The Newton School Committee will hold a rare matinee meeting this week, its first public meeting since the Lions Roar broke the news that Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman plagiarized portions of his June graduation speeches.
Wednesday’s meeting begins at 2 p.m. at the Ed Center, 100 Walnut Street.
The Fleishman incident does not appear on the agenda. (Interesting to note that a Superintendent Assessment was on the July 15 agenda, when the SC knew about the incident but the public did not.)
However, presumably the topic could come up during a public comment period and, also presumably, the Committee could vote to release the minutes from the three questionable executive session meetings it reportedly held to discuss the incident and response.
Anyone know if afternoon meeting are common for the SC in the summer?
Hi Greg,
The School Committee routinely has one or two summer meetings each year, typically during the daytime.
The Superintendent Assessment is on the agenda for additional discussion this Wednesday.
Regards, Steve Siegel
Actually, Greg, if I remember correctly, the SC had planned to continue with the superintendent assessment at this meeting, but as of now there is no mention of it on the agenda that’s posted online. Do you think maybe it was “mistakenly” omitted? Or perhaps the SC has found some reason to postpone to some following meeting, maybe with a 2AM start time for that one?
By the way, has anyone else noticed the absence of communication regarding the Fleishman plagiarism saga from formerly ubiquitous SC blogger extraordinaire Steve Seigel? Perhaps now would be a good time for him to weigh in.
Thanks, Steve, great to hear from you!!!
Greg, Not sure if it is meaningful to you, but the four first-hand accounts (Loins Roar, Fleishman ltr #1, SC letter, Fleishman ltr #2) never used the word “plagiarized”. Either they those sources were avoiding the term, or questioned whether its accurate.
@Hoss: Not meaningful to me. Boring actually. It walks and quacks like a duck. Fleishman has acknowledged it happened and apologized. At this point I’m only interested in the SC’s role in the days/weeks since the plagiarism came to its attention.
That’s what I thought… Didn’t want you to be sued like a duck though.
I doubt that there will be public comments at this meeting. At the two summer meetings last year, there were no public comments.
At the first meeting this summer on July 15, the dog park proposal at Newton South was the “hot” topic, and many neighbors came to speak. MH “allowed” those folks to offer comments, because they had arrived at 8am, not knowing that there wasn’t going to be a public comment item on the agenda.
There were no other comments except for those related to the dog park.
I wouldn’t bet $$ on it, but I think there will not be a public comment agenda item until the first meeting in September of the SC.
Someone just emailed me a copy of the School Committee’s agenda and it includes items that are not on this public posting on the School Committee’s site, including the fact that there will be a public comment period AND a continuation of the Superintendent’s Assessment.
If the exclusion of items from the online version is not a violation of the Open Meeting Law then it certainly seems like a violation of the spirit of that law. Forget the Fleishman thing for a minute. Not disclosing the full agenda — without even an indication that it’s not the full agenda — is wrong.
It could be that this is the way it’s always been done. It could be that people with an insiders knowledge know that this is only a summary. But it’s still wrong and the SC should correct this now and going forward.
It bothers me to no end that Matt Hills will be sitting in the Chairman’s seat when the SC reconvenes. It appears to me that all the members of the SC should be ashamed of the way they dealt with the Fleishman scandal. I have no respect for any of them. But when an elected official in a leadership position violates the public trust, as Hills so obviously did, they need to step down or be removed. Unfortunately our City Charter has no provision for recalling public officials. And the Mayor [who may or may not have been complicit in the scandal] isn’t about to ask for Hill’s resignation. But I think the School Committee is in for a big surprise when people start returning to Newton from their summer vacations. This story is not going away any time soon.
Greg, even if it were only a summary, why would a summary neglect mention of any item obviously associated with what is certainly the biggest public issue that this SC has so far faced? It seems to be just another example of what Emily Costello decried in her 7/30 Tab editorial, a circle-the-wagons corporate mentality that may be perfectly appropriate for the boardroom but is antithetical to transparent governance. While it appears that the superintendent has taken to heart this incident’s message to him that plagiarism is unacceptable, it’s mind-boggling that the SC continues to exhibit no recognition of the message to them, which is that it is unacceptable for government bodies to conduct public business under any cloak of secrecy. You would think, given the fallout from this incident, that they would bend over backwards to make sure the public is as totally informed as it could possibly be regarding items up for discussion in the upcoming meeting. Instead, the SC gives no indication at all that it is even listening, never mind that it has heard any message. Excuse my frustration, but I’m left wondering just how loud the din must get in order to penetrate the ears of these apparently oblivious elected officials.
