Celebrate Sunshine Week 2011

Sunshine Week is March 13-19.  Sunshine Week is a national initiative to promote a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Celebrate Sunshine Week 2011 by emailing the School Board and Commission (schoolboard@mtlsd.net and commission@mtlebanon.org) Urge them to do more than just make broad statements of support of greater transparency.  The Commission took a stand and rescinded their decision to hold closed Joint Steering Committee meetings with the School Board because we cried foul.  Three Commissioners listened.  Two didn't.  Let your elected officials know that they need to do more.

For more information about Sunshine Week, go to http://sunshineweek.org/About.aspx

Update 8:35 P.M.  Clarification from Dan Miller:

You of course know the outcome of how that went down.  Then when the solicitor conducted his review of the case law four commissioners agreed to only have public joint steering meetings (this was done in executive session with one commissioner not yet present). So in essence it was unanimous to support the solicitors opinion to rescind the offer to participate in private joint steering meetings. 

Dan would not say which commissioner was not present since it was done in executive session, but the vote was 4-0. The Feb. 17 Trib article http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_723014.html failed to say that a fourth commissioner changed his mind and the vote was 4-0.

Update 11:50 P.M.  Dan Miller posted this time line on his blog.  http://danmillerward5.com/joint-steering-meetings-with-school-board  Thanks for clearing it up, Dan.  Bottom line is that we want the School Board to be like the Commission.