State Says Stoughton School Committee Violated Open Meeting Law

STOUGHTON, MA - The Massachusetts Attorney General's office has ruled that the Stoughton School Committee violated open meeting law by created insufficient meeting minutes.

Filed by committee member Joaquin Soares, the complaint stems from a June 2015 meeting where Soares read a prepared statement in which he objected to a previous committee decision to exclude his opinion from the board's evaluation of Superintendent Marguerite Rizzi. When the minutes were approved in October, they simply read "Mr. Soares read a prepared statement" under the bold title "New SHS Building Project Update."

After Soares filed a complaint on Oct. 22, the committee responded in a letter that the minutes were amended to make it clear that Soares' statement was unrelated to the building project update and noted that the statement was attatched to the minutes.

Attatching the minutes, was not enough to comply with open meeting law according to the AG's office.

"Simply attaching the statement does not meet the Committee's obligation to summarize the discussion in its minutes. As such, it does not comply with the Open Meeting Law," Assistant Attorney General Kevin W. Manganaro wrote.

Manganaro continued that they did not believe the violation was intentional.

The committee will have 30 days to amend the minutes of the June 9, 2015 meeting to include a summary of the discussion that took place.

Click here to read the full decision.