The ongoing showdown over transparency between state legislators and the State Board of Education entered a fourth month on Thursday, with the board again declining to conduct an executive session during its monthly meeting.
Legislators are allowed under the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act to be present during the executive session of any state board, a point reinforced by a recent formal opinion issued by Attorney General Gentner Drummond. Such opinions have force of law, absent a court decision.
But the board’s contracted attorney, Cara Nicklas, has fought against lawmakers using that authority. Board member Sarah Lepak complained during August’s meeting that if lawmakers attended an executive session, anything discussed in private wouldn’t really be private, even though lawmakers are bound by the same confidentiality rules as are board members.
In June, state Sen. Mary Boren, D-Norman, was kept out of an executive session. The next month, Rep. Jacob Rosecrants, D-Norman, and Rep. Mike Osburn, R-Edmond, joined Boren, but they again were prevented from entering the board’s executive session.
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Drummond’s opinion came out just before the August meeting, which five lawmakers (Rosecrants; Osburn; Rep. John Talley, R-Stillwater; Rep. Dick Lowe, R-Amber and Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond) attended. But the board chose — for the first time in recent memory — to not hold an executive session during a monthly meeting.
The same thing happened Thursday, even as five Republican legislators ― Pugh, Lowe and Reps. Mark Vancuren of Owasso, Danny Sterling of Tecumseh and Ronny Johns of Ada ― sat in the audience. Pugh and Vancuren had left by the time the board began voting on teacher licensing proposals in open session, more than three hours after the meeting started. The board usually goes into executive session to discuss those proposals before returning to open session for votes.
Oklahoma State Board of Education also changed media policy for meetings
Asked for his reaction to how the meeting was run, Sterling said he needed "to research this matter further on procedural issues. Actually, I thought (for the most part) It was conducted very professionally."
The media policy for the meeting also changed in the wake of a federal judge’s order Wednesday that Oklahoma State Department of Education officials — most notably its spokesman, Dan Isett — must allow journalists from Oklahoma City television station KFOR into the meeting room. They’d been banished to an overflow room for months. About 90 minutes before the meeting started, Isett escorted the KFOR journalists, including reporter Dylan Brown — one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Isett and state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters — into the meeting room, long before other journalists received access.
More: Federal judge issues restraining order requested by KFOR against Ryan Walters, spokesman
Journalists also waited to enter the Oliver Hodge Building ― where the meetings are held in a boardroom with a capacity of less than 50 people, far fewer than usually show up hoping to watch — in the same line as other members of the public, after months of being placed into separate lines. There was no indication given that journalists would be allowed into the room without being near the front of the public line, so journalists began arriving as early as 5:15 a.m. to ensure they could have a seat.
Eventually, as has been the practice in past months, the remaining journalists were allowed into the room a few minutes ahead of the public, to allow them to set up equipment and prepare for the meeting.
But after the meeting that lasted nearly five hours, Walters did not answer questions from members of the press about the board's actions and other issues, something he's done after every monthly meeting but one in the past year. After the meeting ended, about 20 journalists remained in the meeting room, waiting about 10 minutes for Walters, before Isett entered and said "no scrum today" before abruptly leaving.
During the meeting, the board unanimously approved its monthly meeting schedule for 2025, with all 12 meetings set to be held in the same small board room.
Drummond criticized officials at the education agency for failing to take simple steps to make sure lawmakers, journalists and members of the public have access to official meetings.
"It is bewildering that adults answerable to voters would operate in this manner,” Drummond told The Oklahoman. “Every other state board appears able to accommodate relevant legislators into executive sessions on the rare occasions those legislators request to do so. Every other state board appears able to accommodate both the general public and members of the press without playing games. These are not difficult tasks.”
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma Board of Education meeting raises questions about access, transparency
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