@Greg, the Attorney General’s regulations for posting notice of open meetings, 940 CMR 29.03, are posted online here. At a minimum, except in an emergency, notices of meetings of public bodies (e.g., Board of Aldermen, School Committee, etc.) must be posted by the City Clerk in a “conspicuously visible manner” at City Hall during business hours. Public bodies may also post the meeting notices online on the City’s website, on the cable access channel, in the local newspaper, on a monitor located at City Hall, and in a recorded message on a call-in line. In Newton, all of the meeting notices are posted on the Electronic Posting Board on the City website. According to the School Committee’s webpage, documents relating to a specific meeting are available the day of the meeting on the SC website.
@Ted: So perhaps they are indeed following the letter of law, presuming the agenda is posted at City Hall and is on the electronic site.
But it’s deceitful, even if it’s not intentional, to list the agenda elsewhere without specifying that this may not be the full agenda or directing someone to the right place. Otherwise, how are people supposed to know?
CHECK THAT: Village 14 gets action again!
The school’s site now links to the full agenda.
Thanks to whomever addressed this.
So a School Committee meeting mid day on a Wednesday in the middle of August -really
Most of the non working parents in Newton are summering down the Cape so they won’t be there to make any comments and the rest of us will be working!
By September all will be forgotten…..
Clearly no one is paying attention to the posted meeting agendas. If no one on the SC has time to be assigned to that, and our city clerk isn’t looking at school stuff, then maybe it’s time to hire a chief of school committee procedures. There’s no snark at all in the suggestion> $200M budget plus $0.05M for a part time procedural person seems what we need.
Ted Hess-Mahan — As I remember it, where it says “may” post notices on-line, that “may” is an elective method where specific rules apply if the municipality chooses the method. For example, if you start doing posting on-line, you need to do it consistently in the same way as the paper posting method. Further, the notices need to be disability-friendly, ie, able to be available to anyone with sight or other types of disability. Did you find this in the rules? The way you wrote “may sound like it’s not in the law.
What I mean to say is “may” doesn’t mean a municipality can post official agendas on-line for certain months and for other months change the practice. If they start doing official postings, everything after that is also under that convention and residents should expect the posting to be official.
Former SC Supporter – Perhaps the Fleishman incident is not on the agenda because not everybody thinks it’s as important as you and some of the other bloggers do. How do you quantify the “fallout from this incident”? Do you think the SC should draw its agenda from the Village 14 blog?
Come on, Gail, wouldn’t you agree that what you call “the Fleishman incident” is the biggest issue this SC has addressed thus far? By “fallout from this incident” I mean that this SC has been harshly criticized by students, parents, residents, and aldermen for the way it handled the entire affair to the point where its credibility, or at least that of its leadership, has been strained. The Village14 blog is beside the point. Just because it has increasingly become the most up-to-date source for Newton news doesn’t mean that it should set the agenda for city government action. I assume that’s something on which you & I can agree, even if we’re not going to agree on the current direction in which the SC is being taken.
The full agenda for the 8-13-2014 School Committee meeting is found right where Ted suggested we’d find it. Start by clicking on the Electronic Posting Board button on the Newton homepage. Then click on 08-13-14 School Committee Meeting Agenda and you’ll note the date stamp of “8:44 a.m. August 7, 2014”, about 31 hours earlier than required by the OML. This is the same agenda I saw when I first opened my packet on Friday morning. I don’t know what has been routine for electronically posting our meetings at City Hall, as frankly it never occurred to me to check. But I’m glad to see how easy it is to find this.
Jo-Louise, please note that “Public Comment” is the first item after the meeting is called to order. Former SCS, the “Discussion and Vote re: Superintendent’s Assessment” is two items past Public Comment.
Regarding “public business” and “cloak of secrecy”, I will speak for myself when I say that I have felt great challenge in striking an appropriate balance between the privacy rights associated with dealing with a personnel matter, and the public interest since this matter relates to the leader of our school department. For example you may have noticed that David Fleishman asked that any consequence the SC settled upon be made public. Without this request I would have found it difficult to disclose his fine, as this disclosure would be contrary to the privacy considerations we extend to employees of Newton at every level. I’ve personally heard from many people with reactions across the spectrum, from “The School Committee got it right, Fleishman has my support, let’s move on” to “You guys blew it, fire the guy”. I suppose this is not surprising, as some folks see this matter in stark black and white terms while others see shades of gray. Personally, I’ve felt it my responsibility to weigh the significance of David Fleishman’s deeds and identify a proportional consequence. Newton Public Schools prides ourselves in the teaching of critical thinking skills to our students. I can think of few situations that have tested this capability in me as well as David Fleishman’s speech has.
