From: "Bill Swan" <swanb@mac.com>
To: "Darce Fardy" <darce@eastlink.ca>
Sent: Sunday, October 05, 2008 9:23 PM
Subject: Response to Openness and Accountability Request
Dear Darce,
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to your request. Please
accept my apologies for the delay, your original message must have
been caught in my spam filters.
I understand and agree wholeheartedly with the ideals of openness and
accountability (with some conditions).
First and foremost, any disciplinary issues with students have to be
subject to strict confidentiality. Clearly these items cannot and
should not be subject to the same level of access to information as
other aspects of school board business.
Secondly, I do accept that there may be circumstances where meetings
may need to be held in-camera for issues unrelated to student
discipline, but a high bar should be set to keep these in-camera
meetings to an absolute minimum. In any case, the outcomes of meetings
(so long as they are unrelated to student discipline) should be made
public.
I believe that as a school board we have an obligation to maximize the
amount openness by clearly pre-defining (in an open session) any
exceptions to that policy and likewise we have an additional
obligation to make those exceptions well known so that the public is
aware of how their school board operates.
Regards,
Bill Swan
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