board meeting/executive session

[Guest Free2speak]

I recently attended a local school board meeting. It is a public meeting. The meeting was called to order and all went fine. When it was time for executive session they 7 board members had the 50+ members of the public removed from the board room to the hallway while they ate pizza and spend over an hour in executive session. Once the session was complete patrons were allowed to come back in.

My question is that if the meeting is called or order..and it is an open meeting, can they close the meeting and make the people leave the room or should they have to leave?

Thanks,

[Gary c Tesser]

As far as Robert's Rules is concerned, the body that is meeting -- in this case, the school board -- has complete control of its meeting hall. That means the board says when non-board members can stay, and when they must step out; and it can pick and choose among the non-members as it wishes.

But the requirements of your local laws and regulations are not covered in RONR. Some places don't allow executive session at all: complete "sunshine." Some places have laws that allow the non-board members to be removed so that the board, in executive session, can consider such specific matters as employee hiring, discipline, and pizza. You need to find out what the local rules are, specific to your board. We can't tell you from here.

[Trina]

...

My question is that if the meeting is called or order..and it is an open meeting, can they close the meeting and make the people leave the room or should they have to leave?

Thanks,

Is your main concern over which group leaves the meeting room during executive session? In other words, would everything have been OK with you if the board members had walked out and conducted their executive session business and pizza party in a different room, leaving the members of the public comfortably seated in the larger room?

[Gary Novosielski]

I recently attended a local school board meeting. It is a public meeting. The meeting was called to order and all went fine. When it was time for executive session they 7 board members had the 50+ members of the public removed from the board room to the hallway while they ate pizza and spend over an hour in executive session. Once the session was complete patrons were allowed to come back in.

My question is that if the meeting is called or order..and it is an open meeting, can they close the meeting and make the people leave the room or should they have to leave?

Thanks,

Yes, they can do just what they did.

However, I will tell you that I serve on a school board and when we go into executive session we nearly always move to an adjoining conference room and allow the public to remain in the main meeting room. But we do so out of courtesy, not because there is anything in RONR that requires it.

According to RONR there is nothing wrong with what they did, and it may be that they have no easy access to an alternative meeting room with sufficient privacy, or any number of other reasons.