MECHANIC FALLS – A new rule aimed at preventing elected school leaders from deliberating in secret, using their private e-mail to communicate, is making its way through schools in Minot, Mechanic Falls and Poland.
By next week, all three towns in School Union 29 are expected to vote on the policy.
“It needs to be clear that we can’t be conducting the meeting with e-mail,” said Dave Griffiths, a member of the Mechanic Falls and Poland Regional High School committees.
Maine law protects the public’s right to watch and examine how its elected officials work. The worry here is that the public’s business could be run like the back of a high school classroom, by notes passed under desks.
Technically, when three or more members of a committee talk – in person, by phone or by e-mail – it might be a meeting and subject to the law.
It’s a concern that Griffiths first brought up a year ago with the Poland Regional High School Committee. It came up a second time last month.
After that meeting, School Union 29 Superintendent Nina Schlikin asked for help from the Maine School Management Association, which helps draft policies for schools across the state.
They came up with a template. Then, Schlikin and the school’s lawyer, Daniel Stockford of the Lewiston firm Brann & Isaacson, filled in the blanks.
The proposal bans using “e-mail as a substitute for deliberations” and warns committee members from disclosing confidential information about students or school employees, even to each other.
Schlikin refused to comment Wednesday when asked whether she believes any previous e-mails might have violated the new policy.
Her hope is to ensure that each of the union’s five committees – one for each town, one for the high school and one collective group – all conform to the same policy, she said.
Schlikin first introduced the proposed rule to the Poland School Committee last week. In the first of two needed votes, the committee gave its unanimous approval.
The Mechanic Falls School Committee followed on Wednesday, also with a unanimous vote.
Chairwoman Terri Arsenault believes her committee complied even before the policy passed, she said.
In her group, e-mail is used only to pass on information such as meeting agendas, she said.
“It’s just a let you know,'” she said.
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