda item failed to state the purpose or terms of the contract and did not identify Westbrook and White as architects that would be employed on the athletic complex. The School Board only posts the agenda, not the attachments, so the details of this contract found only in the attachment were unknown.

A $400,000 architects contract – far from “routine” – was likely placed in the consent agenda to hide this enormous sole-bid contract from the public’s view. After all, members of the public simply do not look as closely to the “routine” items as they do for the discussion or action ones.

What should be done:

1. Annual Brown Act training for all elected and appointed officials, and administrators by well-qualified individuals


2. Talk with the School District’s attorney before limiting the public’s rights


3. Prior to deciding a controversial Open Government issue, first check with the California School Board Association, Californians Aware (the primary transparency organization in our state), the California Attorney General, and the Los Angeles District Attorney


4. Encourage each High School student to participate in a practical Free Speech exercise


5. Apologize to everyone who has had their Free Speech rights denied


6. Place valuable information about Free Speech and Open Government on the District’s website


7. Bid for an attorney who knows the Brown Act well


8. Free Speech rights should be expanded beyond the minimal limits given us by court decisions


9. Require more details in the agenda and only include “routine” issues in the consent portion of that document


10. Speak Up! Everyone has the obligation to protest the destruction of our Constitutional rights and thus our democracy

Gary Silbiger is the Co-Editor of the Culver City Progress Blog and the Former Mayor of Culver City.