Elmhurst D205 Board Closes Doors Most Of Time

ELMHURST, IL – In the last six months, the Elmhurst School District D205 board spent more than half of its time behind closed doors.

Patch analyzed the number of minutes the board met in the open and the number while its doors were closed to the public.

Since March, the board has spent 22 hours in closed sessions and 21 in the open.

The intent of the state Open Meetings Act is that most public business is discussed openly.

But exceptions are made for discussions of union negotiations, specific employees and legal matters, among other things.

In recent years, the Elmhurst school board has been caught breaking the open meetings law twice, resulting from the efforts of local watchdog Edgar Pal.

In one case of a violation, a closed-session discussion involved an administrative reorganization. In the other, board members spoke about their anger with Elmhurst city officials.

Over the last few months, the Elmhurst school board has held closed sessions about a disciplinary matter involving a York High School teacher, which ultimately led to a reprimand.

With its violations, the board released the closed-session recordings. They revealed looser, more blunt discussions than the public is accustomed to seeing.

But the damage was likely worse for a case involving the Lyons Township High School board this year.

In the spring, the attorney general ordered the high school board to release hours of recordings of January closed sessions about a controversial effort to sell the school's land.

From the recordings, the public learned of one board member's self-described conspiracy theory about the school's perceived enemies colluding.

Also in the meetings, members generally agreed that selling the land to an industrial developer, which was the plan, would hurt neighbors.

They also discussed how they kept information about the sale from other local public bodies. And they bashed officials from those entities.

In Illinois, all members of public boards must take Open Meetings Act training.