School board’s ‘one voice’ plan draws criticism

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Friday, July 19, 2002 | 10:55 a.m.

If Clark County School Board members move ahead with plans to evaluate their own job performances, they better be prepared to share all of their findings with the public, the attorney for the Nevada ACLU said Thursday.

A draft of the board's self-assessment plans calls for members to submit individual questionnaires to the board secretary, rating themselves on everything from their handling of complaints to their interactions with the public. The results would be tallied into a quarterly report that would reflect the majority opinion and let the board speak with "one voice," School Board President Sheila Moulton said.

"We won't have any responses hidden away because we don't like what they say," Moulton said. "But what the public will hear is the board speaking with one voice, not each board member's individual comments."

Allen Lichtenstein, attorney for the Nevada American Civil Liberties Union, said the board may be entering ethically murky waters. The state's Open Meeting Law prohibits members of any elected body from meeting secretly or sharing information privately that might affect the outcome of votes, Lichtenstein said.

"The idea that there could be one voice for the school board is troubling," Lichtenstein said. "A pretense of unanimity may be good for politics and public relations, but it's not in the public interest."

Kent Lauer, executive director of the Nevada Press Association, said he believed the individual questionnaires would be public documents and by law anyone would be entitled to request copies.

"I don't know of a state statute that would declare such material confidential," Lauer said. "It seems to me the public has a right to know how their elected officials feel they are performing their duties."

If the questionnaires are being tallied in order to reach some sort of consensus, or "one voice," that could be construed as a closed-door vote -- a violation of the state's Open Meeting Law, Lauer said.

Board Member Ruth Johnson disagreed that the "one voice" concept would influence votes.

"We are all individuals, but to be productive as an individual you need to know how to work on a team," Johnson said. "Sharing feedback will help us work better as a unit and make us a stronger, more successful board."

The board plans to meet again Monday and discuss how self-assessments would be tied in to policy, as well as how the information gathered would be shared, Moulton said.