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School board agenda slim

Monday's meeting to be dominated by executive session

Brent Boyer

Most of Monday’s Steamboat Springs School Board study session will be held behind closed doors.

More than three hours of the scheduled four-hour meeting is set aside for executive session, during which the public is not allowed to participate or observe.

Superintendent Donna Howell said the school district’s new legal counsel, Richard Lyons, will attend the meeting and update board members on the lawsuit filed against it by Steamboat Springs Montessori. Lyons also will train the School Board in open meetings laws and other areas.



The board will discuss student disciplinary action and a personnel matter, Howell said. The board likely will take action relative to the student situation after it emerges from executive session.

Board members Jeff Troeger and Michael Loomis were elected to the board last month; Monday’s meeting is their second as members.



Colorado governmental bodies, including school boards, are subject to the state’s open meetings, or sunshine, laws. Public bodies are permitted to enter executive session only after a vote approving the move and alerting the public to the topics to be discussed during the executive session. The law calls for executive session topics to be detailed as specifically as possible without compromising the reason for the executive session.

Executive sessions for local bodies, such as a school board, are limited to matters required to be kept confidential by state or federal law, security arrangements, property matters, attorney conference with specific legal questions, negotiations and personnel matters. School boards also are permitted to use executive sessions to discuss individual students if identity disclosure would adversely affect the persons involved, the law reads.

Employees can request that a hearing about them be open if it’s scheduled to be held in executive session.

Monday’s study session is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at the George P. Sauer Human Services Center. According to the agenda, the board immediately will vote to enter executive session to discuss the student matter and then a personnel matter.

Public and staff comments are scheduled to begin at 7:15 p.m. The board likely will go back into executive session at 8 p.m. to discuss negotiations. The meeting is scheduled to adjourn at 10 p.m.


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