No action was taken at the Three Rivers Community Schools (TRCS) Board of Education (BOE) meeting Monday evening in regards to adopting a policy for flags and other displays in Three Rivers classrooms. The BOE chose to table all actions concerning the policy in favor of scheduling a future closed session to discuss recent, “critical” attorney-client information.
Superintendent Nikki Nash kicked off discussions by saying her recommendation to the board would be to continue with administrative guidelines, rather than adopt a policy. “Looking into it, less than 10% (of school districts) are adopting an actual policy,” she said. “I do have it in the vote tonight as a recommendation to adopt the administrative guidelines, and not move forward with the policy.” Nash said if any discussions took place that evening they could not re-reference any of the legal information the BOE recently received on Thursday, July 6. “If we want to discuss any of that, we’d have to schedule a closed session in August,” Nash said.
BOE Secretary Ben Karle asked, “Is this limited to just the most recent legal opinion, or can we bring up all we’ve gotten thus far?” Nash said the closed session would be the time to discuss any of the legal opinions received over the course of the process.
In regards to scheduling a future closed session BOE Trustee Ross Daniels said, “I’m 100% behind that decision, personally.” Daniels went on to call the recent legal information the BOE received from their attorney “too critical to ignore.” Karle agreed with Daniels and said, “I like that idea, as well, to have a closed session to review that legal opinion we got. And then whichever direction we head we still have that administrative guidelines.”
Nash ended the discussions by announcing the BOE will schedule a closed session for the August 7 meeting to discuss any and all attorney-client information received throughout this process.
The Board of Education meeting location is inside the District Training Room in the Administrative Office Building at 851 Sixth Ave Rd, Three Rivers.
Beca Welty is a staff writer and columnist for Watershed Voice.
