Adopted: MSBA/MASA Model Policy 204
Revised: Rev. 2022
204 SCHOOL BOARD
MEETING MINUTES
I. PURPOSE
The purpose of this policy is to
establish procedures relating to the maintenance of records of the school board
and the publication of its official proceedings.
II. GENERAL STATEMENT
OF POLICY
It is the policy of the school district
to maintain its records so that they will be available for inspection by
members of the general public and to provide for the publication of its
official proceedings in compliance with law.
III. MAINTENANCE OF
MINUTES AND RECORDS
A. The clerk shall keep and maintain
permanent records of the school board, including records of the minutes of
school board meetings and other required records of the school board. All votes taken at meetings required to be
open to the public pursuant to the Minnesota Open Meeting Law must be recorded
in a journal or minutes kept for that purpose.
Public records maintained by the school district must be available for
inspection by members of the public during the regular business hours of the
school district. Minutes of meetings
shall be available for inspection at the administrative offices of the school
district after they have been prepared.
Minutes of a school board meeting shall be approved or modified by the
school board at a subsequent meeting, which action shall be reflected in the
official proceedings of that subsequent meeting.
B. Recordings of Closed Meetings
1. All closed meetings, except those closed as permitted by the
attorney-client privilege, must be electronically recorded at the school
district’s expense. Recordings of closed
meetings shall be made separately from the recordings of an open meeting to the
extent such meetings are recorded. If a meeting is closed to discuss more than
one (1) matter, each matter shall be separately recorded.
2. Recordings of closed meetings shall be preserved by the school
district for the following time periods:
a. Meetings closed to discuss labor
negotiations strategy shall be preserved for two (2) years after the contract
is signed.
b. Meetings closed to discuss security
matters shall be preserved for at least four (4) years.
c. Meetings closed to discuss the purchase
or sale of property shall be preserved for at least eight (8) years after the
date of the meeting.
d. All other closed meetings shall be
preserved by the school district for at least three (3) years after the date of
the meeting.
e. Following the expiration of the above
time periods, recordings of closed meetings shall be maintained as set forth in
the school district’s Records Retention Schedule.
3. Recordings of closed meetings shall be classified by the school
district as protected non-public data that is not accessible by the public or
any subject of the data, with the following exceptions:
a. Recordings of labor negotiations strategy
meetings shall be classified as public data and made available to the public
after all labor contracts are signed by the school district for the current
budget period.
b. Recordings of meetings related to the
purchase or sale of property shall be classified as public data and made
available to the public after all real or personal property discussed at the
meeting has been purchased or sold or the school district has abandoned the
purchase or sale.
c. Recordings of any other closed meetings
shall be classified and/or released as required by court order.
4. Recordings of closed meetings shall be maintained separately from
recordings of open meetings, to the extent recordings of open meetings are
maintained by the school district, with the exception of recordings that have
been classified as public data as set forth in Section III.B.3. above. Recordings of closed meetings classified as
non-public data also shall be maintained in a secure location, separate from
recordings classified as public data.
5. Recordings of closed meetings shall be maintained in a manner to
easily identify the data classification of the recording. The recordings shall be identified with at
least the following information:
a. The date of the closed meeting;
b. The basis upon which the meeting was
closed (i.e.: labor negotiations strategy, purchase or sale of real property,
educational data, etc.); and
c. The classification of the data.
6. Recordings of closed meetings related to labor negotiations strategy
and the purchase or sale of property shall be maintained and monitored in a
manner that reclassifies the recording as public upon the occurrence of an
event reclassifying that data as set forth in Section III.B.3. above.
IV. PUBLICATION OF
OFFICIAL PROCEEDINGS
A. The school board shall cause its official
proceedings to be published once in the official newspaper of the school
district within thirty (30) days of the meeting at which the proceedings
occurred; however, if the school board conducts regular meetings not more than
once every thirty (30) days, the school board need not publish the minutes
until ten (10) days after they have been approved by the school board.
B. The proceedings to be published shall be
sufficiently full to fairly set forth the proceedings. They must include the substance of all
official actions taken by the school board at any regular or special meeting,
and at minimum must include the subject matter of a motion, the persons making
and seconding the motion, a listing of how each member present voted on the
motion, the character of resolutions offered including a brief description of
their subject matter and whether adopted or defeated. The minutes and permanent records of the
school board may include more detail than is required to be published with the
official proceedings. If the proceedings
have not yet been approved by the school board, the proceedings to be published
may reflect that fact.
C. The proceedings to be published may be a
summary of the essential elements of the proceedings, and/or of resolutions and
other official actions of the school board.
Such a summary shall be written in a clear and coherent manner and
shall, to the extent possible, avoid the use of technical or legal terms not
generally familiar to the public. When a
summary is published, the publication shall clearly indicate that the published
material is only a summary and that the full text is available for public inspection
at the administrative offices of the school district and that a copy of the
proceedings, other than attachments to the minutes, is available without cost
at the offices of the school district or by means of standard or electronic
mail.
Legal References: Minn. Stat. § 13D.01, Subds. 4-6 (Open Meeting Law)
Minn. Stat. § 123B.09, Subd. 10 (Boards
of Independent School Districts)
Minn. Stat. § 123B.14, Subd. 7 (Officers
of Independent School Districts)
Minn. Stat. § 331A.01 (Definitions)
Minn. Stat. § 331A.05, Subd. 8 (Form of
Public Notices)
Minn. Stat. § 331A.08, Subd. 3 (Computation
of Time)
Op. Atty. Gen. 161-a-20, December 17,
1970
Ketterer v. Independent School District
No. 1, 248 Minn. 212,
79 N.W.2d 428 (1956)
Cross References: MSBA/MASA Model Policy 205 (Open Meetings and Closed Meetings)