APRIL 23, 2015
New York Times
Leadership team meetings at New York
City public schools must be open to the general public, a Manhattan judge said in a
ruling filed on Thursday.
Every public school in the city is
required to have a School Leadership Team, made up of a mix of faculty and
parents, including the principal and the chapter leader of the teachers’ union.
Michael Thomas, a retired teacher, sued the city’s Education
Department after he was not permitted to attend a leadership
team meeting on Staten Island last year. He
was joined in the suit by Letitia James, the public advocate, and Class Size
Matters, a nonprofit organization.
The city argued that the meetings were
not required to be public because the teams were advisory bodies only.
Justice Peter H. Moulton of State Supreme
Court did not agree. “The proper functioning of public schools is a public
concern,” he wrote in the decision, “not a private concern limited to the
families who attend a given public school.”
A spokesman for the city’s Law Department
said it was reviewing the decision with the Education Department “to determine
next steps.”
A version of this
article appears in print on April 24, 2015, on page A24 of the New York edition with
the headline: School Meetings Deemed Public.
