School Committee emails prompt complaint

By JOSHUA SOLOMON

Staff Writer

Published: 05-02-2019 11:12 PM

GREENFIELD — Questions of proper communication among School Committee members have flared back up following the filing of an Open Meeting Law complaint by a member of the education task force for Franklin County Continuing the Political Revolution Thursday.

Paul Jablon, a Greenfield resident, claims the Greenfield School Committee, but specifically former superintendent and current School Committee Member Susan Hollins, chronically disregards committee decorum by discussing the school budget over email and not in public.

“It needs to be transparent, which is why myself and other people feel that it’s a con now,” Jablon said.

Hollins said she has been in discussions with the state Attorney General’s Office recently to “better understand the Open Meeting Law guideline about email communications.”

“Based on this discussion, I and almost all members of the School Committee have crossed the line of what is an allowable email communication,” Hollins said in a statement Thursday.

Hollins continued that the “error of email sharing is correct.”

“However,” she continued, “I also have frequently raised the issue of being transparent, sharing information with the public and stand on that record.”

The complaint comes as the Greenfield City Council continues to wrestle with a $51.3 million citywide budget and a difference of $1.1 million in how much to give the schools — a drop in the School Committee’s $20 million request in March.

Attached to the Open Meeting Law complaint, which now goes to the state Attorney General’s Office for review, are dozens of emails Hollins sent to members from November to April. Some emails include requests from Hollins specific to the pending school budget and prior to subcommittee meetings that then discussed those questions.

“The people attending the open meeting don’t have the whole background,” Jablon said. “That’s an issue and that’s why the law is there in the first place.”

The complaint does not call for the resignation of Hollins. It asks for all emails to be publicly posted. Jablon hopes the committee investigates the overall matter.

“It will be good if the legislation rethinks email communications so that the communications are automatically shared at the next meeting,” Hollins said. “That’s a reasonable solution, I believe.”

A separate complaint

The issue piggybacks a complaint filed in February by the committee Chairwoman Adrienne Nunez that reached a boiling point in March at a public meeting that also approved a $20 million school budget.

The complaint by Nunez alleged Hollins and other members of the budget subcommittee were discussing pieces of the school’s spending plan that were not anticipated and planned. Mayor William Martin, a committee member, called it a “ridiculous complaint.”

After that March meeting, member Don Alexander issued his resignation. He said he left for personal reasons.

The committee has been short a member since that March budget meeting. In April an attempt to fill the vacant seat was stonewalled after the members could not agree which of the few candidates to accept.

The emails and the overall tensions on the committee may not be a part of the complaint, Jablon noted, but are a part of the overall challenges he sees the committee is working through.

“It’s an awkward situation when you have a former superintendent on a school committee overseeing the minutiae of what the current superintendent is doing,” Jablon said about the dynamics between Hollins and Superintendent Jordana Harper.

He said Hollins’ communication style “seems to be an abuse of position”

“I understand an email here, an email there, but this is consistent and when told not to do it, it’s difficult,” Jablon continued about Hollins.

Breakdown of communication

Harper declined to comment on the Open Meeting Law complaint, citing she had not yet had the opportunity to fully review it. Attached to the complaint are65 pages, some of which are emails.

Nunez declined to comment specifically on the complaint as well, citing similarly the need to review it.

The chairwoman said the committee will likely add the complaint to the agenda for its May 8 full committee meeting.

Martin said he agrees with the idea of placing the emails online for the public to view.

He said his initial reaction was “trying to understand why there is such a concerted effort to attack the members of the budget subcommittee.”

“I’m not ready to jump on in accusing Dr. Hollins,” Martin said.

The mayor also noted the tension on the committee that has led to a breakdown of communication.

“We’ve had some friction before the current superintendent and the past superintendent for the past three years,” Martin said. “Everyone’s felt that. I don’t know whose fault that is.”

This is “probably the worst subcommittee for budget I’ve been on,” Martin said.

A lack of information, both in general and in a timely fashion, has led to these issues, he said.

The emails

Included in the emails Jablon cites is a note Hollins sent the committee April 15 about herdissatisfaction with “extemporaneous” public comments made by Nunez on potential candidate Jean Wall for the committee member vacancy.

“I am not sure how to bring this up so I will submit a concern to you about the chairperson statement which publicly and, I believe, unfairly discredited a School Committee candidate,” Hollins said in the email a part of the Open Meeting Law complaint.

Hollins concludes the comments by Nunez “discredit” the committee and Wall.

“I personally believe you should recuse yourself from voting given your stated and influential bias,” Hollins said.

A response to this email from Committee Vice Chairwoman Susan Eckstrom states: “It is a discredit to you, to all of the hard work you’ve done and to the School Committee in general that you would suggest Adrienne recuse herself, knowing full well the candidate would be ensured a seat on the committee.”

“I’m more than disappointed,” Eckstrom continues in her April 15 email. “This is beneath you. I am embarrassed with this suggestion that the School Committee, that I am working so hard to support, would stoop to the appalling manipulation the town is currently being made victim of.”

Eckstrom said “should this behavior continue, I will resign my seat wholeheartedly and will sing my reasoning to whomever will listen.”

Hollins said she had planned to share these emails with the public at the next meeting, following discussion with the Attorney General’s Office on proper protocol.

A January email from Hollins requests a clarification on what the committee’s policy means, following a question from the chairwoman that she was not in line with policy after helping out a school band — “I thought I was following both policies.”

“It is not easy or without effort, particularly with 40 pages of music you have never seen and only a few days to prepare,” Hollins said in a January email to Nunez. “When we paid $10,000/year, the professional accompanist had music at least two (2) months in advance and weekly rehearsal time. I sometimes think I have saved the district $20,000. Imagine trying to do this with bifocals, adjusting your sight up and down and barely knowing the music, flipping pages. I’m not complaining at all but this isn’t a simple effort.”

Hollins said she was “truly dumbfounded” that her efforts were not “even worth a simple thank you which takes 1/10th of a second but instead generated two public reminders about policy non-compliance, and I’m not even sure there was a policy non-compliance.”

In an email the day prior, Hollins wrote to the School Committee the costs to fix certain band items, ranging from $200 to $800.

“Please consider learning about the Greenfield Schools Music program, the benefit to students, the budget needed, and giving a welcome to the new music director,” Hollins said.

In an email to the superintendent in January, Hollins said, “We can’t be handed $800,000 in new positions and have no time to think or talk.”

In February, Hollins wrote the superintendent and the committee about elementary classroom requests. “Could any classes be consolidated through multi-age classrooms or change in school assignment? For ease of budget thinking, I estimate each classroom = approx. $100,000.”

She presented other suggestions on how to pay for classrooms.

“If there was a way to shift from 6 to 5 classrooms for 2 grades, each time this is worked out it saves approx. $100,000 (my reasoning),” Hollins wrote. “Could a school with three 3rd grades and three 4th grades with low class size have two 3rd grades, two 4th grades, and a ¾ multigrade classroom with class sizes of 19 and 20? Where is something like this possible?”

A week later, Hollins emailed the committee and superintendent with the subject line, “Comment on Budget Document.” She said she submitted the comments “given the relative absence of time to review documents and information presented last week.”

“These comments have no expected influence coming from one member,” Hollins said. “Still, there is no other way to share any possibly-helpful review feedback through a subcommittee meeting before a budget document is published.”

You can reach Joshua Solomon at:

jsolomon@recorder.com

413-772-0261, ext. 264

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