Schools
Supt. Steve Murley Demanded Silence or Else; Chris Liebig Referred to First Amendment Rights to Free Speech
In October 2016 ICCSD Supt. Steve Murley's contract extension and raises for two years were discussed. The board disagreed. Sparks flew.
Captions: 1. In foreground, Supt. Steve Murley, who is looking behind him at the huge crowd gathered to listen to the hearing regarding Stephanie Van Housen, former homeless liaison for the Iowa City Community School District, who was fired for blowing the whistle on the misuse of seclusion boxes in the district. In background from left to right, board director Brian Kirschling; board president Chris Lynch; board director LaTasha DeLoach. 2. Chris Liebig, University of Iowa law professor and school board director.
The information used in this article was obtained through an Iowa Open Records Act request and is therefore public. Iowa law requires all governmental bodies, including school boards, to perform their official functions in the open. As stated in the open meetings law, “any ambiguity should be resolved in favor of openness.” Even when staff performance evaluations are performed in closed meetings, board members do not give up their free speech rights under the First Amendment to criticize or praise district policy and the superintendent in public. The right to criticize public officials is firmly established by precedent and the First Amendment.
In October 2016, Iowa City Community School District Supt. Steve Murley was apparently incensed when board directors Chris Liebig, Phil Hemingway, and Lori Roetlin expressed their concerns about Murley’s proposed hefty raises, twice the size of staff raises, to Holly Hines, an Iowa City Press-Citizen reporter.
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Subsequently, Murley stated in a letter to board president Chris Lynch with a copy to the board’s attorney, J. Holland, that board directors Chris Liebig, Phil Hemingway, and Lori Roetlin are prohibited from criticizing him according to Board Policies on Board Governance
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“http://www.iowacityschools.org...
He wrote to board president Chris Lynch, "Good Evening, I write to you with grave concerns. Please see the article currently running on-line in the Press Citizen which I presume will be in the print edition tomorrow morning.
"In this article are the following quotes:
"Board members Phil Hemingway, Chris Liebig and Lori Roetlin said the proposed raise is inappropriate after a recent investigation revealed areas of noncompliance in the district's special education program. Liebig said he also opposes the contract because it includes a higher pay raise than those approved for other staff groups. 'I don't see a good reason for that,' Liebig said.
"Hemingway said he thinks issues raised during the Iowa Department of Education's investigation of special education, including concerns about whether the district has a retaliatory culture, have not been fully addressed. He said he is also concerned about consulting work Murley has done in the past. "I'm against any raises for the superintendent. I don't think he had a good year," Hemingway said. [The emphasis is Murley's.]
"I specifically reference Code of Conduct (Level 2d) and within that section (Level 3d): 2.a, b, c:
“2. Board members shall not attempt to exercise individual authority over the organization except as explicitly set forth in Board Policies.
“a. Members’ interaction with the Superintendent or with staff must recognize the lack of authority vested in individuals except when explicitly authorized by the Board.
“b. Members’ interaction with the public, press or other entities must recognize the same limitation and the inability of any Board member to speak for the Board except to repeat explicitly stated Board decisions.
“c. Members shall not publicly make or express individual negative judgments about Superintendent or staff performance. Any such judgments of Superintendent performance will be made only by the Board, meeting in executive session as appropriate.
“And I specifically reference Code of Conduct (Level 2d) and within that section (Level 3d):
“3. Board members shall maintain the confidentiality appropriate to issues of a sensitive nature, especially those discussed in executive session.
“In my opinion these three members of the Board are evaluating me in public which is in direct violation of Board Policy. They are also expressing negative judgments about my performance which is in direction [sic] violation of Board Policy. And finally, they are violating the confidentiality of executive session where my evaluation was discussed which is in direct violation of Board Policy.
“This is wholly inappropriate and not acceptable. This behavior cannot be allowed to stand unchallenged. This behavior cannot be allowed to continue without some type of warning that it must not occur again and that if it does so appropriate consequences will be imposed.