@Steve: Thanks, once again, for commenting here. Helpful and insightful. I wish more of your colleagues would use this forum.
Put me in the column of those who think the SC got it right with the punitive actions but dubious when it comes to the posting of the executive session meetings and the delayed response to divulging the incident. And I agree with the TAB that inquiries from the media did not constitute grounds for an emergency executive session meeting in this case. I also wonder if we would have ever heard about this from the SC if it were not for the Lions Roar report.
And yep, sure, it’s easy to find the minutes, if you know where to look. My concern is that, most certainly unintentionally, there exists a second place where incomplete minutes exist/existed with no indication that those were perhaps not the complete or most recent version.
Steve – Its too bad the SC were not concerned about privacy issues when Matt Hill the now chair of the school committee gave a letter from the Mass DOE with a students name on it and allowed it to be posted on this blog. And it is was even more troubling when I personally asked the Superintendent what measures he had put in place so that this would not happen again and he could not give me an answer other than the group questioning the history curriculum were a problem. I guess the SC is selective in how they deal with privacy issues.
Committee Member Siegel — Respectfully, as you may know, Massachusetts has said privacy considerations are secondary to the pubic right to know financial information. That being said the precedence of a standing pubic employee effectively paying back compensation is certainly unusual thus I’m not sure that aspect has been tested. But the pubic right to know, and an elected official’s duty to the people first, is highly valued, and carefully protected by our MGLs. As a member of your Ward, if you had protected a leadership position’s privacy by not disclosing public information, I personally would have found that unforgivable. I’m glad this didn’t reach that point.
Mr Siegel — If you can take a moment to respond again, is there actually a “collecting bargaining” aspect to be discussed on Weds as the agenda suggests at the top? If so, is the committee now committed to discussing only that item in this Executive Session, and not other topics?
(Sorry I missed the “l” in public!)
Steve Siegel, thanks for taking the time to respond.
Speaking for myself, as a Newton citizen, taxpayer, and parent, what I want to hear from the Superintendent and the School Committee is an apology for conducting public business in secret, and not making detailed minutes of those secret meetings public after you all got caught. The School Committee’s concern for the Superintendent’s privacy stands in stark contrast to the way the Superintendent and School Committee violated the privacy rights of a high school student and her mother who filed a complaint with DESE concerning certain curricula by going public with their names. I am informed by someone with personal knowledge that DESE found against the Superintendent and NPS on that issue, but, to my knowledge, I have never heard an equally public apology from anyone about it.
It is indeed ironic that Superintendent Fleishman chose to reference David McCullough, Jr.’s “You’re Not Special” speech in his own commencement speech at graduation this year. Because the actions of the Superintendent and the School Committee speak far more loudly than words. We are told we are all special, but evidently some people are more special than others.
@Ted: If tomorrow is the first SC meeting since the (presumably final) executive session meetings related to this matter, wouldn’t tomorrow be the date when the committee should be expected to approve and vote to make those minutes public?
@School Committee: Given recent history, Hoss’ skepticism regarding what will really be discussed in executive session tomorrow does seems well founded.
Since I don’t think I can ever trust again an agenda posting for Executive Session, maybe some brave BoA member can consider making it a requirement that a non-member ethicist type person attend these meetings. The City Clerk seems to be appropriate. I also think the BoA should require specific items with on-line meeting notices. (1) that they be retained, not purged (ever), and (2) that they be the “official” posting along with the identical paper copy in the glass case. All references to the “official” posting should be a link to the same source. In this current case, the School Committee web page isn’t showing the official copy with the red stamp, etc.
@Hoss. What you say makes perfect sense to me. The puzzling thing, in fact, is why this isn’t already SOP.
The Superintendent’s offense was committed in a public forum in front of 2000 people. And according to Siegel, “David Fleishman asked that any consequence the SC settled upon be made public,” effectively waving privacy considerations. So why did the School Committee still cover-up the plagiarism incident and the $5000 fine?
I believe they were trying to push the matter into the summer months to mute the embarrassment of their colleague. But I also believe the School Committee knew their modest monetary penalty amounted to a slap on the wrist, and they were protecting themselves from criticism.
When elected officials break the law to protect themselves from criticism, the public is ill-served. And I’m convinced that’s exactly what happened in this case, with the School Committee’s failure to abide by public meeting laws. That’s why I believe the Chairman of the School Committee, Matt Hills, must step down from his leadership position.
