The Woodland Hills School Board last week censured director Darnika Reed for posting screenshots of board emails regarding the ongoing construction project at Edgewood Elementary School.
In a 5-4 vote, the board majority said Reed violated a board policy by sharing internal district emails on social media without receiving the permission of other board members, the Post-Gazette reported.
The emails were confidential, the majority said. Not only does the censure seek her resignation, it cut off her access to district networks and technology. And it removed her from three board committees on which she sits.
So much for due process.
Reed says there’s more to the story. She claims “the majority of the Woodland Hills School Board approved a request to spend over $3 million in an email without knowing the names of the companies they were paying.
“There was no attempt to schedule a meeting for public discussion and a few of the board members became combative when I expressed my concerns on how inappropriate it was to approve contracts in an email thread.”
The board majority defended its contract action, citing cost concerns if it did not act expeditiously. The district solicitor says the contract was approved legally.
But if the board was conducting the public’s business via email, including expending more money, that’s clearly a matter of public record and no one should be able to hide under the cloak of “confidentiality.”
Whether it is the case or not, the appearance is that one faction of the board did not want the public to readily know all the ins and outs of the public business it conducted and/or was hiding something. And it then punished one board member for opening the curtain and allowing at least some sun to shine in.
It’s not Reed who should be censured in the matter but the board majority that got its knickers in a knot when Reed questioned the prudence of the board’s action.
It strikes us that Darnika Reed was acting responsibly, seeking to protect the public’s interest, in response to a board she felt was acting irresponsibly in treating the public as an afterthought.
When it comes to the public’s business, the more it knows, the better.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