“With respect,
“Steve [Murley]”
And who would know better that board policy is unconstitutional than University of Iowa law professor and school board director Chris Liebig? Liebig responded to Supt. Murley’s letter in an email:
“From: Chris Liebig
“Sent: Friday, October 21, 2016 8:49 a.m.
“To: Stephen Murley
“cc: jholland@icialaw.com
“Subject: FW:
“Hi, Steve. I disagree that anything I was quoted as saying [in the Press-Citizen] violates any law or policy. Our policies have to be interpreted in ways that are consistent with the First Amendment. Board members have to be able to explain the reasons for the way they vote on the issues that come before them; that’s the kind of speech that’s at the heart of the First Amendment.
“I do not see any state statute that prohibits board members from all public comment on a superintendent’s performance. That’s especially true since any discussion of anything in the district that needs changing could be interpreted as critical of the people running the district; it would be absurd to suggest that board members’ speech is limited in that way. It is one thing [for] the statutes to say that we have to conduct our formal evaluation processes outside the public eye, but quite another thing to suggest that we can never say anything publicly that could be interpreted as reflecting on the superintendent’s performance. (Moreover, if there were such a prohibition, it would have been violated here by any board member who made positive comments about the contract proposal as well.)
“As for revealing things we talked about in private session, nothing I am quoted as saying reveals anything that the board discussed. The mere fact that a topic is discussed in private session does not mean that a board member is then precluded from ever discussing that same topic with others.
“I don’t understand how anything that was quoted in the [news]paper violates the policy about board members exercising individual authority over staff members.
"But if I'm wrong about these issues, I need to know. This issue would have a big effect for how we can discuss the contract proposal at this week's board meeting. I request that that proposal be tabled until we resolve this question.
"By the way, I never heard back from you about posting my statement about the Van Housen hearing. Are you objecting to that on the same grounds? I'd like to know before I share that statement with anyone else.
“Thanks,
“Chris Liebig”
As to who has authority over whom, I would add that the superintendent is the board’s only employee, a fact frequently stated by numerous board directors in the past and recent past, so obviously the board has authority over the superintendent.
Supt. Murley’s and board president Chris Lynch’s insistence that the board speak unanimously in one voice as though the board were one person strikes me as more than just a little fascistic. If the board spoke as one voice, that one voice would be board president Chris Lynch, as he is the leader who heads up the four-member majority. The minority view represented by Chris Liebig, Phil Hemingway, and Lori Roetlin would not be heard at all.
Our republic was deliberately not set up for the voice of the majority to speak as one and to silence minority voices. In our school board, minority voices should also be heard. In my opinion, the board's minority directors are the truth tellers.
Whistleblowers and parents have lawyered up because Supt. Murley and board president Chris Lynch would rather intimidate board directors and silence dissenters rather than listen and learn from violating federal and state laws regarding special education. Such tactics could end up costing the district a lot financially in the end if whistleblowers and parents sue the district. It's hard to put a price on the misery those mistakes have caused students, who one parent described as having "vomited, defecated, and urinated" in seclusion boxes that have black interiors. In the past, those seclusion boxes were referred to as "time outs" in discussions with parents without the parents having any clue that their children were confined in boxes.
Having worked as a social worker (MSW, LISW) with clients from Chicago in transitional housing on Broadway Street in Iowa City, I know that some of them experienced extreme trauma as children. One woman I worked with was raped by one of her mother's boyfriends when she was nine years old. He put a gun in her mouth and raped her.
Only a grandmother did anything to protect the young girl. When her grandmother began to die, my client dropped out of school to take care of her. She was 13. I can't imagine how she would react to being put in a seclusion box. She used to ride the buses around Chicago just to stay warm and avoid being at home.
She can't be the only one. Children who are depressed act out. Depressed adults may present as sad, listless.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is not just something that veterans of foreign wars suffer from. Sometimes "combat fatigue," the old term for PTSD, is incurred by terror and trauma at home. Being put in a seclusion box would be contraindicated if a child is already traumatized.