The Northampton School Committee has violated the state's Open Meeting Law, according to the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, which released its findings this month.
The law requires "public bodies" to create and approve minutes in a timely manner, which would be within the next three meetings or 30 days from the date of the meeting, unless the public body can show good cause for a delay.
Campbell also found the school committee failed to respond to a request for minutes. Reporter Jonathan Gerhardson, who filed the complaint, writes for The Shoestring.
In October 2022 Gerhardson said he was working on a piece about the school district's COVID-era masking policy. He was new to covering Northampton and thought reviewing minutes from the last three years would be a good way to dig into the story.
"So in the course of trying to get these minutes, I was told that some of them were still being worked on," Gerhardson said, "and it was alluded to that some of them just didn't exist."
In a request for an interview, the Northampton School Committee said they will have no comment until the committee discusses the attorney general's findings.
"The discussion about the [attorney general's] decision will be on the next ... agenda Thursday, April 13," school committee member Gwen Agna said in an email.
Agna said she would be willing to speak to NEPM after that.
Campbell's finding came with a warning — that future similar violations may be considered evidence of intent to violate the state law.
