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Marble – Cherokee County Board of Education members violated the state’s open meeting law when a majority of them toured a school in Union County, Ga., earlier this month without notifying the public about the meeting, according to a lawyer with expertise in North Carolina’s open meeting laws.
The board, except members Jason Murphy and Jeff Tatham, traveled to Blairsville, Ga., to tour an elementary school there. After returned to Cherokee County, the board voted unanimously to propose a kindergarten-through-eighth-grade version of the Union County grades 3-5 school based on their findings during the tour.
The Cherokee Scout contacted the school district asking whether there was public notice about the field trip. School board liaison Greg Chapman said advance notice was unnecessary.
“This was not an ‘Official Meeting’ as defined by N.C. G.S. 143-319.10(d),” Chapman said in an email. “It was simply an informal assembly of available members of the board and county commissioners to look at a recently constructed elementary school in order to get a real understanding of the scope of such a project. There was no hearing, deliberations, or voting or any other business transacted.”
The statute cited in Chapman’s email was rescinded. However, GS 143-318.10(d) does address meeting laws, and Chapman’s citation may have been a typographical error.
While it may be true there were no “hearings, deliberations or voting” during the field trip, the board’s next regular meeting later that day included a discussion about the tour and resulted in a unanimous decision to consolidate four schools and build a new school in the Murphy area.
The Scout, a member of the N.C. Press Association, contacted the law firm retained by that association for legal advice about the field trip. Attorney Mike Tadych of the Raleigh law firm Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych PLLC responded.
“A gathering of a majority of the BOE (board of education) for the purpose of looking ‘at a recently constructed elementary school in order to get a real understanding of the scope of such a project’ sounds like otherwise transacting the public business within the jurisdiction, real or apparent, of the public body,” Tadych wrote in an email.
“See GS 143-318.10(d). The explanation given confirms that it was not a social meeting. I sincerely doubt that no one said a thing about what they were seeing the entire time they were there. They were there in their official capacities. Thus, without notice, they violated the OML (Open Meeting Law). They need to provide you (referring to the Scout) and the public with minutes of what was said and done.”
The law
NCGS 143-318.10(d) is a section of North Carolina law found within Chapter 143, Article 33C, that governs the public records and open meetings of public bodies in the state.
This subsection defines “official meeting” as it relates to the public records and open meetings laws. Essentially, an “official meeting” is a gathering, assembly or simultaneous communication of a majority of the members of a public body.
The purpose of this gathering or communication must be for:
- Conducting hearings: Formal proceedings where information is gathered and considered.
- Participating in deliberations: Discussion and consideration of issues to reach a decision.
- Voting upon or otherwise transacting the public business: Taking formal action or carrying out official duties within the public body’s jurisdiction.
The statute clarifies that a social meeting or informal assembly of the members of a public body is generally not considered an official meeting. This distinction holds true unless the social gathering or informal assembly is specifically called or held with the intent to avoid the spirit and purposes of the open meetings laws.
The board’s tour of a school in Georgia was for fact finding related to school consolidation, not a “social gathering or informal assembly.”
The same statute requires every public body to keep full and accurate minutes of all official meetings, including any closed sessions held pursuant to G.S. 143-318.11.
“Such minutes may be in written form or, at the option of the public body, may be in the form of sound or video and sound recordings,” according to the law.
Even closed sessions require that minutes be kept, state statutes say.
A pattern of opacity
The Scout has reported previously about the school board skirting, and in some cases violating, state open meeting laws.
In August 2024, the Scout reported that the full board was holding private meetings just prior to scheduled meetings, ostensibly to pray. The meetings, held away from where the board normally meets and away from the public, lasted anywhere from a few minutes to 15.
The board’s committees, which meet at unannounced times and without published agendas, are supposed to include just three of the board’s seven members because four would constitute a majority, also known as a quorum. Yet, committee meetings have been held with four board members.
State law requires that quorums only occur during public meetings with advance notice, agendas and that minutes be kept.
The school board continues to release its agendas the day of meetings and has not posted a draft of upcoming meetings since November 2024. The agendas themselves are vague, such as “facilities” without further elaboration, during which the board voted to reorganize four school campuses in 2024.
A public records request of school board member emails in 2024 showed that none of the school board members nor executive staff were answering their emails.
Legal opinion
Ashley Fox, another lawyer with Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych, responded to questions from the Scout in 2024 about the school board’s committee meetings and pre-meeting prayer sessions.
“Under the Open Meetings Law, an official meeting is ‘a meeting assembly, or gathering together at any time or place or the simultaneous communication by conference telephone or other electronic means of a majority of the members of a public body for the purposes of conducting hearings, participating in deliberations, or voting upon or otherwise transacting the public business within the jurisdiction, real or apparent, of the public body’ (N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-318.10(d)),” she wrote in an email.
“A public body is ‘any elected or appointed authority, board, commission, committee, council, or other body of the State, or of one or more counties, cities, school administrative units, constituent institutions of the University of North Carolina, or other political subdivisions or public corporations in the State that (i) is composed of two or more members and (ii) exercises or is authorized to exercise a legislative, policy-making, quasi-judicial, administrative, or advisory function (N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-318.10(b)),’ ” she wrote.
Both the school board and the committees “(which, it sounds like, are made up of a subset of members of the board) would be public bodies,” she said.
“If either a majority of the board (four of the seven members) or a majority of any committee (two of the three official members) meets to discuss public business, then that’s a ‘meeting’ and the requirements of the OML (open meetings law) should be applicable, including public access. They should also be keeping minutes, which are then public records under the Public Records Law. So, theoretically, if they’re discussing public business in these ‘pre-meeting meetings,’ you should be able to request the minutes of what was discussed (assuming they’re actually keeping them).”
Where public bodies violate the OML, the statute allows anyone to bring a lawsuit to enjoin threatened or continued violations (N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-318.16), she said.
“The OML also allows you to seek nullification of whatever action was taken at the illegal meeting if a lawsuit is filed within 45 days of when that action is disclosed. (N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-16A),” she said.
Regarding concern about agendas, she said, “I don’t believe there are specific requirements for how detailed an agenda has to be. But, the OML does state that if a public body is taking action by referencing an agenda, it has to provide copies of the agenda at the meeting that are ‘sufficiently worded to enable the public to understand what is being deliberated, voted, or acted upon,’ (N.C. Gen. Stat. 143-318.13(c)).”
Tadych, a partner with Stevens Martin Vaughn & Tadych law firm, concurred with Fox’s advice, adding “it’s safe to say” that the school board is violating the open meetings law with “pre-meeting” meetings.
Following the Scout’s article about alleged open meeting violations in 2024, the school board discontinued pre-meeting prayer sessions. Instead, at the start of meetings there is a “moment of silence,” when school board member Jason Murphy says a prayer. His prayers usually last less than 30 seconds.