Despite long agenda, GM board meets for 7 minutes; legal fees go unaddressed

By Shawn Cunningham
© 2023 Telegraph Publishing LLC

Thursday night’s Green Mountain Unified School District Board meeting ended almost as soon as it began. The board adjourned slightly more than seven minutes into the meeting over how to handle an agenda item regarding the appeal of its May 18 decision that the name Chieftain does not violate its policy against discriminatory mascots and branding.

That became an issue when The Telegraph reported that more than $10,000 had been spent on legal fees to defend the decision without the knowledge or approval of every board member. The agenda listed both an “update” on the appeal and an executive session “sharing advice from legal counsel” regarding the appeal.

At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, board chair Deb Brown of Chester sought to remove from the agenda, the portion of the update that labelled it for “discussion/action.” Brown explained that including that phrase had been a clerical error.

At that point, board member Lois Perlah of Chester called for an addition to the agenda regarding the decision to hire a lawyer for the appeal and Brown offered that it could be discussed in the executive session. Perlah objected.

“I want to add a public explanation of how it was determined to have an attorney represent the board when the board never voted to do that,” said Perlah, noting that it was a board procedure question.

Board member Kate Lamphere of Cavendish asked for clarification on what was being deleted and member Josh Schroeder of Chester asked if the board could keep the discussion of the appeal. Brown explained that the “discussion/action” was never supposed to be in the agenda and that they could not discuss it because it “was not warned properly.”

“It was not in either of our papers of record,” said Brown. “The agenda was, the discussion/action was not. So no one would know there was action being taken.”

“I confess, I’m a little confused” said Superintendent Lauren Fierman, “because did the words ‘discussion/action’ appear in the papers of records for anything? Then we shouldn’t be taking action on anything?”

A representative of The Chester Telegraph noted that the paper is not required to publish the agendas but does so as a public service and edits the copy to make it more readable. The Telegraph has been publishing school board agendas in this way for eight years and this is the first time that objection has come up. In Vermont, a paper of record is designated by municipalities (including school districts) as the place where paid legal notices are published.

“Just print the agenda as it’s given to you,” said Brown. “Then that would solve everything.” Brown went on to say she needed a motion to continue with the agenda.

“I will say that if we’ve been doing this the same way for….” Schroeder began, but Brown cut him off.

“I’m just looking for a motion right now,” said Brown.

“It’s going to start this way huh?” said Schroeder.

Board vice chair Adrienne Williams of Baltimore said that perhaps they should just adjourn and made that motion. The vote was unanimous and the meeting ended. The upshot is that the public and most of the board will be in the dark about this issue until the next scheduled meeting on Oct. 19 unless an earlier meeting is called.

Where is legal maneuvering heading?

Last week, The Telegraph reported that the GM district had spent more than $10,000 on legal fees to defend it in appeals by those who complained that the board was violating its own policy by keeping the Chieftain name.

At the time, The Telegraph reported that two board members had said they were unaware of a lawyer working on the case or of expenditures for legal fees. After Thursday’s meeting, several more members said they too were unaware that a lawyer had been hired until they read The Telegraph article.

While the chair was willing to discuss the issue of hiring a lawyer in the executive session later in Thursday’s meeting, she seemed to want to limit discussion of the topic in public.

What’s interesting is that at least three school board members have spoken (or written on social media) that the objective of GMUSD in hiring an attorney is to take the issue out of the hands of local officials and, as board member Scott Kendall of Andover wrote on social media in reference to The Telegraph article: “If people let it run it’s[sic] course and the state says end chieftain. THEN ITS[sic] GONE!”

But that does not explain why GM’s hired attorney, Mick Leddy, seems to be actively defending the case.

His legal maneuvers as outlined in The Telegraph‘s Sept. 13 article speak to that. And since then, The Telegraph has learned that Leddy has asked the Agency of Education to provide transcripts of the testimony of then-AOE Secretary Dan French and AOE General Counsel Emily Simmons before legislative committees on Act 152, which bans the use of discriminatory mascots and such school branding.  It passed in 2022.

Simmons is also the hearing officer for the appeal.

Leddy apparently also asked Simmons to provide the name of the person at the AOE who worked on the model policy for schools that was mandated by the statute. Whether that means that Leddy intends to depose agency officials or call witnesses is not clear. But it seems an attempt to more fully defend the mascot name, which could mean far larger expenditures.