Board blesses settlement of open meetings claim

by Judy Stringer

June 24 school board meeting

Hudson City School Board approved a $1,000 payment to Brian Ames of Mogadore to settle a civil lawsuit he filed against the board on April 3. As part of the settlement, Hudson also paid $4,860 to cover Ames’ attorney fees and related court costs.

Over the last few years, Ames has filed numerous suits against school districts and other public bodies alleging violations of the state’s open meeting statutes, i.e. Sunshine Laws. In the Hudson case, he claimed the district “failed to keep full and accurate minutes” of 16 meetings between March 13 and Oct. 23 of last year, according to a complaint filed in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas.

The complaint said the Oct. 23 minutes, for example, reflected former board member James Field “as being present and voting when he was in fact absent from the meeting,” did not identify an agenda item as it was identified in the meeting and did not adequately capture spoken explanations. The location of the meeting was omitted in all of the minutes listed, according to the complaint.

Ames’ lawsuit also alleged that board policy didn’t align with statutory restrictions on executive sessions. In addition to passing a resolution approving the settlement, the board voted in favor of policy revisions to clarify its use of executive sessions.

While the board did not discuss the settlement or policy revision resolutions at the June 24 meeting, Vice President Alisa Wright – presiding in the absence of President Steve DiMauro – said the board continues “to examine both to ensure that we are complying with the law and utilizing best practices,” prior to reading the resolutions.

She also stated that the proposed settlement was intended “to avoid the cost and administrative burden of continued litigation.”

In other legislative action, the board passed a resolution to renew the district’s property, auto, pollution, violence, cyber and liability insurance coverage with the Ohio School Plan. The $278,186 policy is a 12% increase over the previous insurance contract.

Operations Director Tom Barone explained that catastrophic claims and significant inflation on the property replacement costs are pushing insurance rates up.

“Originally, as a member of the Ohio School Plan, our membership received a 29% rate increase on the property reassurance,” Barone said. “The Ohio School Plan Board got together and decided to use a surplus to take on more risk to get that rate down to 8% across the 320 members of this plan.”

He added that cyber insurance “continues to escalate” as well.

The board also approved approximately $56,000 worth of gifts and grants to the district. This includes a $30,000 donation from the Denise Lukingbeal Memorial for the Ellsworth Hill Outdoor Learning Project. A barn from a Barlow Road property is being salvaged and partially restored as part of the school’s planned outdoor learning laboratory.

The Hudson High School Music Association donated another $16,500 in equipment to benefit the music program. The Charles D. Miller Leadership Fund of the Akron Community Foundation made a $2,960 donation to the World Language Department and $6,500 to the district’s Artificial Intelligence Leadership Team.

Of the latter, Assistant Superintendent Doreen Osmun said the AI team is “looking at different policies and procedures” to navigate AI use in the district.

“We are adding some guidelines to our handbooks, especially for our students and our teachers at the high school, because AI is everywhere,” she said. ∞