Ironically, I think the School Committee’s actions actually made it even more difficult for Fleishman to continue as an effective Superintendent. I believe that will become apparent in the weeks after schools reopen. I’m also left wondering about Mayor Warren. He was either asleep at the wheel, a co-conspirator, or has far less leadership skill than I thought.
I try to make it a point to not criticize the Mayor without offering a solution of my own. If I had been in Mayor Warren’s position and wanted to keep Fleishman, I would have insisted on an immediate statement of wrongdoing and public apology. No cover-up. No obfuscation. No delay. Then I would have suspended him for 30 days without pay. Had Mayor Warren and the School Committee taken that transparent approach, everyone’s integrity would have been preserved, and the public would have been much more likely to accept the School Committee’s judgement.
Mike Striar – The history is the Mayor made a bad executive decision in the past related to employment matters, and we have yet to find out the consequence of the mistake. He fired a police dept head on City Hall steps as a special “I’m in charge” moment. I frankly have no doubt the City settled that one and we all deserve to know for how much. Millions? Now we compare a kicked shoe with stolen sentiment… We learn from our mistakes, right?
Hoss– Yes, I completely agree. Unfortunately it’s a rare occasion when local Newton officials are held accountable for their actions. Regrettably, that’s likely the outcome here.
@Mike Striar
We know that you ‘believe there was a “cover up” and that they were trying to “push the matter into the summer months to mute the embarrassment of their colleague”. And that you ‘believe the School Committee knew their modest monetary penalty amounted to a slap on the wrist, and they were protecting themselves from criticism”.
These things may very well be true. But you have no facts, no hard evidence, and it feels irresponsible to me for you to continually refer to these things as if they are true. It’s just not fair to all involved.
Again, I’m not saying you’re wrong about these things – I’m saying that we don’t know that you are right, and it’s not healthy for the conversation for you to name it a cover up. At least just yet. It wouldn’t pass journalistic muster.
Mike Ciolino — Thanks for asking that shadows in the dark come to light before judgement Can you describe the method they come to light?
Thanks THM
They did violate the students privacy -yet the superintendent could not tell me what processes have been put in place to prevent it from happening again. Thanks for letting us know that the DESE found against the SC and the Superintendent.But they should have publically apologized.
Unfortunately it is mistakes like this from the superintendent and Matt Hill that is very troubling.
@Mike C– My opinion carries no more weight than any other here on V-14. And opinions are really what we all have to offer in this forum. I wasn’t in the room [or on the conference call] when the School Committee members were having their private conversations about any of this. So a certain degree of conjecture is warranted. Ideally, Matt Hills would join the conversation and enlighten us all.
Any updates from today’s SC meeting?
A comment was removed from this thread because it outed an anonymous blogger who, although I’d prefer if that person used their real name, was playing by the rules of this blog. Folks it’s summer, take a deep breath. Your blog hosts have no interest in running a summer kindergarten program.
Yet another comment has been removed. Knock it off please.
The SC mtg from the Weds afternoon is now on-line. The approval of minutes happens 2 1/2 hrs into the meeting (at the meeting drew to close). There were minutes from the April and May regular mtgs for approval meeting. There were also minutes from two Executive Sessions: May 12 and July 24. Those minutes are not yet on-line and there was no discussion about them at the meeting. I’m hoping we get to see these minutes soon. I also wonder what happened to the minutes from the two other Executive Sessions during the Supergate period. Why are these not available?
Hoss– Perhaps the School Committee hired Rose Mary Woods to run their dictaphone???
Funny Mike. They have admitted to the other executive sessions so not approving them now seems foolish.
The only Supergate minutes that they approved were the mop-up minutes from July 24. While it would be helpful to see what they approved for that short mtg, the lack of approval on the various other Supergate discussions could mean the SC is seeking guidance on those other meetings. That is all fine w me, but this clearly is not “behind us” as Mr Hills said — it’s now a September issue, fully four months after the fact.
I’d like to also add that since there was clearly no “Collective Bargaining” Executive Session warranted or allowed at this week’s meeting as announced to the public, could it be that Mr Hills intended to craft minutes in those closed meeting. Why the heck did they again announce a “Collective Bargaining” smoke session unless that’s our new “none of your beez wax” header for SC meetings
What a terrible witch hunt this issue has become. In many people’s eyes DF has committed a crime. How is it that Deval P. owns the words he spoke.
D.F. is not writing an historical book that requires detailed footnotes.
I believe that many people in this city have done the superintendent a disservice. This entire incident is way over the top.