Schools
2 Closed Meetings At LTHS This Week
The sessions are about specific personnel issues, according to meeting agendas.
LA GRANGE, IL – Lyons Township High School board members are catching grief online this week for what they said in two Jan. 23 closed sessions.
They are also meeting behind closed doors twice this week to discuss personnel issues. One meeting was on Monday, and the other is scheduled for Wednesday.
A board spokeswoman did not return a message for comment.
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No action is slated at this week's meetings. Any vote on specific personnel issues must be in the open.
Under orders from the attorney general, the board last week voted to release the January closed session recordings. The meetings were about the controversial effort to sell the school's land in Willow Springs.
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During the sessions, the board spoke about a member's conspiracy theory, bond debt, budget for building improvements, efforts to communicate with other government bodies and public relations.
Under state law, the board is prohibited from discussing any of those topics in private.
Attorney Ares Dalianis of the Chicago-based Franczek law firm attended both January sessions, but never advised members they were violating the law.
Like all members of public bodies, Lyons Township High School board members are supposed to have taken Open Meetings Act training. Yet not one member ever warned the board that it was veering into prohibited territory.
The board could have discussed setting the price of real estate in closed session, but members only mentioned such issues in passing during the nearly 2½ hours of meetings.
See the stories based on the recordings of the closed-door meetings on Jan. 23:
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