Legality of Madawaska school board session in question

MADAWASKA – The Madawaska school committee heard comments about Superintendent Dr. Danny R.P. Michaud from 32 individuals behind closed doors Tuesday night for more than five hours of executive session at a meeting that lasted nearly 6 1/2 hours.

Despite objections from a Bangor Daily News reporter who claimed the executive session could be illegal because it was not warranted under Maine’s public right to know law and because people’s comments in open session were being stifled, the school board followed the advice of its Portland attorney, Daniel Rose.

Rose even maintained the school board meeting was not a public meeting but a meeting where the public was allowed to be. He claimed, and the school committee agreed, that no complaints would be heard in open session about Michaud.

Rose feared the school board could be involved in a lawsuit if “slanderous” comments were made by residents.

While more than 200 people were at the session when it started, about 100 left by the time the school committee emerged from its second executive session at 11:10 p.m.

The Madawaska School Department has been under stress for months. The Madawaska Education Association has filed four grievances against the school department since Michaud became superintendent last July. One remains unresolved and three have been settled in favor of the education association.

Last month, Madawaska High School Principal Conrad Cyr, also in his first year in that job, resigned in frustration after an executive session. He claimed Michaud micro-manages and mismanages the department. Michaud accepted his resignation last week.

The education association and residents have decried the school committee’s inordinately high number of executive sessions, its failure to answer questions at meetings and the superintendent’s and school board’s refusal to allow residents to be placed on the school board agenda to discuss issues.

Three executive sessions were held Tuesday night. The first, a 20-minute meeting, was for the school board to discuss with its attorney the board’s legal rights before holding a public session.

When residents, including high school students, spoke during a subsequent public session, several speakers were interrupted by Rose and school committee chairman Brian Thibeault, when they mentioned Michaud by name or by position.

Residents were told they could not do that. Residents were never told Michaud is a public official, and criticism of public officials is allowed under Maine law.

After 25 minutes of sanitized comments by four residents, the school board went into a nearly four-hour executive session where 32 people, individually or in groups of two to four, entered to speak with them. Michaud and Rose were also present.

Some of those who went into the executive session to speak said they were supporters of Michaud.

“I had good things to say about Mr. Michaud,” one woman, who would not give her name, said outside the meeting. “I would not say it in public because I would be booed.

“You wouldn’t print the good things some of us have to say anyway,” she said while sitting in the corridor at the Madawaska Elementary School. “You only print things that make the school department and Mr. Michaud look bad.”

After a third, 45-minute, executive session, which included Rose and Cyr, the school board voted to seek an investigation of the school department and actions of recent months.

Thibeault said the school department should then take whatever action is needed to remedy problems of the department.

Rose, who arrived in Madawaska on Tuesday afternoon, met with Thibeault and vice chairman James Lavertu before Tuesday night’s school committee meeting. He left the meeting Wednesday morning at 12:20 a.m. for Presque Isle.

Michaud said Friday he had no idea what Rose’s fees were for the time he was in Madawaska on Tuesday.