The Shawano School Board re-voted in open session on a trio of teacher non-renewal notices May 11 after it had voted on them behind closed doors two weeks earlier.
Geoff Lacy, the school district’s attorney with Renning, Lewis and Lacy, said he would take the blame for not recommending the board return to open session to vote on the non-renewals April 27 when giving members legal advice.
“You can vote on them in closed session to maintain confidentiality for individuals,” Lacy said. “The path of least resistance is for the board to make a motion in open session. Essentially, the motion would be to approve the issuance of final notices of non-renewal as presented to the board during private conferences in closed session.”
The final vote was 5-1 to reissue the non-renewals. Board member Bobbi Lemerond voted against the motion, while board member Jeana Winslow abstained because she had not participated in the closed session. Board member Karen Houston had already left the meeting when the non-renewals came up on the agenda.
Board President Christine McKinnies questioned what difference the open vote would make.
“Is it a new vote?” McKinnies said. “We’re essentially backing up the clock and saying we’re out of closed session and being asked to vote how we voted.”
Lacy noted that the state’s open meeting law doesn’t forbid governing bodies from taking votes in closed session, but there’s no language that permits such votes, either.
“We’re doing it to protect the district’s interests and be cautious against any allegations that we didn’t want to do it in open session,” he said.
Jennifer Schmidt, president of the Shawano Education Association, spoke out at the April 27 meeting on the non-renewal notices and said the law did not advise votes in closed session instead of making the vote public.
“The final vote is what matters to the community, and that should take place in open session,” Schmidt said.
Superintendent Kurt Krizan and other district officials have said that Lacy had advised them that such votes can take place in closed session.
Lemerond, who attended the meeting remotely, said that there had been no closed session votes in the three years she’s been on the board until recently.
“Before we went into closed session, I specifically asked the previous board president (Tim Renard) if we were going to vote in closed session, and he told me no,” Lemerond said. “Otherwise, I would have made a motion to have our vote in open (session) to begin with, because we should not be voting in closed session.”
Lacy said there are circumstances where votes can take place in closed session, where they cannot and also a “gray area.”
There is one other known instance when the school board voted in closed session. In 2022, the board voted to accept then-Superintendent Randi Anderson’s resignation in exchange for paying out the remainder of her contract, which cost the district $400,000.
